Beau Baumann 🍎
@beaubaumann.bsky.social
Constitutional Law Prawf @ University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law. Formerly YLS, Cornell Law, DOJ. (Account does not represent opinions of my employer) . . . Also, vintage menswear enthusiast . . .
I like how this piece tees up the core incongruity of a writer whose core commandment was that writing required an estrangement from one’s own culture but who nonetheless was indelibly shaped by her place in the world.
How Racist Was Flannery O’Connor?
She has become an icon of American letters. Now readers are reckoning with another side of her legacy.
newyorker.com
I really don’t think people understand that I don’t try to have a unified theory for how democracy works with apex courts for all time, for all seasons. I am operating off the simple observation that ~our~ apex court is reliably pathological in its opposition to multiracial democracy in America.
Yeah, I guess I should just say explicitly I’m weighted against centrist work of a kind of “internal” legal variety. That’s what already get shoved into our bloodstreams all day anyway.
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 2d agoI’m starting a new scholarship roundup series called “Beau & Tell.” I’m specifically target folks on the left, on the right, and folks abroad. I think the current pipelines might give these buckets of scholars too little play.
The first big recommendation on the "Beau & Tell" Scholarship Roundup had to be @jmichaels.bsky.social's killer new piece :)
Beau & Tell Scholarship Roundup 10/9/26
Congressional power, administrative institutions, legal history, constitutional theory, Law and Political Economy, and comparative constitutionalism.
bbaumann.substack.com
I’m starting a new scholarship roundup series called “Beau & Tell.” I’m specifically target folks on the left, on the right, and folks abroad. I think the current pipelines might give these buckets of scholars too little play.
bbaumann.substack.com
Why do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Why They Want You to Watch
The Legal Spectacle of Public Executions
bbaumann.substack.com
Very good piece. I appreciate the thoughtfulness, which really is needed in facing this issue. What's ironic: trump & hegseth minions couldn't spell Foucault, much less have read his work.
Michael Douglas: That's The Sad Truth
ALT: Michael Douglas: That's The Sad Truth
static.klipy.com
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
And to add one more point: “Opposition to the execution can then be made to look like sympathy for a murderer.” Opposition to the execution can be used to charge people with support for a terrorist.
Beau is right. But also this isn’t just a choice of a man who garners no sympathy, there are lots of those. He’s a Muslim and particularly useful. The spectacle provides yet another opportunity to use Islam and Muslims as targets and to fan hate. To claim that they are all disloyal infiltrators.
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
“The public execution is to be understood not only as a judicial, but also as a public ritual. It belongs, even in minor cases, to the ceremonies by which power is manifested.” – Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
I’ve gotten into writing in that weird twilight before I sleep. It feels great in the moment but comes at a steep cost. I sleep like shit after I do this.
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Yes, and…. As a performance of sovereignty, the purpose of public executions has changed over time with shifts in the nature of sovereignty. The spectacle Hegseth intends is a largely a return to an earlier mode of public execution associated with early modern monarchies 🧵
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Sometimes people get mad at me for saying a judge did something “moronic.” And I’m just like, hey maybe hot critique of people who wield state power is not a big deal in a culture in which women in the public eye are ritualistically mocked for their appearances.
Nathan Richardson@nathanrichardson.bsky.social · 3d agoBad people do enough bad stuff worthy of trenchant, even pointed and rude critique that making fun of their physical appearance is not just unnecessary, classless, and pointless, but actively counterproductive. Might feel good in the moment but it undercuts the moral authority of critique.
@beaubaumann.bsky.social is right: everyday, until the supposed day of public execution, is a struggle over the message. I would add two things: First, when I say that the Civil War taught us No Kings, No Masters, this is what I mean. The master had sovereign authority over the plantation.
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Yeah, I didn’t want to get bogged down again in the “constitutional politics” of it all, but totally right. Spectacles like this one are a claim on the righteous use of state violence. And this one claim is implicitly anathema to well-ordered democracy.
John Carpenter’s Halloran@profhalloran.bsky.social · 3d agoAs both @kalimurray.bsky.social and @beaubaumann.bsky.social point out, the stakes of this in a pluralistic democratic society are pretty clear: state power should be exercised for the benefit of the people, who are sovereign. *Not* for the benefit of the Executive which is not a sovereign.
Killer stuff. 💯
Professa Murray@kalimurray.bsky.social · 3d ago@beaubaumann.bsky.social is right: everyday, until the supposed day of public execution, is a struggle over the message. I would add two things: First, when I say that the Civil War taught us No Kings, No Masters, this is what I mean. The master had sovereign authority over the plantation.
One thing that @beaubaumann.bsky.social addresses is the question of whether it’s any worse to do this behind closed doors. Again, a wonderful analysis of why a public execution is qualitatively different. That dovetails with my discussion of oversight from yesterday (though from a different frame)
John Carpenter’s Halloran@profhalloran.bsky.social · 3d agoIn thinking about public executions, I think we need be careful about drawing a line between public participation being necessary for accountability and thinking that public participation would horrify people enough to get them to oppose the death penalty.
This is an absolutely phenomenal analysis. And everyone should take a moment to read it. Asking ourselves ‘what does this exercise of state power mean?’ is an essential analytic frame.
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
“One might ask, is this better or worse than hiding the ritualized killing of human beings in untelevised rooms, as has become the tradition in Texas? That’s a question I have been chewing on since I heard the news.”
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
“The location too is just so on the nose that Foucault would have rolled his eyes. Hasan’s execution is supposed to take place at Ft Hood, the site of his killing spree. The whole thing is about reenacting the violence of the Hood shooting but with a reversal of the power and capacity for violence.”
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
“The word spectacle can accidentally connote something superficial. But in law, a spectacle can organize violence in a way that gives it a public, political meaning.”
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
“I think the best way to understand this announcement is that the Trump Administration is doing spectacle. In other words, this execution will do political work for the Administration before a single shot is fired.”
Beau Baumann 🍎@beaubaumann.bsky.social · 3d agoWhy do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Why do Trump and Hegseth want you to watch a man die?
Why They Want You to Watch
The Legal Spectacle of Public Executions
bbaumann.substack.com
You really need to buy into the SCOTUS of it all to shout out a juriscentric theory of the constitution with gusto. You aren’t gonna get a liberal alt to originalism until the contingent forces make it plausible. And I don’t think that’s the direction the wind is heading.
