Blake Emerson
@blakeprof.bsky.social
Professor of Law, UCLA School of Law. Administrative law, political theory. Author: The Public’s Law. Personal views only. https://law.ucla.edu/faculty/faculty-profiles/blake-emerson
The selling point of a data center is to eliminate jobs.
Hassett: "Data centers are very good for towns bc they create so many jobs & bring people in with high incomes that can buy houses & stuff like that. So if you take a sleepy town that hasn't seen much in the last 30 years & put a data center there, there are gonna be a bunch of happy residents."
“And there is a Federal AI Commission that imposes reasonable rate and non-discrimination regulations on us.”
New draft paper on SSRN: "Fact Avoidance," forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Issue. This Essay identifies a recurring feature where the Court decides presidential power cases entirely on legal grounds without engaging at all with the facts /1 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
Fact Avoidance
<p><i><span>The legality of the President’s exercise of statutory power depends on questions of both law and fact. Yet courts often focus exclusively on the for
papers.ssrn.com
I never would have thought I’d become a Jackass fan. But LA has broadened my horizons. Knoxville is a mensch and the franchise has a great gonzo, gender-subversive politics.
Johnny Knoxville, America’s God of Mischief
What moves the star of “Jackass” to risk his life for our entertainment? A very serious investigation.
newyorker.com
“I think you’re all morons and can’t wait to take your money, jobs, and capacity for critical thought”
“What we need to explain to the world: Number one, we are close to creating a genie that can grant any wish. Number two, we are going to make sure that our first wishes broadly benefit humanity” - Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI — This is definitely the opposite of Anthropic’s AI kills all jobs pitch.
AAUP and UCLA *unions* protected us. The university did little to nothing.
"Universities like Columbia are not better off for having capitulated last year. They compromised their independence and suffered reputational damage, yet are still subject to [Trump's] arbitrary behavior." Read @ryanenos.bsky.social on need to resist Trump: www.bostonglobe.com/2026/07/27/o...
I would appreciate it if academic leadership (at many places, not at my law school) would stop acting as though they have to bow to the absolute power of AI and instead stand up for their increasingly distinctive and scarce human and social value.
Americans have more confidence in higher education than in big tech companies, and the gap is growing rather than shrinking. The higher ed-doomsday pundits need to get on board with the real vibe shift in public trust that is happening right now.
“Even for those agencies that clearly have RIF authority, it cannot be read to permit the agency to fire all staff necessary to exercise their discretionary powers. Congress could not have intended…” Yesssss! Looking forward to this
COMING SOON
Trump’s greatest contribution as President will be accidentally accelerating the abandonment of dirty energy.
Come join my faculty! We're hiring for two positions: 1) open-rank BA and corporate law and 2) entry level torts! I love my law school and faculty and know that you will, too! #RollWave! 🌊
I can’t help you with stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, but can I interest you in giving one to the Saudis?
I appreciate both Mamdani’s (accurate) description of Netanyahu as a war criminal and his seriousness about the limits of the Mayor’s actual legal authority.
Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal.
I’ve seen this headline about a dozen times this summer.
Check out Seyla Benhabib’s incisive critique of Roberts’ Barbara opinion, which deployed Hannah Arendt’s phrase “the right to have rights” (without citation, of course), while the Court in Mullin v. Doe effectively deprives refugees of such rights.
Hannah Arendt v. The Roberts Court
by Seyla Benhabib
medium.com
This is what the “voter fraud” stuff is about - the claim isn’t that people are voting illegally, but that most democratic voters (especially the non-white ones) aren’t really Americans.
Claremont has direct proximity to and influence over the government right now. The guy who led the mass deportation campaign for all of 2025 believes this shit. So yeah, this is fringe, racist, batshit nuttery. It's also a serious threat. www.thebulwark.com/p/whos-to-bl...
A&M may be generating most of the anti-academic freedom headlines, but this is a pretty bleak sign of how things are going at my old employer, too: www.statesman.com/news/educati...
UT border surveillance scholar was a shoo-in for tenure. UT denied him.
American Studies scholar Iván Chaar López fears UT’s unexplained tenure denial violated his academic freedom amid scrutiny of controversial fields.
statesman.com
Headline needs to go through a few more drafts, no idea what this means
I’ll say it: the whole World Cup thing was a little much.
We need to move all of administrative adjudication, not just immigration courts, to Article III, with article III judges appointing what are currently administrative judges as magistrate judges. I outline the case in part III of this article: www.law.georgetown.edu/georgetown-l...
Now should be a moment when a few senators decide Trump is too unpopular to abet his unhinged lawlessness, and not confirm Blanche. I’m not optimistic, but we’ll see