I've just taken a very quick look on my phone but at first glance the drop in “perceived decline“ in free expression is disturbingly, if predictably, polarized on party lines: Rs show only slight decline compared to 10 years ago while Ds dropped by more than 30 percentage points

John Sands@iohn.bsky.social · 6h ago

A new survey from @knightfoundation.org and @ssrsresearch.bsky.social reveals a disquieting decline in how free Americans feel to use the freedoms protected by the #FirstAmendment without government interference or punishment. 🧵

bloop

Kansas voters reject GOP-backed measure to directly elect state Supreme Court justices

The Republican-controlled Legislature referred a constitutional amendment to the primary ballot after the state Supreme Court ruled against the party on issues like abortion.

nbcnews.com

Not sure if this looks worse for the LLMs or for the legitimacy of SCOTUS

SSRN@ssrn.bsky.social · 7h ago

This paper tests #GPT-5, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude Sonnet 4.5 & Grok 4 on every SCOTUS argued case from OT 2025. Accuracy looked good until you realise most of it just reflected the Court's usual ideological alignment, not actual legal analysis. spkl.io/633247zQpk #AI #LegalTech

The DOJ is now 0-20 in court trying to access states' voter files. They've lost in: Arizona California Colorado Connecticut Illinois Kentucky Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island Virginia West Virginia Wisconsin

Temple Law School is proud to welcome Lonnie T. Brown, Jr. as the Kean Family Dean and Peter J. Liacouras Professor of Law. His leadership and commitment to access, academic excellence, community engagement, and scholarship will carry our mission forward. Welcome, Dean Brown!

Oh. Well, anyway…

Steve Herman@newsguy.bsky.social · 2d ago

CNN - President Trump is considering removing Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, over a DoJ conclusion that problems with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool stemmed from a flawed renovation rather than vandalism. www.cnn.com/2026/08/03/politi...

Either Scholastica needs to streamline this or journals are going to need to find another way to do this. Nobody reads individual submission requirements in a mass submission system.

Michael Smith@msmith750.bsky.social · 3d ago

As another PSA, The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is requiring AI disclosures too. They don't have a Google form and are asking authors to include a note in their cover letters. Anyway, RIP to my submissions as I found this out too late, but did I really have a chance?

At least so far, attorneys can still be disciplined and lose their licenses. They simply are not in the same position as (other, in some cases) elected or political figures. I think you should expect to see these paths diverge more and more.

Helen Kennedy@helenkennedy.com · 4d ago

Oh my. Pirro v Burgum is on people. (Cannot see how they both stay in their jobs)

AI IS BASICALLY A SEX WORKER might be the hook for my new class…

This is in the American Bar Association's lawsuit against the Trump admin for what the ABA identifies as the Trump admin's "Law Firm Intimidation Policy." Judge Amir Ali has the case, Susman Godfrey's Stephen Shackelford is representing the ABA, and James Wen is representing the government.

Chris Geidner@chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 5d ago

On an hour-long (so far) discovery call that started at 10a on a Friday in the summer. Congrats to the lawyers who drew this straw (and the judge).

Judge Willett says - as clear as you can say it - the First Amendment does not allow for liability for being famous and in a protest, and he calls for SCOTUS to act.

My friends at @umichlaw.bsky.social are hiring in the first year Legal Practice program, potentially for multiple slots! careers.umich.edu/job_detail/2...

OK! I have read the complaint in the "Grok (OK, fine, xAI) (OK, fine, SpaceX) sues Minnesota over obscene deepfake law" lawsuit, and I'm here to break it down. Link to the complaint below, so you can follow along. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

@mariabonn.bsky.social, Josh Bolick, and I are updating our survey on scholarly communication competencies. If you or a colleague work in scholcomm we would love to hear from you. The survey is here and should take less than 5-10 minutes: ncsu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

ridiculous

Florida Professor Fired for Assigning a Profane Story, Lawsuit Says

South Florida State College fired an English professor after she assigned a story about a teacher who talks about sex with her students. Now the professor is suing.

nytimes.com

"The judge said the appeal would be meritless, adding that 'Freeman and her lawyers have engaged in "vexatious" and bad faith conduct throughout' the case."

Writer Must Post $150K Bond During Romantasy IP Appeal - Law360

A New York federal judge on Tuesday said a writer has to put up a bond of $150,000 while she appeals the dismissal of her suit accusing a best-selling fiction author of stealing her romance-fantasy bo...

law360.com

Sarah Fackrell@design-law.bsky.social · 5mo ago

"A ... federal judge has dismissed a writer's lawsuit accusing a bestselling fiction author of stealing her romance-fantasy book drafts to create the popular 'Crave' series, issuing a lengthy opinion finding tropes of the genre —such as 'hot, sexy, dangerous boys'— are not protected by copyright."

Hello, yes, I am in this post.

Aparna Nair@disabilitystor1.bsky.social · last wk.

I see that it is officially "Im panicking, the summer can't be nearly over, what do you mean the semester begins again, I haven't finished what I had planned, I need a time machine" time of the year

I am about to stress throw up on everyone's behalf

David Ziff@djsziff.bsky.social · last wk.

"Dear Applicant, With deep regret, I write to inform you that Washington’s July 2026 administration of the NextGen bar exam has been cancelled. We will not continue tomorrow. . . . We do not have sufficient confidence that the technology issues have been resolved . . . . We sincerely apologize."

Employers are now profiting not just from workers' labor but also their loan payments & data. New paper with @kennybauf.bsky.social on the "Triple Extraction Model" and why consumer law belongs in the workplace. Forthcoming in @uclalawreview.bsky.social: ssrn.com/abstract=718...

A woman’s Global Entry was revoked days after she legally observed ICE agents. ICE agents showed up to a polling place to demand a worker remove an anti-ICE post. A man was sentenced to 30 years in prison for moving a box of left-wing magazines. Trump’s crackdown on dissent is here. Be warned.

Upwards of 200,00 people may have lost their jobs today; or will in the upcoming days. There is a palpable sense of fear among the Haitian community right now. They need your support.

Heba Gowayed هبة جويد@hebagowayed.bsky.social · last wk.

My Haitian friend was just fired from his job. "They said I don't have a legal status now." This is likely happening to hundreds of thousands of people across this country today. Sick.

Within weeks of SCOTUS's B.P.J. decision, Heritage called Title IX "feminist social engineering" and called for its overhaul. Reva Siegel and I revised our forthcoming piece in the Tx. L. Rev. to make sense of B.P.J. and what's going on: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.... balkin.blogspot.com

Ok law profs (and anyone else who wants to chime in). Talk to me about writing tablets (ReMarkable, Scribe, etc.). I need to up my note-taking game and be better about marking up and organizing pdfs and other notes. What do you use? What do you like? What should I be thinking about?

It is beyond cringey the professors I see baking in "anti ai" cheater catching mechanisms into their exams when they could spend the same amount of time simply making a better exam. But that requires work you don't want to do, now doesn't it?

To my past, current, and future law students: please know that your accommodations are not a "large advantage." They're a need. Legal education is broken in so many stupid ways. But what we are not going to do is normalize this kind of thinking. Let's go over why. 🧵

Orin Kerr@orinkerr.bsky.social · last wk.

Here's Professor Sag's discussion about accommodations that precedes the earlier screenshot. Of course, if students believe that Professor Sag is wrong about that, that's super useful, too, I'd be very interested to hear about that.

I am always trying to explain to folks that most Americans have never met a Jew and people do not believe me and I just need you to understand that the perception that we are a powerful group in this country is intentionally created by antisemites and you’re unknowingly buying in.

Joel S.@joelhs.bsky.social · last wk.

This actually explains something about how people talk about the Jewish community.

Time to ban LinkedIn.

Rav@rvbdrm.com · last wk.

Discovering new levels of LinkedIness

Over at his personal blog, Emory Law Professor @matthewsag.bsky.social offers some very interesting thoughts on structuring law school exams in an era of AI and common extra-time accommodations. matthewsag.com/ai-accommoda...

As good as many of you said. I really appreciate the unambiguous point that this primarily a racist moral panic before unpacking the nuanced second-order explanations. dannykatch.substack.com/p/we-used-to...

We used to be able to buy things in this country

Locking up toothpaste was a warning sign that our executive class was crazy

dannykatch.substack.com

Nothing screams “2026” more than this.

Esther Schindler@estherschindler.bsky.social · 2w ago

Facing federal science budget cuts, biologist Daniel Blumstein resorted to uploading marmot videos to OnlyFans to raise funds for his marmot research. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/25/s...