Anyone in the Boston area is welcome to attend this live podcast recording. But if you happen to attend Harvard Law School it'll be pretty easy--the venue is two blocks away.

Short Circuit@shortcircuitij.bsky.social · 18h ago

We're coming to Cambridge, Mass! See a live show on zoning, the Constitution & Cambridge. Euclid v Ambler Realty, Nectow v Cambridge & YIMBYism today. W/ @maureenebrady.com @burhanazeem.bsky.social Ari Bargil of @ij.org & @ijsanders.bsky.social Space is limited, RSVP today! ij.org/event/short-...

Dear New Law Students: Reposting what I've said in previous years--Our constitutional order didn't begin in 1787. So many important things preceded it! Here's what you should read to understand constitutional law that *they* won't teach you in that class: 1/

Since there were Existentialist bands you'd think there would have been Logical Positivist bands. "Metaphysics is a Lie" could have been a big hit. Or maybe "Verify Your Vienna Circle."

You know, ordinarily I’d say centrally planned economies are a bad idea. But what if — and hear me out, here — what if we switched to a centrally planned system, except there was only only one planner, and he was a corrupt, senile, 80-year-old man who had driven multiple businesses into the ground?

Trump’s Bad Bet on Beef

A new plan to lower prices is causing a rift in his own party.

theatlantic.com

"What was your favorite [Tim] Curry movie and why was it Clue?" Exactly.

@sonnybunch.bsky.social · 6d ago

There's an argument to be made that Dolly Parton was the greatest living American, just the embodiment of talent and hard work creating a fortune that was, in turn, used to better the lives of millions. RIP. May her library carry her name into the future. www.thebulwark.com/p/dolly-part...

Our Latest Podcast: Irreparable Speech Harms. All about the Eighth Circuit, with Aaron Van Oort & Sam Gedge! #12Months12Circuits Plus, learn how Judge Posner wrote opinions in less than two hours. ij.org/podcasts/sho...

The scribbles of an 18th Century Clerk of the Rolls Chapel (Henry Rooke), using a draft indenture to practice writing common words (common for his work, at least). Mesmerising. [TNA C 149/57]

Just learned that last week Charles Marohn of Strong Towns won his as-applied 1st Amendment claim in federal court against Minnesota's engineering board over his use of the term "professional engineer." The litigation has lasted many years. Congrats to Chuck & his legal team! ij.org/wp-content/u...

Last week the Mercatus team published our annual roundup of state housing supply bills. 2026 saw a slight decline in bills, after several years of consistent increases, with a total of 350 by our count: www.mercatus.org/research/pol...

"It was Mr Western's custom every afternoon, as soon as he was drunk, to hear his daughter play on the harpsichord". -Fielding, The History of Tom Jones Man, those were the days.

Note on this: Recently a colleague actually DID go to a conference "at the Sheraton Hotel in Canada" (Toronto). I said this line to a meeting with a bunch of our coworkers. No one laughed. No one even smiled. Man I felt old.

Anthony Sanders@ijsanders.bsky.social · last wk.

OK, I did this too fast. So many others, of course, but the true #1 is "at the Sheraton Hotel in Canada."

The five Simpsons lines I’ve uttered most: 5. Monorail! 4. That's a paddle. 3. The government doesn't own the air. You could live in a balloon! 2. And then I was killed. By an elf. 1. Communism works *in theory.*

Pete Nikolai @neatpickleye.bsky.social · last wk.

The five simpsons lines I’ve uttered most: 5. Sure, we’d save lives, but millions would be late 4. Which was the style of the time 3. You don’t make friends with salad 2. I am so smart, s-m-r-t. 1 money can be exchanged for goods and services.

On this day in antiquity: the final known text in Egyptian hieroglyphs is written down. These two texts from Roman Egypt, written in hieroglyphs and Demotic on the Nile island of Philae, are short, but they nonetheless give us their author's name and their date of creation: August 24th 394 AD.

In this post, building on an insightful piece by @casssunstein.bsky.social, I explain how taking account of voter ignorance can help reconcile Hayek and Mill’s divergent defenses of liberty: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

Reconciling Hayek and Mill's Divergent Defenses of Liberty

As Cass Sunstein points out, Hayek and Mill had widely divergent rationales for liberty. But the two can be reconciled.

reason.com

Real liberalism has been tried. First it created the Constitution. Then it abolished slavery. Then it ended segregation. Then it created the greatest surge of prosperity in history. Our problems today are not because liberalism failed. They are because we failed liberalism.

It's crazy the cultural impact this show has had. The podcast the rest of us podcasters set our watches by.

Esther Bintliff@estherbintliff.bsky.social · 2w ago

'It will be literally no work. It will be no work whatsoever' was how Tom Holland sold a history podcast to Dominic Sandbrook. Had so much fun interviewing them and attending the first @theresthistory.bsky.social festival at Hampton Court Palace. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/2026/08/22/w...

Trump has threatened to sue the left-leaning @americanprogress.bsky.social (CAP) and its donors over a study it published questioning the benefits of his National Guard deployment. I'm proud that Cato's president is speaking out against this act of intimidation. "We stand with CAP." /1

Party like it's 1971.

Short Circuit@shortcircuitij.bsky.social · 2w ago

Our Latest Newsletter: Rough rides, U.S. attorney vacancies, and the 26th Amendment. ij.org/sc_newslette...

Sorry for the late notice, but I'll be holding an AMA for the next 30 minutes by Gate C62 at the Denver Airport.

One of the fancy signs at issue in a Tenth Circuit case we discuss this week.

Short Circuit@shortcircuitij.bsky.social · 2w ago

Our Latest Podcast: Free Speech Died in the Library With @pjaicomo.bsky.social & Sophia Henderson! youtu.be/MQ_nK17yHYE?...

New word for me: rime (in the non-words sounding similar sense). One meaning is frost or to cover with frost. Seems it went out of fashion in Middle English but then was somewhat revived by 18th & 19th C writers. But it didn't stick (melted away?), so it seems.

If voters can't even distinguish between candidates with similar names why do judges defer to the constitutional interpretations of the legislators those voters elect?

Ilya Somin@ilyasomin.bsky.social · 2w ago

Alaska Senate race controversy over potential voter confusion between two candidates named "Dan Sullivan" is part of a much broader problem of voter ignorance: reason.com/volokh/2026/...

"Effects of the Minneapolis 2040 Plan on House Prices" onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... "we find a significant reduction in house price increases in Minneapolis following the Plan. Our baseline estimates suggest a 15%−23% reduction in mid-tier house price growth."

Want to see the latest in scholarship re: state constitutions & other state public law issues? Check out @miriamseifter.bsky.social's new roundup for @statecourtreport.org. statecourtreport.org/our-work/ana...

Summer Scholarship Roundup: New Papers on State-Federal Conflicts and State Constitutions

Law review articles shine new light on state public law issues, including state constitutional interpretation and the commandeering doctrine.

statecourtreport.org

A proposition: A Top 10 (Top 5?) mic drop of literature is in Chapter 61 of Middlemarch.

I learn from reading @judgedanfriedman.bsky.social that in the early 1980s there was a bit of a rap battle, of sorts, between David Currie and Frank Easterbrook over who was the least significant justice in Supreme Court history.

Rage 🧵: A few years ago, our neighbors complained to the city about the plant growth on a steep slope in our backyard. It’s so steep that lawn care companies told me they won’t mow it. The city didn’t care. They threatened us with thousands of dollars in fines. I ended up writing about it:

Code Snitching: Nashvillians Are Weaponizing Metro Codes Against ‘Undesirable’ Neighbors

Taking a deep dive on a trend that disproportionately affects Black and low-income Nashvillians

nashvillescene.com

Reading George Eliot. Saw this passage in Middlemarch and suddenly the actions of the British upper classes made much more sense.

*ADA stomping his feet* "But juuuudge, usually courts just accept what we say without asking for evidence!"