How do you grow up in a survivalist family, surrounded by extreme poverty, with no formal schooling until you are 17 years old, physically and emotionally abused by an older brother, and a decade later graduate with a doctorate in intellectual history from Cambridge? This is the story at the heart of Tara Westover’s memoir,…
Category: Blog
How do you replace an icon on the Supreme Court? (and why that is the wrong question)
The news that progressives dreaded for years came to pass last night: Justice Ginsburg died. An icon of the liberal wing of the Court, her passing hands President Trump another seat on the Supreme Court. To progressives, this signals the end of the Court as a bastion of justice and defender of minority rights for…
Arguing about the Past: Why all the fuzz about the 1619 Project?
The 1619 Project is all the rage in conservative circles. And for the life of me, I can’t figure out why. I still remember when the piece came out a year ago. I shared the essay from Nikole Hannah-Jones far and wide. The idea, the concept, spoke to me. Here is how the project opens:…
Do we really have to ask, What is Puerto Rico?
Does it really take 61 pages to answer such a simple question? The legal question in the recent Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico v. Aurelius Investment, LLC was not explicitly over the constitutional status of Puerto Rico, of course. The question was over the constitutionality of the PROMESA Board, a body established…
Taking the Streets
Protests rage across the United States. Fires. Shootings. The President turned off the lights and hid in a bunker. And as this tragic moment unfolds, for reasons I will explain shortly, the conservative figure of Justice Frankfurter looms large in my mind. The link between these protests and words Frankfurter wrote generations ago is clear,…
What do North Carolina Judges Know that Supreme Court Justices Do Not?
Last week, a three-judge court in North Carolina did the unthinkable: it struck down a state redistricting plan on partisan gerrymandering grounds. This plucky little court held, in light of the overwhelming factual record chock-full of crass and extreme examples of partisan behavior, that the plan violated the law. Doing the heavy lifting was a…
“School Begins” in Puerto Rico. A Hundred years later, nothing changes
As mass protests swirled in Puerto Rico over vulgar tweets and governmental corruption, I could not stop thinking about a famous cartoon published over a century ago in Puck Magazine. The cartoon, entitled “School Begins,” depicts an angry- looking Uncle Sam as schoolmarm, admonishing students sitting in the front row as others go about their…
What’s wrong with “open borders”?
Any chance he gets, President Trump assails critics of his immigration policies as advocates of “open borders.” Unsurprisingly, he is wrong as a matter of fact; the United States does not have open borders, and the Democratic Party is not arguing for opening them. But what exactly is wrong with open borders? No, really. What exactly…
To be or not to be [brilliant]
Judge Kavanaugh is in line to replace Justice Kennedy on the US Supreme Court. The nomination dance is about to begin in full force. Critics will raise questions about past cases, judicial temperament, law and the judicial role; and supporters will point to his past accomplishments and the judge’s professed belief in judicial restraint [and…
