I get along well with Social Studies staff. Like them all. But they are often a source of major face-palming. Following the oral argument in Trump v Anderson the senior member of the staff was complaining “I tried to listen to the oral argument but they kept talking about stuff somebody wrote back in the 1840’s or something. I don’t care about that old stuff. What about now?” Before I could explain basics of argument to SCOTUS he blurted “and I went to law school!” Needless to say I found that surprising so rather than arguing history and Con Law I inquired about his law school background. I asked him where he went. “Ohio State but not for very long.” Turns out he never took the LSAT but instead audited a couple classes the first few weeks. So his expertise was CLEARLY established.

From Nate Raymond at Reuters: Judge criticizes US Supreme Court’s reliance on historical ‘tradition’.  He’s actually arguing originalism vs traditionalism, but the point is still there.

Words mean things. I reflexively jumped down a student’s throat this morning when she said her college education would be “free.” No. Somebody ELSE was paying for it but it was DEFINITELY not free. And speaking of words meaning things (a phrase my ex-wife HATED!) CLARITY OF LANGUAGE IS THE FOUNDATION OF CLARITY OF THOUGHT:  Stop saying ‘we’ when you mean ‘they’. Stop eating sin that isn’t yours.

Another one she disliked was when I asked her to define her terms. Resolving Definitional Disputes sets out this problem quite succinctly imho. When a student (or anyone, ackshually) asks my opinion on something, and the question is asked in a very pointed, leading way, my initial response is “what do you mean by X?” “Do you think the 2020 election was stolen?” “What do you mean by ‘stolen’?”

JOHN LUCAS: Cutting Down the Law to Get at the Devil: An anti-morality performance premiers in New York. From a scene in Bolt’s masterful A Man For All Seasons. Roper claims he would cut down every law (tree) in England to bring down the devil. Sound like our favorite Fanni? Or Letitia James, aided and abetted by a political hack in judicial robes, Arthur Engoron?

Thomas More’s notable response? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast–man’s laws, not God’s–and if you cut them down–and you’re just the man to do it–d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes. I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.

But those are the teachings of old white men and not to be listened to.

Another long but worth it read: Teaching Constitutional Law in a Crisis of Judicial Legitimacy

David Friedman give us a nice discourse on Dishonest Words, including homophobia, racism, trafficking, pollution, denier and others. Again – go bookmark it and read it twice.

And finally: What the hell does it take to indict a democrat?