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Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov

@jnovkov.bsky.social

9.9K followers 1.1K following 5K posts

Academic (poli sci, law, and US political development), administrator, gymnastics fan, resident of upstate New York. Go Great Danes! Views expressed here are solely my personal opinions. Born at 321 PPM CO2. #polisky #skystorians .. more

Julie Novkov is an American political scientist, currently a professor of political science and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. She studies the history of American law, American political development, and subordinated identities, with a focus on how laws are used for social control while also being affected by social reform movements. .. more

Political science 54%

Law 14%

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Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 8h

Worth noting that the judges closest to the facts and actual impacts are the ones least likely to support the government.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 13h

Sad to think that someone like this would have the last word on tenure/promotion of people whose cases are based on the quality, quantity, and placement of their peer-reviewed work.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 20h

Just as the framers intended.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 20h

The WV one really does feel almost like a bill of attainder.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 20h

If hotels are successfully pressured by communities to refuse service and the federal response is as expected, we might finally get that elusive third amendment case we've been waiting for for so long!

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 20h

I think it's probably past time for universities to leave X. If a community member of any university did what Grok is doing, they'd be subject to serious discipline, no?

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 20h

I wasn't as early as you but I remember it feeling like I was just at a large-ish conference, over in the corner talking to my friends. And then the Keanus and Kind Doctors and Veterans with Dogs Who Love Life started coming ...

Reposted by Julie Novkov

David Shiffman, Ph.D. 🦈 @whysharksmatter.bsky.social · 21h

“I haven’t checked if this is true, but…”

Let me stop you right there, friend-o.

There’s enough actually horrible stuff really happening without you spreading inflammatory wrong information.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

I'd be down with an "all conferences in Chicago until further notice" rule.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

For sure! Maybe everybody should just come to Albany. Well, for late spring, summer, and fall conferences . . .

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

They really looked good!

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

It's beyond clown car.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Some places are getting increasingly dangerous for some orgs' members.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

I just want to remind everyone, perhaps prematurely, of Ken Sherrill's point that for years, SPSA met in the only hotel in the south that allowed integrated conferences. I would really not want to be an org director making decisions about siting annual meetings right now.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Yes. If there's any optimism to be had, it lies in the hope for an Arendtian revolutionary moment to come out of extreme provocation. But as you know, that's a high bar and in the US we're not great at follow through.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

And as for civil war. That's one possible outcome. Another is a retreat to an early-20th-century settlement, allowing states/regions to go their own way, including encouraging some to set up herrenvolk democracies or even little autocracies.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Ahhh, now that is a question for our friends in CJ. And I think they have some answers, though they aren't easy ones. A short version of Rob Worden's recent work is that institutional change is tough without buy-in from street level bureaucrats all the way up.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Some theorist smarter than me could go to town on a comprehensive analysis of the specific kind of violence inherent in this kind bullshit. It does violence to the individuals involved, of course, but also violence to the polity.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Exactly! What Cover teaches is that legitimation is a dynamic process. One of the tragedies of American political development is that we have as a nation done such a poor job of demanding accountability from the purveyors of bullshit legal justifications.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

The working theory on the right seems to be that any form of noncompliance justifies state violence. But that's not a meaningful justification. Rather, it is an overt threat.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

Just crazy.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

So let's add a corollary: bullshit legal justifications, especially if post hoc, can't achieve the above-referenced alchemy.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

How does the state use violence legitimately? Through law. Law can transform violence into justice. But we must recognize that it remains violence underneath and that law alone can't bootstrap legitimacy.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 1d

This gets me thinking not just about Weber (state holding a monopoly on legitimate uses of organized violence) but Robert Cover's discussions of the relationship between law and violence.

Reposted by Julie Novkov

Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 1d

Journos looking for scholars to interview about the status of Puerto Rico in relation to the US: you need Sam Erman (U Michigan Law), or Mae Henning (Suffolk Univ). Other experts I missed, please tag yourselves.

jaimi.bsky.social @jaimi.bsky.social · 2d

Ted Cruz specifically cited Puerto Rico as a model for how we should administer Greenland, too, in his Senate Commerce Committee hearing last year with one of Elbridge Colby’s think tank buddies as a star witness

www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/2/nuuk-...

Nuuk and Cranny: Looking at the Arctic and Greenland’s Geostrategic Importance to U.S. Interests

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, will convene a full committee hearing titled “Nuuk and Cranny: Looking at the Arctic and Gre...

www.commerce.senate.gov

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 2d

Yesssss!

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 2d

Go Birds and also NCAA men's gym kicks off this weekend with Stanford tonight and Michigan tomorrow. I desperately need a Charlie Larson floor routine to heal my heart.

Julie Novkov @jnovkov.bsky.social · 3d

I've learned a lot from reading The Crisis issues from the late 1910s and early 1920s.

Reposted by Elizabeth Stokoe, Ingo Rohlfing, Johannes Breuer , and 1 more Elizabeth Stokoe, Ingo Rohlfing, Johannes Breuer, Julie Novkov

Altmetric @altmetric.com · 3d

X/Twitter's rough full volume is around 500 total million posts every day, or 182 (and a half) billion posts per year.

By contracts, we found 11.2 million research posts in all of 2025 on there.

In other words, 0.000006% of Twitter appears to be sharing research. Basically zero.

Reposted by Julie Novkov

Anna O. Law @unlawfulentries.bsky.social · 3d

Law Prof Maxwell Stearns wrote a timely book called Parliamentary America: The Least Radical Means of Radically Repairing Our Broken Democracy. He advocates a # of reforms.

On the Balkinization blog, one review a day by different people will appear, with Stearns responding last. See my post 👇 here:

Cover of the book Parliamentary America by Maxwell L. Stearns, with the the US Capitol dome