Stephen E. Sachs
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stephenesachs.bsky.social
Stephen E. Sachs
@stephenesachs.bsky.social

Antonin Scalia Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
stevesachs.com

Stephen Edward Sachs is an American legal scholar who is the Antonin Scalia Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He is a scholar of constitutional law, civil procedure, conflict of laws, and originalism. .. more

Political science 46%
Law 25%
Pinned
Now published in the Harvard Law Review Forum:

"Zionism and Title VI"
harvardlawreview.org/forum/vol-13...

A solicited response to Profs. @beidelson.bsky.social and Debbie Hellman on how federal civil rights laws apply to campus anti-Zionism.

A few excerpts from the introduction: 1/

February:

Looking forward to meeting our students in tonight's Harvard Law seminar on Abortion: Law, Policy, and Ethics!

Here's the syllabus, so the rest of you can follow along at home:

stevesachs.com/syllabi/abor...

Looking forward to welcoming my students to today's Conflict of Laws class—and the rest of you can follow along with the syllabus at home:

stevesachs.com/syllabi/conf...

Reposted by Stephen E. Sachs

Taking off my weather hat for a moment for something more important than the forecast…today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

I’ve shared before that my grandparents (mom’s side) are both Holocaust survivors. Please do me a favor and read their story in this thread.

Pearly, 2013–2026

(As always, my old exams are archived here: )

stevesachs.com/exams/
Past Exams - Stephen E. Sachs
Civil Procedure Conflict of Laws
stevesachs.com

Congratulations to my Civil Procedure students on finishing their fall semester and starting a new one!

Now you can try the final exam for yourselves at home:

stevesachs.com/Exam_CivPro_...

And on the relationship of anti-Zionism, antisemitism, and the genocide libel:

An excerpt on the violence of the protest movement's aims: 4/

I guess I'd say that, done properly, OMO approaches whatever OLO would say. :) If we want to know what the law was at time t0, and if part of that law was written law, we might look to any then-prevailing and legally relevant interpretive methods

2) My sense is that OMO tends to be defended directly on normative grounds, while OLO tends to be defended as a claim about existing law (which we might also have good reason to follow, but which we should at least report accurately). Cf journals.law.harvard.edu/jlpp/wp-cont...
journals.law.harvard.edu

I'd guess there are at least two:
1) If there were competing original methods, OLO would choose among them based on which has the better claim to having been part of the law at the time. I'm not sure, but I think different OMO theories might choose differently? Cf.:

Some related professional news! Honored to serve.

It's RULES AMENDMENTS DAY!

No Act of Congress having intervened, the amendments to the Federal Rules of Appellate, Bankruptcy, and Civil Procedure promulgated earlier this year by the Supreme Court are now in effect.

REJOICE!

December:

In any case, read the whole thing! Comments welcome.

www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

6/6
www.supremecourt.gov

States make separate public corps for the same reasons private corps make subsidiaries: to move risks into separate baskets, w/separate debts and subject to separate judgments. If a suit isn't going to bind the State, there's no reason for immunity! 5/

TL;DR: Sovereign immunity is for sovereigns. The immunity retained at the Founding was specifically for States, not corporations; the very thing States were worried about in Chisholm was being treated like corporations!

4/

Does NJ Transit, a separate public corporation, get the same sovereign immunity as the State of New Jersey? We say no.

From the summary of argument:

2/

Now online:

A new amicus brief by @williambaude.bsky.social and me, filed today in the Supreme Court in Galette v. New Jersey Transit Corp., on sovereign immunity and the "arm of the State" doctrine:

www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/24...

1/

The point here isn't to shape the electorate one way or another, but to deal with the giant problem in front of us (23% of the electorate lacking representation) rather than edge cases, and to take any other aspect of the voting system as one finds it

But if the reason is both of these at once, or some other idea that membership in the political community is a prerequisite for being heard in its councils, then there's no proper proxy for a citzen child who lacks one citizen parent. I imagine you disagree with some of these reasons, which is fine!

If the reason is that citizenship is *merely* a test for whether your interests ought to be taken into consideration, then presumably we ought to let noncitizen parents vote for their citizen children, because the latter's interests do count, and the former are capable of representing them

If the reason is that citizenship is *merely* a proxy for knowledge/alignment of interests, then presumably we ought to let citizen parents vote for their noncitizen children (rare, but possible), bc the children still have interests that matter, and the parents know enough to help them

But current law doesn't let noncitizens vote. So if the proposal takes that part of the system for granted, it would matter *why* current law doesn't let them vote

Current law lets noncitizens act as proxies in lots of situations (hospital rooms, litigation, etc.), but it also lets them act for themselves; no one is prevented from giving permission for a surgery on the grounds of citizenship, for example, and the same is largely true of suing in court