Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Mathias Hong @hongmathias.bsky.social · 21h

"Ein pauschaler Ausschluss von Bewerberinnen und Bewerbern allein aufgrund ihrer parteipolitischen Herkunft widerspricht" dem gesetzlichen und verfassungsrechtlich gebotenen Prüfungsmaßstab.

@verfassungsblog.de

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Mathias Hong @hongmathias.bsky.social · 21h

Pautsch zu VG Stuttgart zu ehrenamtlichen Richter:innen

"Gerade § 13a LRiStAG" verlangt "die wichtige Überprüfung", ob eine Bewerber:in "für die freiheitliche demokratische Grundordnung" eintritt.

Art. 33 II GG verlangt aber eine einzelfallbezogene Prüfung. verfassungsblog.de/afd-wahllist...

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Im Süden nichts Neues

verfassungsblog.de

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New York Attorney General Letitia James @newyorkstateag.bsky.social · 1d

This is nothing more than a continuation of the president’s desperate weaponization of our justice system.

I am not fearful — I am fearless.

We will fight these baseless charges aggressively, and my office will continue to fiercely protect New Yorkers and their rights..

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Lawrence Solum @lsolum.bsky.social · 1d

After Neoliberalism: Predistribution and the Law and Economics of Income Inequality - LPE Project buff.ly/UIxHbnD

After Neoliberalism: Predistribution and the Law and Economics of Income Inequality

Law and Economics scholars argue that if income redistribution is to happen at all, it should occur exclusively through the tax system, rather than through supposedly less efficient methods…

buff.ly

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 1d

Indicting political opponents & critics because they are political opponents & critics is terrifying.

It's completely inconsistent with the rule of law & democracy.

It should scare everyone - and (hopefully) will get people to realize that we all need to stand against this.

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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 1d

From the Supreme Court opinion granting Trump immunity:

"Investigative & prosecutorial decisionmaking is the special province of the Executive ... allegations that the requested investigations were shams or proposed for an improper purpose do not divest the President of [his] exclusive authority"

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stevelevitsky.bsky.social @stevelevitsky.bsky.social · 1d

www.thecrimson.com/article/2025...

Harvard Must Take a Stand Against Trump’s Compact | Opinion | The Harvard Crimson

Harvard, rather than quietly pursuing its own appeasement strategy, should lead the way to preserve academic freedom and democracy.

www.thecrimson.com

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Daniel James @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social · 2d

11/ Critically engaging with Hegel means tracing these entanglements: seeing, e.g., how his idea of freedom became bound up with the justification of colonial rule, but also how anti-colonial and anti-racist thinkers like C. L. R. James and Angela Davis turned his ideas toward true emancipation.

Racism and Colonialism in Hegel’s Philosophy: « Philosophy# « Cambridge Core Blog

A Conversation with the Guest Editors of the Hegel Bulletin Themed Issue, Daniel James and Franz Knappik

www.cambridge.org

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Daniel James @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social · 2d

9/ Hegel’s legacy splits in two. One line turns pro-imperial: British Idealists like Edward Caird cast empire as reason’s outward growth, a moral duty to “raise barbarous races” toward civilisation. The other anti-colonial: C. L. R. James reclaims Hegel’s dialectic through the Haitian Revolution.

Half-length 1871 photograph of philosopher Edward Caird by Thomas Annan; Victorian studio portrait, seated, dark jacket, direct gaze. One of the British Idealists who moralised empire.

Black-and-white 1938 portrait of C. L. R. James, head and shoulders in suit and tie, looking left—author of The Black Jacobins, reading Hegel through Haiti.

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Daniel James @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social · 2d

5/ Slavery: Hegel repurposes the master–slave dialectic to argue against immediate abolition. Though enslavement is “in itself” wrong, his racial theory permits only gradualism: Africans, he claims, lack the discipline to transcend servitude, making enslavement a “necessary education” in freedom.

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Daniel James @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social · 2d

2/ Our central claim: Across his system, Hegel builds an account of colonialism as racial domination, linking world history, freedom, property, and statehood. It’s grounded in the four-stages theory and what he calls the absolute right of the Idea, vindicating colonialism in the name of liberty.

A colour lithograph published as a supplement to The Graphic for the Indian and Colonial Exhibition (24 July 1886), showing the British Empire in pink and centred on Greenwich. Britannia sits enthroned above the globe, framed by banners reading Freedom, Fraternity, and Federation. Around the border, allegorical figures represent the empire’s peoples: Indigenous hunters and labourers at the margins, traders, soldiers, and settlers nearer the imperial core. Insets list trade, population, and area statistics, fusing allegory with empirical data. Animals and crops – elephants and tigers for India, kangaroos and sheep for Australia – mark each region by its resources and stage of economic life (Driver 2010).

Crane’s composition depicts a hierarchy of civilisation. Britannia embodies imperial authority, while her subjects appear as differentiated types of labour and culture. The blend of commercial data and moral imagery turns empire into a story of progress, where freedom, property, and self-government are equated with discipline and productivity. The bent “Asian porter” and Atlas labelled Human Labour expose the burden that sustains this freedom (Driver 2010).

The map’s spatial order mirrors the stadial logic of Scottish four-stages anthropology that also shapes Hegel’s philosophy of world history. Hunters, pastoralists, agriculturalists, and commercial peoples occupy successive ranks in a teleology culminating in Europe as bearer of universal freedom. The banners of Freedom and Federation vindicate colonial domination, echoing Hegel’s historical theodicy in which the “absolute right of the Idea” is realised through European expansion (Driver 2010).

Reference

Felix Driver, “In Search of the Imperial Map: Walter Crane and the Image of Empire,” History Workshop Journal 69 (2010): 146–157.

A black-and-white engraving depicting Hegel lecturing at the University of Berlin. He stands before rows of students, gesturing with one hand while holding a manuscript in the other. His face is animated, suggesting the intensity of oral exposition. The students below him sit closely packed, taking notes or gazing upward toward the lectern, where the philosopher appears framed by a dark wooden pulpit and a high window that lets in a diffuse light.

The scene evokes, amongst others, Hegel’s lectures on the Philosophy of History in the winter term of 1822–1823, when he proclaimed that Europe represents the culmination of world history. In these lectures, Hegel argued that the principle of freedom had been fully realised in modern Christian Europe and that what lay outside it was “intrinsically overcome.” “For Europeans,” he declared, “the world is round” – the globe itself already encompassed by Europe’s spiritual and political dominion.

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Daniel James @schlawinerkreis.bsky.social · 2d

1/ I'm excited to share that Franz Knappik’s and my Cambridge Element on Hegel and Colonialism is finally out – open access below! We trace how Hegel defends European colonial rule, including transatlantic slavery, and how that defence runs through his entire philosophical system.

Thread below ⬇️

Hegel and Colonialism

Cambridge Core - Classical Philosophy - Hegel and Colonialism

www.cambridge.org

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Roberto Tallarita @rtallarita.bsky.social · 2d

"Very interesting and recommended" Not bad for a "law & baseball" paper! Thanks @lsolum.bsky.social!

Lawrence Solum @lsolum.bsky.social · 8d

Tallarita on Roberts, Balls, and Strikes

Roberto Tallarita (Harvard Law School) has posted Calling Balls and Strikes on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Chief Justice Roberts’s metaphor of judges as umpires has been often criticized for being a bad theory of legal adjudication. Unlike umpires,…

Tallarita on Roberts, Balls, and Strikes

Roberto Tallarita (Harvard Law School) has posted Calling Balls and Strikes on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Chief Justice Roberts’s metaphor of judges as umpires has been often criticized for being a bad theory of legal adjudication. Unlike umpires, Roberts’s critics argue, judges are not mechanical reporters of pre-existing normative truths. In this Essay, I argue that Roberts’s metaphor is a bad theory of baseball.

legaltheoryblog.com

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Legal Tribune Online, LTO @lto-de.bsky.social · 2d

Weil eine Demonstrantin die Angriffe auf Zivilisten in Gaza mit dem Holocaust in Verbindung brachte, verurteilte sie das Amtsgericht zu einer Geldstrafe. Das Landgericht sieht das nun anders: Die Äußerung sei keine Holocaust-Relativierung. Bericht v. @mkolter.bsky.social:

Holocaust-Aussage: LG Berlin spricht Gaza-Aktivistin frei

Eine Gaza-Aktivistin wurde für die Frage 'Haben wir aus dem Holocaust nichts gelernt?' in Berlin verurteilt. Ihre Berufung dagegen hatte nun Erfolg.

www.lto.de

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Crooked Media @crooked.com · 3d

Scary new interpretation of the 14th Amendment just dropped!

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Cambridge University Press - Law @cambup-law.cambridge.org · Jun 10

A comparative, solutions-oriented legal & policy analysis of methods used to combat the impact of dis- & misinformation on democracy

Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy eds. Ronald J. Krotoszynski, J., András Koltay & @charlottegarden.bsky.social

#BookSky #LawSky

cup.org/49FQqdY

Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy

Cambridge Core - Comparative Politics - Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy

cup.org

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Mark Joseph Stern @mjsdc.bsky.social · 3d

KBJ’s blunt question today about the Supreme Court’s culture war hypocrisy kind of floored me, because it’s the kind of meta-criticism that we aren’t used to hearing from the justices.

It’s the second day of the term, and things are that dire already. slate.com/news-and-pol...

With One Damning Question, Ketanji Brown Jackson Defined the Supreme Court’s New Term

The justice stripped the veneer of constitutional principle from the court’s latest blatant culture war.

slate.com

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Lawrence Solum @lsolum.bsky.social · 3d

Speta on FCC Authority and Broadcaster Viewpoints

James B. Speta (Northwestern University - Pritzker School of Law) has posted The FCC Lacks Authority To Punish Broadcasters for their Viewpoints (Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Sept. 26, 2025) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Does the…

Speta on FCC Authority and Broadcaster Viewpoints

James B. Speta (Northwestern University - Pritzker School of Law) has posted The FCC Lacks Authority To Punish Broadcasters for their Viewpoints (Yale Journal on Regulation Notice & Comment, Sept. 26, 2025) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: Does the federal government have the power to punish broadcasters, by exercising its power over their licenses to use the airwaves, for speech the government does not like, including speech that criticizes the government?

legaltheoryblog.com

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Prof Caroline Mala Corbin @carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social · 3d

The oral argument in Chiles v. Salazar, about whether Colorado can ban licensed therapists from subjecting minors to the discredited & harmful "conversion therapy" is done

You do not actually have to hear the arg to predict that the Christians will win.

I would love to be wrong, but

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Prof Caroline Mala Corbin @carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social · 3d

Rebuttals now.

A twelve year could get gender affirming care w/o parent consent but could not get Chiles counseling w/ their parents consent.

Now giving fake science facts that I will not repeat

But basically trans panic

Citing Cass Review which has zillions of problems.

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Prof Caroline Mala Corbin @carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social · 3d

I guess I will live blog the argument. Unless I get too disgusted and stop.

Prof Caroline Mala Corbin @carolinemalacorbin.bsky.social · 3d

Hello!

I am your friendly neighborhood First Amendment professor here to provide some background on Chiles v. Salazar, to be argued in Supreme Court this morning.

At issue is whether Colorado can ban licensed therapists from inflicting the discredited practice of “conversion therapy” on minors

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Jan-Werner Mueller @jwmueller-pu.bsky.social · 3d

"Precisely because they have been losing court cases over free speech and visas for foreign students, Trumpists now seek to entrap universities in a deal that effectively removes the protections of federal law and gives the administration arbitrary power over them."

US universities must reject Trump’s ‘compact’. It is full of traps | Jan-Werner Müller

The administration is trying to make nine universities an offer they seemingly cannot refuse

www.theguardian.com

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Laurence H. Tribe @tribelaw.bsky.social · 5d

“This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law. Defendants have made a range of arguments that . . risk blurring the line between civil and military federal power—to the detriment of this nation.” — Trump-appointed U.S. District Court Judge Karin Immergut (Oct. 4, 2025).

Laurence H. Tribe @tribelaw.bsky.social · 5d

www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/...

Federal Judge Blocks Trump’s Seizure of Oregon National Guard for Portland Deployment