Birthright citizenship is a policy choice so central to our values and identity as a nation that we chose to amend the Constitution to protect it against the passions and prejudices of temporary majorities.

And (2) we end up with a constitutional system selected because it favors the political right AND a right-wing judiciary convinced of its own neutrality and innocence.

We mostly agree, but (1) around the margins you favor right-wing presidents and disfavor left-wing presidents because results are under-determined and things like loan forgiveness just seem so unfair to you

But for 95% of its adherents the explanation for that is purely psychological: once you figure out the cheat card for your side to win, your need to think of yourself as a good person makes you embrace allegedly neutral reasons to adopt the winning rule.

But the entire Republican embrace of the unitary executive stems from an era where Nixon/Reagan/Bush were winning landslides and the Dems had held the House for 50 years. They believe in their bones that unleashing the President is right-wing gold.

More shoes dropping. Exhausting watching this Court roll back modernity.

But it’s not just the vagueness. They just don’t think it is their job to worry about the consequences of the constitutional world they are creating. Dozens of examples but the best one remains the laughable treatment of reliance interests in Dobbs.

I just don’t think it is credible that the founder’s decision to create and name a President made the choice between all the different models of government administration they have been invented since.

That would raise hard constitutional questions that would have to be answered by on point text or structural arguments but wouldn’t be influenced by the use of a definite article in what was clearly meant to be a throwaway introductory sentence naming the office.

Why can’t the Vesting Clause just mean “we hereby create an office called President who shall be the head of the executive branch. [For discussion of the scope of their powers and any limitations thereon see below.]”

Glad my brain was in line with the cool kids this morning.

On a tangential point, I find it extremely weird and in serious tensions with other doctrines that we decided there is no First Amendment problem with allowing public records searches of academics’ emails.

This newsletter pulls a few things together, including my Atlantic essay on working the referees, and @mantzarlis.com’s fantastic new analysis on what exactly is in Grokipedia.

As a legal educator, I am shocked by how badly the law school I attended handled clerkships: routing students to famously abusive judges, pressuring students to apply to judges that made them uncomfortable, berating students who turned down clerkships with judges who expressed bias during interviews

The path was holding strong and raising the political cost until the Republicans either gave in on this issue, compromised on this issue, or offered something else of significant value in return for the Democrats dropping this issue.

Been patient holding him all season out of some combination of naked eye scouting and stubbornness. Moving up majorly this week despite a mediocre bench boost but those two assist calls costing me something like 100,000 places. Only a game I guess.

Robbed of two today, right?