There’s nothing quite like the feeling of getting a call from a client you helped get released from prison, letting you know that they’re thriving. Even more so when their prior sentence was mandatory life without parole. My client spent 18 years being told he would die inside the federal prison system. But instead of…
Why I Write Civil Procedure Articles Rather than Trusting My Personal Perspective
Picture in your mind a “serious scholar of the law”, real or made up. What do they look like? Aside from that, what topics do they talk about? Constitutional law? Civil procedure? Legal philosophy? Does their scholarship have anything to do with race? I knew in my head that the answer could be yes to…
9/11 and the Politics of Against-ness
Twenty years. I meant to time this post to our actual exit from Afghanistan, but I needed a little more time to find the words. It’s generally hard to move people’s beliefs. We imbibe nuggets of conventional wisdom as adolescents, question them (or not) as young adults, and then spend years cherry-picking anecdotes that support…
Dam Nation on the Missouri
On this July 4th, I’d like to talk to you about irrigation. (No, really.) And I hope at the end of it, you have a better sense of what critical race theory is and why we need it. Intrigued? Good. Let’s begin. The two largest artificial lakes in the United States, by surface area, are…
It’s Past Time to Talk About Asian Americans and Racial Justice
I. My aunt runs a nail salon. It seems to do very well. The Yelp reviews are great (5 stars from over 3/4 of the reviewers). I’m not all that surprised. My aunt is legitimately one of the most authentically positive people around. She’s never toxic about it or trying to perform positivity; she simply…
The Rhetorical Lessons of MLK’s Guaranteed Minimum Income for a Biden Administration
Don’t forget, on this MLK day, that Andrew Yang is not the first to propose a UBI-style reform, nor is his proposal for implementation anywhere near as ambitious as what Martin Luther King was proposing over 50 years ago. Indeed, Richard Nixon of all people actually proposed, and the House actually passed, a Yang-style reform…
Joe Biden Can (and Should) Nominate a Public Defender to the Supreme Court
Now that Joe Biden likely has 50 votes to confirm judges, we need to talk about the Supreme Court. Biden is very likely to replace at least Stephen Breyer over the course of this upcoming term. During the campaign season, he committed to placing a Black woman on the Supreme Court. Given the consistent and…
The Biden Administration Gives Marcia Fudge a Job She Didn’t Ask For
I was blindsided, like many, by the news that Marcia Fudge, the high-powered member of the House who has been pushing the Democratic Party in important and meaningful ways over the last few years, would be nominated to be Joe Biden’s Secretary for Housing and Urban Development. (If you’re not familiar with Marcia Fudge or…
The First Presidential Debate and Confronting Mortality
The message was obvious to me as soon as Trump said half a sentence. There’s too much personal introspection there for a public post, but let’s just say that all of the thinking I’ve done regarding my own mortality in the last few years helped me absorb the initial blow in stride. And yes, mortality,…