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Adam S. Rust

@asrust.bsky.social
3.9K followers 121 following 871 posts

Lawyer, writes on law things, writings have appeared in Liberal Currents and Balls & Strikes, based in the SF Bay Area.

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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
You may not like it, but this is what a peak judicial appointments process looks like.
Incredibly convoluted chart showing how the judicial appointments process works in Jamaica.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Ur so Texas tuff. 💪
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
The Walt Whitman Irish giga-chad poem referenced by me is linked below. I took some poetic license in my summary, but only some poetic license. whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.004...
whitmanarchive.org
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
Oh God, I guess I have to write this thing now.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
Quotes from the 1863 pamphlet "Interior Causes of the War: The Nation Demonized and Its President a Spirit-Rapper" really illustrates that the human capacity for brain rot existed well before social media.
""The nation is unquestionably mad," asserted David Quinn. A Chicago lawyer, Quinn attributed the country's bewilderment to the mesmerizing, or magnetic, effect of demons working on the minds of spiritualists and religious sectarians. The philosophy of these spirits, he maintained, "assumes as a fundamental ideality, that all things are intrinsically equal, and susceptible of continual and endless development, until they reach the standard of Deity." The mental infection caused by this harebrained political theory explained the nation's grotesque and self-destructive course, and "why the sun of Ameri-can greatness is rapidly sinking in a sea of fraternal blood." A per-verted president had been selected by diabolical spirits to achieve "the equalization of white men and negroes." He boasted conclusive evidence that the chief executive, members of his cabinet, and supportive editors held "spiritual circles" in the presidential man-sion. "Mr. Lincoln is not only a spiritualist of the abolitionist school, but.... has been, from the beginning of his term, directing the war under the direction of spirit rappings." In this, claimed Quinn, he was supported by, among others, Salmon Chase, Ben Wade-whose wife he took to be one of the best mediums in Ohio-and Joshua Giddings, all of whom had "for years been consulting the rappings." As if this were not enough, the president's demented administration had appointed a trance lecturer "ready at call to serve his excellency, as the witch of Endor served the Hebrew king, to bring forth the spirits of the dead."'
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
I don't feel it is widely appreciated enough how many conservative intellectuals hate Abraham Lincoln and how deeply they hate him.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Me too!
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
I'm just a very tiny man.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
My official hard copy of the @liberalcurrents.com Reconstruction Papers has arrived! US readers can order their own snazzy copy here!
A picture of me excitedly holding my copy of Liberal Currents first "Reconstruction Papers" collection.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
JQA's dream life.
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Adam Gurri @adamgurri.liberalcurrents.com · 13/07/2026
Tbh it’s one of the ideas ones rather than the policy/reform ones but this essay is low key one of my favs of the collection
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Physical copies of the Reconstruction Papers are finally shipping out with my contribution (quoted below) included. You should get one! www.liberalcurrents.com/the-reconstr...
liberalcurrents.com
The Reconstruction Papers
The Reconstruction Papers is available for pre-order in the US Pre-Order Now! For nearly a century, the conservative movement's white whale was the government the New Deal and the Great S...
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Reposted by Adam S. Rust
Liberal Currents @liberalcurrents.com · 30/06/2026
"The only way to explain the differing results in the two cases is to conclude that the Roberts Court realizes the consistent application of their reasoning would jeopardize the world economy, and make a poorly-rationalized exception to avoid that outcome." www.liberalcurrents.com/slaughtering...
liberalcurrents.com
Slaughtering the Administrative State
The Supreme Court's Cooked reasoning on independent agencies.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Following the lead of @aselrod.bsky.social here are the first two pages of my essay for the@liberalcurrents.com Reconstruction Papers collection.
Image of the first page of my Reconstruction Papers essay (too many words to include given the character count limit).Image of the second page of my Reconstruction Papers essay (too many words to include given the character count limit).
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Reposted by Adam S. Rust
Alan Elrod @aselrod.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Here’s the first two pages of my entry:
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
It really is wild how much the SCOTUS has done to hog tie Congress. Chafetz's article "The Chadha Presidency" really brought that home for me. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com
The <i>Chadha </i>Presidency
<p><span>Where is Congress? Why hasn’t it reined in some of the worst abuses of the Trump Administration? This Article argues that a significant part of the ans
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
So thrilled to have an essay by me in this collection. Download the PDF, but also purchase a physical copy so people know how plugged into The Discourse you are when they look at your coffee table.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
One of my favorite quotes from Thaddeus Stevens is on exactly this point. This is from a speech on June 13, 1866 where he supports a watered down version (i.e., our version) of the 14th Amendment.
"“In my youth, in my manhood, in my old age, I had fondly dreamed that when any fortunate chance should have broken up for a while the foundation of our institutions, and released us from obligations the most tyrannical that ever man imposed in the name of freedom, that the intelligent pure and just men of this Republic, true to their professions and their consciences, would have so remodeled all our institutions as to have rid them from every vestige of human oppression, of the inequity of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich. In...""...short, that no distinction would be tolerated in this purified Republic but what arose from merit and conduct. This bright dream has vanished ‘like the baseless fabric of a vision.’ I find that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it, in many of its parts, to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the storms of despotism.""Do you inquire why, holding these views and possessing some will of my own, I accept so imperfect a proposition? I answer, because I live among men and not among angels; among men as intelligent, as determined, and as independent as myself, who not agreeing with me, do not choose to yield their opinions to mine. Mutual concession, therefore, is our only resort, or mutual hostilities.”
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
I saw this movie for the first time a couple years ago and was like "damn, this is racist." An incredible 1990s US cultural product.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Typical social historian book intro: "This book began on February 24, 1993, the day after Carnival. A hung over archivist at the Arquivo Nacional brought me the wrong folder. Its contents altered my understanding of baptismal records, train schedules, and the meaning of Brazilian modernity."
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 15/05/2026
How I imagine I look when I take a trip to the law library.
Jimmy Stewart in a law library in the movie "Anatomy of a Murder", the greatest American legal movie.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
In this, the 250th year of our bold experiment in self government, engage in the politics of making constitutional meaning as the Founders intended.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Not me though. I love a Vesper martini.
Picture of pretty good Vesper martini next to a copy of Laura Kalman's excellent biography of Abe Fortas.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 16/04/2026
Enjoy that Ian Fleming created a drink for Bond thinking it was so cool and sophisticated. Took a sip of it for the first time a few months after publishing the book where he has the super cool drink and goes, "This is garbage."
Wikipedia article on Vesper martini: "Just as the character Vesper Lynd dies in Casino Royale, the cocktail named for her makes no appearance in any of Fleming's later Bond novels. Fleming, in a letter to The Guardian in 1958, said that when he tasted a Vesper for the first time "several months" after including it in his novel, he found it "unpalatable""
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Overreliance on the internal workings of the executive branch to solve our problems and diminishing Congress's executive-constraining powers is part of how we got here.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Imagine if these goofs directed their viewers to call Congress demanding impeachment instead of wasting their breath hoping members of the executive branch will do anything.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 04/04/2026
Nixon's reaction to Roe v. Wade is really about what I would have expected.
"Nixon was conflicted about the outcome. On the one hand, easier access to abortions would break up the family and encourage permissiveness. Girls did not have to worry about getting pregnant anymore: They could simply go to a doctor and get an abortion for $5. On the other hand, there were times when abortions were "necessary."

He cited the first example that came to mind. "When you have a black and a white."

"Or a rape," Colson interjected.

"Or rape. You know what I mean. There are times.""
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
The chasm in quality of oral advocacy skills between the Sauer (bad) and Wang (really good) was wild. Even when you bracket the merits of their arguments.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
Listened to oral args on birthright citizenship at SCOTUS and I want the Barrett quote, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but what about the Constitution?" on a shirt.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 30/03/2026
A true modern woman of the second half of the 19th century.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Post World War II to mid-50s has a similar decade division problem.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
This is the ideal.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 27/03/2026
Inter arma enim silent leges nudem.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Of everything I have written, it is the thing I am the most proud of.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Mostly responding to the liberalism without legal liberalism point. That there is a larger field in which constitutionalism comes into play than just courts.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Currently writing a more expansive essay on the same theme, but really enjoyed the final product of this one (I never enjoy writing).
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 25/03/2026
Legal liberalism success is always downstream of political liberalism. I have touched on this point in @liberalcurrents.com actually. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-fight-ma...
liberalcurrents.com
The Fight Makes the Meaning: Noah Feldman, James Oakes, and the Lessons of Antislavery Constitutionalism
Noah Feldman, Felix Frankfurter Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, is a frequent public commenter on the state of constitutional law and the Supreme Court. Over the last few years he’s been in a ...
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Man in 70s suit saying "36% of the time it works everytime."
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
That is devastating to me.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Yeah. I am becoming more comfortable with AI use now, but I did a decent amount of reading about what AI does and how it works before diving in and making it part of my professional practice.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
This long but really good thread fits in with my general heuristic on AI in legal work: it is only useful if you already know a decent amount about what you are asking the AI to find or do.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
I got a friend just like that. Also military.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Also people underrate temperament because polling can't capture it. Which is something to consider.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Is my experience with my dad, lifelong Republican cishet white male conservative Christian Boomer who did not vote for Trump in the last three elections because he is not a hater informing this analysis? Absolutely.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
I think it is a toss up who Hank Hill would vote for. People overrate demographics and underrate individual temperament when assessing people's voting choices. Demographically Hank seems like a Trump voter, temperamentally Hank doesn't seem like a hater, which cuts against Trump's appeal.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
You already did a Chadha article for the real ones, now it is time to speak to the People.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
media.tenor.com
a woman says they 're the same picture while sitting in front of a window
ALT: a woman says they 're the same picture while sitting in front of a window
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
Aren't we getting a taste right now?
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 23/03/2026
In fairness, contemplating the design of the Supreme Court building keeps one's mind fat, far, from politics. Just pure consideration of the law's neutral and very not-political majesty.
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Adam S. Rust @asrust.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
AI needs to be treated like any legal treatise or head note summary. You cannot get around actually reading the case. Heartbreaking, I know.
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