iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

To sum up, the Unitary Executive Theory now appears to be: "The President must be in charge, the Constitution demands it! ... Unless we might lose some money, then, maybe the Constitution is um... less on point? Yeah! And we should, I don't know, look at the statute...yeah, that's it. Nailed it!"

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Corey Rayburn Yung @coreyryung.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito pride themselves on being immune to empiricism. It doesn't matter what lessons of history teach us or the current state of the world - their visions of the Constitution will not yield to such petty realities. They are the anti-pragmatists.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

The Slaughter and Cook opinions provide a perfect distillation of the rhetorical disdain for political reality that characterizes CJ Roberts’ (and his Court’s) view of American Democracy and the American electorate, and they way he employs that rhetoric to cement his own preferred view of democracy.

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Quinn Yeargain @yeargain.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

for all of the bleating by conservative justices that they decide cases on law, not politics, the choice to release the opinion RIGHT NOW is so brazen: it's far enough away from the election for Republicans to weaponize it, but close enough to allow Purcell to be invoked in the subsequent lawsuits

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

The Court's Callais decision has generated significant criticism (rightfully so). But I wanted to flag a passage in Justice Alito's opinion that is receiving slightly less attention, but which reveals just how partisan the opinion is. /1

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/05/2026

In my completely subjective opinion, Justice Kagan has been the best writer on the Court for at least a decade. But she really outdid herself on her Callais dissent. It's rare to see such clear and profound sadness and anger in a SCOTUS opinion coupled with such strong legal analysis.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 25/02/2026

My thanks to @chrisjwalker.bsky.social and the student editors of the Yale Journal on Regulation Notice and Comment blog for publishing this short discussion of Justice Thomas’s dangerously executive-empowering dissent in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump. www.yalejreg.com/nc/vesting-c...

yalejreg.com

Vesting Clause Asymmetry in Justice Thomas’s Learning Resources Dissent - Yale Journal on Regulation

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump is sure to garner countless news reports, media commentaries, and academic responses. Much of this attention will focus on Chief Justic...

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

My thanks to @unlcollegeoflaw.bsky.social for supporting the Big Ten Early Career Law Scholars Workshop. And my thanks to all of the brilliant scholars from across the Big Ten community who spent the past two days sharing their time, work, and insights.

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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 27/10/2025

Today's "One First" explains why Stephen Miller is wrong that ICE officers have "federal immunity" from prosecution for all actions they take in their official duties, and that anyone attempting to prosecute them is committing a felony. Supremacy Clause immunity is a thing, but it's *not* absolute:

stevevladeck.com

186. When Can States Prosecute Federal Officers?

Stephen Miller claims that ICE officers have "immunity" for anything they do while enforcing immigration law. Even as an argument about *state* criminal prosecutions, that claim is overstated at best.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Increasingly polarized maneuvers like this were always going to be the result of Rucho shutting the federal courthouse doors to partisan gerrymandering claims. nebraskaexaminer.com/2025/09/08/w...

nebraskaexaminer.com

White House may discuss mid-decade redistricting with Nebraska lawmakers this week • Nebraska Examiner

The Trump administration is hosting a state leadership conference, but political aides could discuss redistricting, too.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

My essay for the @washulaw.bsky.social symposium, “History, Tradition, and the Franchise,” is now available for download. It highlights the modern Court’s reliance on history & tradition, and cautions against this approach in voting rights, equal protection claims wustllawreview.org/2025/09/02/h...

wustllawreview.org

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

Come join us at @unlcollegeoflaw.bsky.social for an early career scholars workshop this October!! Open to legal educators at Big Ten institutions with less than ten years of teaching experience! Papers at all stages welcome, and there’s a $500 travel stipend available! law.unl.edu/big-ten-earl...

law.unl.edu

Big Ten Early Career Scholars Workshop | College of Law | Nebraska

This collaborative workshop will provide an opportunity for participants to present works-in-progress at any stage of development and receive valuable feedback from peers and mentors within the Big Te...

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Evan Bernick, a finite mode with a smol hooman and a lorg floof @evanbernick.bsky.social · 29/07/2025

I think we should expect them to attempt to carry it out regardless of what the courts say about it and then be pleasantly surprised if they do not

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 21/07/2025

FWIW, “Concentration of Powers” (forthcoming UC Davis Law Review) was a “top download” this week in SSRN’s “Bureaucratic Relations” eJournal. You can access the paper here: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.com

Concentration of Powers

<p><i><span>This Article critically interrogates the Roberts Court’s evolving administrative law jurisprudence as a paradigm of judicial aggrandizement. It trac

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Lawrence Solum @lsolum.bsky.social · 18/07/2025

Johnson on Judicial Supremacy, Separation of Powers, and Administrative Law, buff.ly/Sbvv3rb - Brandon Johnson (University of Nebraska College of Law) has posted Concentration of Powers on SSRN.

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David S. Cohen @dsc250.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

This is 100% right - though I think it's deeper than that. People don't necessarily think it's a person who will step in but that the system just does things automatically to stop bad things. But it doesn't work that way. Laws, courts, the Constitution -- nothing happens automatically.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Is this what they’re using that new Grok contract for? This looks like some asked a racist AI to convert Nazi propaganda about the “Volksgemeinschaft” into pioneer propaganda. This is so stupid it would be laughable if it wasn’t at the same time, deeply terrifying and a harbinger of worse to come.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 12/07/2025

Reupping this for interested folks who may have missed it yesterday!

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 11/07/2025

“Concentration of Powers” (forthcoming in @ucdavislaw.bsky.social Law Review), which analyzes judicial control of agencies, is now available on @ssrn.bsky.social. I’m working on substantive edits (especially to Part IV) so any and all comments are welcome! papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

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Connor Ewing @cmewing.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Fortunately we know from history that there’s nothing alarming or untoward about referring to your political enemies as vermin or insects.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

We’re at the point where clergy is helping to hide people from a masked, militarized state police. Anyone who has even a passing familiarity with history, knows this state of affairs has never ended well.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

If we as a country survive this descent into authoritarian madness, we will need a massively robust reckoning and reconciliation process to come to terms with the horrors our government will have inflicted on our most vulnerable. This is shameful, this is heartbreaking.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

This was always going to be the end result of villainizing agencies, and placing political loyalists in leadership positions, who not only have no experience, but also actively disdain the agency they are supporting be leading. I fear this is going to become an all too familiar pattern.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

“Don’t politicize tragedy,” is now a stock response. But there’s a difference between politicizing something, and asking important questions about the policies that either allowed for, contributed to, or made the tragedy more likely. Failing to address those policies will only lead to more tragedy.

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Noah Shachtman @noahshachtman.bsky.social · 08/07/2025

I don't mean to sound hysterical but there are some pretty clear historical examples of "force the urban-dwellers to the farms," and none of them are great.

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

One reason Stephen Miller is so strong is that much of the rest of the Trump Cabinet is so weak

The crisis, from the immigration raids that sparked the protests to the militarized response that tried to put the protests down, was almost entirely of Mr. Miller's making. And it served as a testament to the remarkable position he now occupies in Mr. Trump's Washington. Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, who reportedly accompanied Mr. Miller on his visit to ICE headquarters, seems to defer to him. "It's really Stephen running D.H.S.," a Trump adviser said. The attorney general, Pam Bondi, is so focused on preparing for and appearing on Fox News that she has essentially ceded control of the Department of Justice to Mr. Miller, making him, according to the conservative legal scholar Edward Whelan, "the de facto attorney general." And in a White House where the chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is not well versed or terribly interested in policy - "She's producing a reality TV show every day," another Trump adviser said, "and it's pretty amazing, right?" - Mr.
Miller is typically

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 07/07/2025

Number 3 here is hugely important, and not unique to the U.S. system. Even in the German courts of the Third Reich, which were notoriously complicit in the horrors which took place, there were *some* lower court rulings that pushed back on the regime, but these were always reversed by higher courts.

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 05/07/2025

Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...

talkingpointsmemo.com

Critical Read About the BBB, Federalism and the Future of American Democracy

TPM Reader TS (Harvard sociologist/political scientist Theda Skocpol) and I often compared...

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

Coming soon: “The Originalist Case for Why the President Actually Does Have a Dispensation Power, which We Totally Knew All Along, but Didn’t Want to Say until We had A President We Trusted to Use It ‘Correctly.’”

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Sherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

The leadership of our co-chairs @judgeluttig.bsky.social and Dean Erwin Chemerinsky has been extraordinary in gathering us for this effort.

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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 03/07/2025

I mean this sincerely: If you are a liberal Supreme Court pundit, and after *this* term you are still dreaming up fantasyland narratives to explain how John Roberts is going to heroically save democracy from Trump, it is time to hang up your keyboard and never post again

ballsandstrikes.org

The Supreme Court’s Majority Is Playing Noah Feldman Like a Fiddle

Death, taxes, and liberal legal pundits tying themselves into knots to explain why Chief Justice John Roberts is the hero they imagine.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

Again we see basic tenets of Fascism defining the administration. This is full-scale adoption of Mussolini’s slogan “Mussolini ha sempre ragione” (“Mussolini is always right”). The cult of the infallible leader is always central to authoritarian rule.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 03/07/2025

@evanbernick.bsky.social’s thread on The Dual State highlights the important role the normative state played in “keeping up appearances.” An additional point here: the normative state also blessed the illegality of the prerogative state, advancing the regime’s agenda. We are seeing this in SCOTUS.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

I am running out of words to describe how every single action of this administration comes straight from authoritarian playbooks. Installing participants in a failed coup in what is essentially a political crimes division of the DoJ is just another demoralizing example.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

At a time when multi-billion dollar corporations are sacrificing journalistic integrity to appease an authoritarian regime, it is encouraging to see students engaging in actual journalism.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

The silence now from conservatives who urged action to address the treatment of the Uyghur community just last year, highlights the moral bankruptcy of modern conservative politics. It should not be a harder question to stand up against domestic Concentration camps than foreign ones.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

It’s worse than just the hypocrisy of the “tough on crime” rhetoric from MAGA (which was always a dog whistle scare tactic anyway). A defining characteristic of Fascist regime’s like Mussolini’s Italy was the political use of arbitrary pardons and amnesties. It’s about party control of punishment.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 02/07/2025

As institution after institution capitulates to the lawless demands of this administration we lose potential counterweights against an authoritarian regime. Elite institutions are failing us time and again.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

You have got to be kidding me. On top of this being incredibly stupid & hurtful, how is it possible that our country’s supposedly most elite centers of education have learned nothing about the failure of appeasement. And not only from historical examples, just from reading a damn headline recently.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Military personnel, acting in their military capacity (here as JAG members) to decide civil claims in a civilian bureaucracy in the name of “efficiency.” This is an absolute hallmark of a police state. I am so sick of saying this, but we keep seeing new examples. Stop pretending this is normal.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

This has always been the goal. In addition to the white nationalist agenda pushed by Stephen Miller, there is a political agenda of removing voters. And despite repeated (false) claims of many non-citizens voting, in order to actually impact the electorate, citizens would always have to be targeted.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

So much for the Senate being the “cooling saucer” designed to tame the passions of the House. Unbelievable cowardice on display here.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

A hallmark of imprisonment in authoritarian regimes is intentionally under-resourced and overcrowded facilities. The goal is to reduce the humanity of each individual. The combination of cruelty and incompetence exacerbating human suffering.

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Chris Murphy @chrismurphyct.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

Final vote. 50-50. VP breaks the tie. One single GOP Senator could have stopped this abomination. Saved millions of parents from watching their child go hungry. Saved the lives destroyed when Medicaid disappears. They will all live forever with the horror of this bill.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

I struggle with the defense of Trump v CASA raised by Will Baude today, and by others previously: the acted now because: “the first few months of the second Trump administration appeared to be kicking things into yet another gear [regarding the number of nationwide injunctions]. /1

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 01/07/2025

I am honored and grateful to be named a Schmid Professor for Excellence in Research for the 2025-26 academic year. My thanks to the Schmid foundation for their support and to the @unlcollegeoflaw.bsky.social faculty for this honor.

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

There are many other reasons to oppose the bill (not to mention the alteration of senate process to pass it), but I have to transition back to research today. So I leave one final encouragement to please call your senators and urge them to vote against this bill. Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Next up, for my discussion of the (ridiculously named) One Big Beautiful Bill Act: Restrictions on AI regulation. In the interest of full transparency, the following presents a significant amount of opinions and, of course, reasonable people can disagree. Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121 /1

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Brandon Johnson @bjeromy.bsky.social · 30/06/2025

Next issue I want to highlight in the budget bill (I should note that none of these issues are new, and have been widely reported) is the vast increase in spending on immigration enforcement at a time when ICE appears to be unconstrained by law. Capitol switchboard number: 202-224-3121. /1

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