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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 09/07/2026

I am thrilled to share that my paper “'Abuse of Speechifying': Crafting the Politics/Law Divide in the Supreme Court’s First Decade" is going to be published in the Journal of Supreme Court History next summer! I welcome feedback and suggested revisions.

Forthcoming 52 J. SUP. CT. HIST. (2027) Draft June 5, 2026
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“Abuse of Speechifying”: Crafting the Politics/Law Divide in the
Supreme Court’s First Decade
Abstract
What actions are too “political” for a Supreme Court justice? This question has
been the subject of intense debate since the beginning of the republic. In this note,
I reveal the misunderstood beginnings of this debate and, in chronicling how it
transformed the judicial role, I will show how critiquing the judiciary as “political”
and partisan is a practice as old as the Constitution itself. I do so by examining the
lengthy “charges” the Supreme Court Justices delivered to federal grand juries
while they rode Circuit and the increasingly negative public responses to them.
Through the lens of the charges, one sees that justices and their political opponents
had a fundamental disagreement about what was appropriately “judicial” and what
was too “political.” This disagreement shaped our judiciary in its first years and is
the origin of our current debates about the boundaries between politics and judging.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 20/05/2026

Say it with me: “the stock market is not the economy.” www.nytimes.com/2026/05/19/b...

Unlike during last year's tariff turmoil, Mr. Trump appears less willing to back down over Iran, analysts say. The economy is otherwise in good shape, underpinned by the growth of artificial intelligence and blockbuster corporate profits. The stock market has risen for seven consecutive weeks, hitting record highs along the way.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 12/05/2026

Rereading Trump v. United States and this passage particularly aged like milk

The dissents’ positions in the end boil down to ignoring the Constitution’s separation of powers and the Court’s precedent and instead fear mongering on the basis of extreme hypotheticals about a future where the President ‘‘feels empowered to violate federal criminal law.’’ Post, at 2365 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.); see post, at 2369, 2371 – 2372; post, at 2375 2377, 2377, 2378, 2380, 2382 – 2383 (opinion of JACKSON, J.).

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 27/10/2025

As the national guard cases head to the Supreme Court, two passages from Ernst Frankel’s The Dual State stick with me:

No doubt, the National-Socialist coup d'etat of 1933 was, at least technically, facilitated by the executive and judicial practice of the Weimar Republic. Long before Hitler's dictatorship, the courts had held that questions as to the necessity and expediency of martial law were not subject to review by the courts.

However, the National-Socialists would probably have been successful even had such constitutional-judicial safeguards existed. The absence of a legal tradition analogous to the Anglo-American tradition enabled them, however, to render lip service to the laws, a procedure found useful during the transitional period, when the army and the officialdom were not entirely dependable.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 19/07/2025

There are a lot of horrifying and embarrassing things about Trump’s SLAPP against WSJ but the former paralegal in me finds it very funny that the firm he hired doesn’t know how to take a proper screenshot.

Screenshot of twitter in the complaint that includes the menu bar on Windows and the side bars of twitter

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 03/07/2025

Of course, it seems not a single trans person will be allowed to speak during this workshop.

Screen cap of the event page reading:

Event Description
This workshop will focus on unfair or deceptive trade practices in "gender-affirming care" for minors. Doctors medical ethicists, whistleblowers, detransitioners, and parents of detransitioners will share perspectives grounded in research, expertise, and personal experience.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 19/04/2025

I will be thinking about this quote from the end of @benjamincarterhett.bsky.social’s The Death of Democracy for a long time. I would highly recommend the book. (Apologies if the punctuation is wrong, I transcribed the quote from the audiobook)

“Thinking about the end of Weimar democracy in this way—as the result of a large protest movement colliding with with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture increasingly prone to aggressive myth making and irrationality—strips away the exotic and foreign look of swastika banners and goose-stepping stormtroopers. Suddenly, the whole thing looks close and familiar.”

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 19/03/2025

If you know @bedoyaftc.bsky.social, you know he loves poetry--so I will close with a line that I have been thinking about lately from Carl Sandberg's "The People, Yes"

Passage from The People, Yes: "Each man fated to answer for himself:
Which of the faiths and illusions of mankind
Must I choose for my own sustaining light
To bring me beyond the present wilderness?"

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 14/03/2025

“Government efficiency.” I was a federal government paralegal for 3 years. If you took away my Adobe Acrobat I would have been at least 30% less productive.

Reddit post from r/fednews reading: “Trump Took Away Adobe Acrobat and it took Me 45min to Combine Files
Fed only
Not that this matters but for anyone who thinks this is creating efficiency, Trump/Elmo took away my agencies Adobe acrobate away which means I can't edit documents. So instead of being efficient and taking seconds to combine a paf, I took 45min along with IT to combine files. That's how I spend my time these days, trying to overcome the obstacles they put in place so l can do my job. For all this talk about government employees not doing work, I'm working double time just to keep up with what they are doing.”

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 10/03/2025

Growing up, I never believed this quote would apply so perfectly to my country. We are at the beginning but we know how authoritarians end things. We’ve seen it before, and we have promised not to forget. encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/a...

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
—Martin Niemöller

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 12/02/2025

Mitch McConnell got us here, now he gets to vote his conscience after it is too late.

Graphic showing Mitch McConnell as the only Republican who voted against Tulsi Gabbard for DNI.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 18/12/2024

Also fascinating from The Judicial Tug of War: a chart of how law school graduates have gotten more Liberal over time.

Graph showing law school graduates going from more conservative to overwhelmingly liberal from 1940 to 2010.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 18/12/2024

Fascinating graph from @adambonica.bsky.social & @mayasen.bsky.social. Conservative T14 grads much more likely are to become federal judges than Liberal T14 grads. It follows, of course, from their finding that the pool of liberal lawyers from T14s is much larger. www.cambridge.org/core/books/j...

Graph of likelihood of becoming a judge at various levels against ideology

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 10/12/2024

Lowering the HHI thresholds in the 2023 Guidelines was an important step. It’s wonderful to see Judge Nelson relying on these new thresholds and find the FTC/DOJ’s reasons for updating them persuasive.

Screenshot of Judge Nelson’s opinion with the following quote from the 2023 guidelines highlighted: “Although the Agencies raised the thresholds for the 2010 guidelines, based on experience and evidence developed since, the Agencies consider the original HHI thresholds to better reflect both the law and the risks of competitive harm suggested by market structure and have therefore returned to those thresholds."

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 19/11/2024

Folks are rightfully mocking the "ordinary man" quote in Thomas Goldstein's NYT piece. But this quote is at least as ridiculous. No matter what jurisprudential theory you follow, it is patiently absurd to assume the Constitution is not concerned with rampant criminality by the Executive.

Passage from the article reading: "Some people will always be convinced that dismissing the charges will let Mr. Trump get away with crimes. But the Constitution isn’t concerned with preserving a couple of criminal cases. It is concerned with having a system of government that can hold our democracy together for centuries. So far, it has worked, even if our deep disagreements make that hold seem tenuous right now. Inviting prosecutors of the opposing political party to pursue these kinds of charges in the wake of a presidential election can only make things worse." The quote "But the Constitution isn’t concerned with preserving a couple of criminal cases." is highlighted.

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 13/11/2024

An interesting antitrust wrinkle to the X exodus: Elon seems to still be throttling engagement for posts with @bsky.app links (if we trust Elon's engagement stats—a big if, I know). These two posts were sent 2hrs apart and the one without the BlueSky link already has more impressions

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Bryce Tuttle @bryce-tuttle.com · 16/02/2024

This article is a pretty good summary of what is wrong with how corporations operate today: management gets a windfall no matter what

FT headline: Goldman Sachs raises CEO David Solomon's pay 24% despite weaker profits

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