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Gautam Hans

@gshans.bsky.social
6.1K followers 889 following 228 posts

Clinical Prof., Cornell Law School. That brown gay law prof who makes ice cream. Speech, tech, clinical legal education, and the legal profession. Not the best but pretty good. Always MI ✋🏾

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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 4h
What’s next — a Nobel in dendrology?
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Cristian Farias @cristianfarias.com · 4h
This is the first time I see anyone report that back in 2020, Justice Samuel Alito personally lobbied the local government in his New Jersey hometown of Trenton to preserve a statue of Christopher Columbus the community and its leaders wanted removed. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Samuel Alito and New Jersey’s Fallen Columbus Statue (Gift Article)
Justice Alito has a history of nudging the boundaries of judicial rectitude.
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Adam Serwer @adamserwer.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
After years of championing "free speech," Texas lawmakers have enabled a dramatic rise of censorship in Texas universities, banning concepts, canceling courses and closing departments seen as "woke," and even using AI bots as censors. All in the name of freedom. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/1...
In other professors’ syllabi, the bot flagged the Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America by Tony Kushner, essays by the Mexican American MacArthur genius grant recipient Sandra Cisneros, and materials related to a class about the Holocaust (that professor was told to drop material regarding Nazi persecution of LGBTQ people).

Putting aside the ideological slant of the new rules, the bot, like many large language models, seems to “hallucinate,” or make mistakes. The AAUP lawsuit lists texts banned for their “sex-based ecofeminist framework” and “gendered ecofeminist frameworks.” These phrases might sound persuasively like academese, but the academics behind the lawsuit had never heard of them; these concepts “do not exist,” the complaint says. Matthew Pehl, a history professor at Tech, told me that he knew several people who’d received reports from the system that were “plainly written by an AI that had hallucinated content or confused content from one class to another.”
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Leah Litman @leahlitman.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
VERY important point from my colleague Sam Bagenstos - the 2026 Senate races will determine the future of the Supreme Court and federal courts more broadly. Which means the 2026 Senate race in MICHIGAN could determine the future of the Supreme Court
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 11/10/2026
Richard Avedon was the first, and for a long time the only, staff photographer at The New Yorker. His early work at Harper’s Bazaar was some of his best. www.newyorker.com/culture/phot...
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
lol Gen X definitely not silent
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
“But that's life. One minute you're on top of the world. The next minute, some secretary is running you over with a lawnmower.”
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 11/10/2026
The one time this administration cares about antitrust. 🤦🏾‍♂️😒🙄
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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Calling my shot: we will see less than half as many pundit-consultant pieces about this Latino realignment as we saw in the other direction 2021-2025, because a Latino blue shift doesn’t fit the Dems-Too-Woke narrative
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 10/10/2026
From the daily newsletter: Flowers, a Black man who was tried six times in Mississippi by the same white prosecutor for a crime he did not commit, was the subject of the In the Dark podcast. www.newyorker.com/newsletter/t...
newyorker.com
The Death of Curtis Flowers
From the daily newsletter: Flowers, a Black man who was tried six times in Mississippi by the same white prosecutor for a crime he did not commit, was the subject of the In the Dark podcast.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
A fascinating, important role at LDF for the right person! www.naacpldf.org/about-us/car...
naacpldf.org
Project Director, Pro Truth Initiative
The NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) is the country’s first and foremost civil and human rights law organization. Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, who subse...
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
That person went on to become one of the nation’s leading experts in their area, so it was hardly a bad bet!
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
One of my law school mentors (hired to teach a specialized subject decades ago) told me they interviewed at the AALS conference w/the dean, who asked what they would teach. My prof named the class, and the dean replied “The person teaching that class now is an adjunct I’d love to get rid of.” Hired!
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Reminds me of this @donmoyn.bsky.social classic: bsky.app/profile/donm...
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
Pre-writing his political obit, no doubt.
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 09/10/2026
Kind of a buried lede in the results of this Supreme Court approval rating poll from Marquette: Overall support for Supreme Court expansion, which even Democratic politicians were dismissing as "radical" just a few years ago, is now at 53 percent today.marquette.edu/2026/09/marq...
Proposal	Favor or oppose
Favor	Oppose
Enforce strict ethics code for justices	89	10
Limited terms for justices	79	21
Increase number of justices	53	47
Marquette Law School Poll, national survey: Sept. 2-9, 2026
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Still thinking about this sad news. My friend, colleague, and mentor Sheri Johnson argued and won Flowers v. Mississippi not even a decade ago. Think of how different Mr. Flowers’ life would’ve been had MS not mistreated him the way it did for decades. He was only 56! www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/o...
nytimes.com
Curtis Flowers Has Died at 56. His Case Became a Symbol of Racial Bias.
A white district attorney tried Mr. Flowers six times for the same murder, always ensuring that few or no Black people were on the juries.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
“Ingrid Carlberg, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, said the author was in Iceland ‘listening to the wind’ when the academy reached her to notify her of the win.” Story checks out.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Still was figuring out what to do with my hair… an ongoing question. This was at Kramerbooks in D.C., not far from my apartment!
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
(Me, back in my youth (2013), holding said book.)
A man with glasses wearing a black jacket and holding a book with a volcano on the cover.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
An amazing day for Canadians, classicists, poets, and also me (my all-time favorite book is “Autobiography of Red”).
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
As someone who will look for typos on menus and loves to explain the distinctions for between/among and fewer/less, this moved me. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/08/m...
nytimes.com
Experts Agree: Nobody Knows What ‘Bimonthly’ or ‘Biweekly’ Means
Couldn’t we impose some rules-based order, etching a single meaning of “bimonthly” on a stone pillar? Probably not.
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Fuck this. I don’t know what else to say. Prison kills. mississippitoday.org/2026/10/07/c...
mississippitoday.org
Wrongly imprisoned Curtis Flowers dies
After Flowers was convicted in a sixth trial, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned it and a state judge dismissed capital murder charges against him.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Truly some of your best work.
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I fear that any midterm “mandate” angry voters give them will be squandered on dinner party invites instead of building the accountability regime people are desperate for and are putting their bodies and lives on the line to get.
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danielle weisberg @danielleweisberg.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
desecrating the Animaniacs’ home and for what! For what
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The Fig Economy @figgityfigs.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Sometimes my wife and I like to send each other text messages as though they’re democratic fundraising messages, and I believe she has produced the jewel of the form.
, it's
and I
have some personal news to share with you.
Being a mom is one of the greatest joys of my life, and I feel deeply that we should have salad tonight
This year has been challenging in many ways, and I have immense gratitude for the kindness and support of family, community, and people like you who have continued to stand by me through everything. It means the world, and I wanted you to be among the first to know that squash is in the oven and kale is in the fridge.As many of you are aware, ve been navigating one of the most challenging periods of my day while waiting for dinner.
Facing baseless federal hunger brought on by not eating since lunch, fighting for the working kids of this country, and now caring for a mean toddler and helping him grow up in a world that isn't always easy. But it has also reminded me exactly why I do this work and who I do it for.
I will never stop working to eat dinner. I will never stop fighting for what is right, even when there is also some feta in the fridge. And I will never stop being so very thankful that you are by my side in this important work and that there is tahini in the pantry for dressing
With love and gratitude,
stop to end
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
If you haven’t seen “North by Northwest”, she is witty, warm, and sharp. Who among us could hold our own against both Cary Grant *and* Marlon Brando (“On the Waterfront”)?
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Jameel Jaffer @jameeljaffer.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
For our symposium on "The Forever War and the First Amendment," @knightcolumbia.org and @harpers.bsky.social co-commissioned this essay from @harikunzru.bsky.social about art and censorship after 9/11. It's really good, and I'm hoping Hari will turn it into a book. harpers.org/archive/2026...
harpers.org
Stargazing, by Hari Kunzru
Art and censorship after 9/11
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
sounds like someone has made it up to NFIB v. Sibelius in 1L Con Law...
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Justice Alito devotes an entire chapter of his new book to the emergency docket—and to responding to people like me (“the most prolific academic critic of the emergency docket”). As I explain over at “One First,” it … didn’t go well: www.stevevladeck.com/p/256-so-une...
In the pre-publication galleys to his new book, So Ordered: An Originalist’s View of the Constitution, the Court, and Our Country, Justice Alito spelled my last name inconsistently. This is, I suspect, the pettiest possible point on which to open in discussing a Supreme Court justice’s new memoir, and I would never have mentioned it except for the fact that inconsistency turns out to be the organizing feature of the chapter in which I (“the most prolific academic critic of the emergency docket”) repeatedly appear.The central inconsistency of Chapter 8, which is devoted to the emergency docket, is structural: Rather than tackle the subject holistically (as one might expect in a book), Alito mashed together the speech he gave five years ago at Notre Dame Law School with a “postscript.” The former was deeply flawed even at the time (among lots of other things, Alito repeatedly insisted that there was “nothing new” about the Court’s behavior on emergency applications during the first Trump administration and COVID); and the latter tries to move the goalposts away from the specific phenomena to which critics like me have actually objected.The result is to leave readers with a disjointed, inaccurate, and misleading sense of what the debate is even about—to say nothing of how the Court’s own behavior since September 2021 (including Alito’s) has only further undermined the already-flawed claims Alito made back then. Somewhere between the galleys of Alito’s book and the final product (which hits bookstores today), someone apparently figured out that my last name should be spelled the same way (and correctly!) throughout. The other, more significant inconsistencies were, apparently, harder to fix.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
You could say so many things about this (the complete and intentional fraying of an already tattered national interrelationship, imagine an alternate universe where a Dem prez says this about Oklahoma, etc.) but what I find remarkable is how San Diego, a military hub, is portrayed as cannon fodder.
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AAUP @aaup.org · 05/10/2026
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: The AAUP is suing the Trump administration over new policies that threaten green card applicants with family separation. 1/
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
Ben, it’s time for sod.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
As my colleague @jtlg.bsky.social noted, Kotlikoff not even six months ago seemed to have run over a student’s foot with his car. It has not been a year of inspiring leadership from our president and board, in my opinion. bsky.app/profile/jtlg...
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The New Yorker @newyorker.com · 03/10/2026
Doctors in Tennessee are attempting to save the life of a woman whom the state just tried to kill. www.newyorker.com/news/the-led...
newyorker.com
Christa Pike and the Absurdity of Humane Execution
Doctors in Tennessee are attempting to save the life of a woman whom the state just tried to kill.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Cornell’s administration just emailed us a link to this 8 minute video message from the president. It strikes a different tone but doesn’t have much content. statements.cornell.edu/2026/2026100...
statements.cornell.edu
Message from President Michael I. Kotlikoff
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
Doxxing someone in your party about a Daylight Savings Time bill while gas prices and mortgage rates are what they are is… 😑
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
I subscribed; have you? If not, you’ll lose access to my Nina Totenberg memoir review from a few years back, as well as all of the stuff Jay writes after we cyberbully him.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Almost 5 yrs ago my best friend @melaastro.bsky.social & I were on an episode of @sporkful.bsky.social with guest co-hosts @ericeddings.bsky.social & @bmluse.bsky.social discussing a dispute: what food you should go for on a road trip. They’re replaying it this week! www.sporkful.com/should-you-p...
sporkful.com
Should You Put Ice In Your Milk? With Brittany Luse & Eric Eddings (Reheat)
Should you eat at chain restaurants on vacation? Is soup bar food? Brittany Luse and Eric Eddings join us to resolve your disputes.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Nothing will ever justify state-administered murder. Nothing.
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Radley Balko @radleybalko.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
They made her wait all day to kill her, and now they’re torturing her.
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Justice Kavanaugh, please explain to me — and Christa Pike— how this is an “interim” decision? Justice Barrett, please explain to us how this is merely a “preliminary” ruling?
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
But which case was about a long jacket?
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Over dissents from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS *grants* Tennessee's request to vacate the stay of execution the Sixth Circuit had entered in the case of Christa Pike, clearing the way for her execution: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
supremecourt.gov
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Niko Bowie @nikobowie.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
I'm grateful to Radcliffe and the Schlesinger Library for ensuring that my mom's work will be accessible to her many students, past and future
hls.harvard.edu
Lani Guinier’s legacy, in her own words - Harvard Law School
Schlesinger Library collection offers scholars a closer look at Lani Guinier's work on voting rights, race, education, and equality.
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Steven Hale @iamstevenhale.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Christa Pike’s attorneys say the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a stay of execution. News spreading now outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, where the execution is scheduled for 10am.
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Steve Vladeck @stevevladeck.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
#BREAKING: Over dissents from the three Democratic appointees, #SCOTUS grants a stay in the third-country removals case; clears way for Trump admin. to continue removing non-citizens without a full chance to litigate the conditions in those countries (while also taking up the full merits appeal).
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 29/09/2026
If you’d asked me to parody how silly and broken legal journalism is, I genuinely don’t think I could have come up with “so the best-known ‘nonpartisan’ Supreme Court outlet is now run by an ex-Trump DOJ flack who had her longtime personal friend Brett Kavanaugh officiate her wedding”
ballsandstrikes.org
The Conservative Takeover of SCOTUSblog Is Just What the Supreme Court Needed
SCOTUSblog used to cover the Supreme Court. Now, it cheers for it.
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Gautam Hans @gshans.bsky.social · 29/09/2026
Sophia was my student last year; she’s incredible. The Sun has done excellent work on this difficult story.
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