iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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John Schwartz @jswatz.bsky.social · 15/12/2025

You know what feels good? Walking into the Tarlton law library at the University of Texas law school to do a little research and seeing this glorious portrait of Heman Sweatt. Sweatt v Painter was a pivotal case in desegregating public education. The case, and Mr. Sweat, deserve this recognition.

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 21/11/2025

Mantra: Learn to use AI. Do not use AI to learn.

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 22/09/2025

Expand the court, yes, but also make the court into rotating terms drawn from the circuits, panels of 5-7 justices that are determined after cert is granted so petitioners don't know their judges in advance and so can enforce ethics recusals.

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Jennifer N. Victor @jenvictor.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

My five things are: 1. Multimember districts with proportional distribution of House seats by party. 2. Expand the House. 3. Guarantee voting rights for all (DC and PR included) 4. Reduce authority of the Senate. 5. Increase pay and professional staff for House members. 2/3

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Meghan Leonard @meghanleonard.bsky.social · 13/08/2025

Everything is awful, but a new paper with @profjvross.bsky.social provides new evidence that state court chief justices are much more like academic department chairs than ideologically-driven seekers of policy outcomes. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

Opinion Self-Assignment on State Supreme Courts - Meghan E. Leonard, Joseph V. Ross, 2025

The assignment of a majority opinion author is a pivotal moment in the judicial decision-making process, yet nearly all our understanding of the assignment deci...

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FT @fucktheory.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

I have a little bit of time to kill so I’m going to start a thread on the Spanish Inquisition that I probably won’t finish today. I’m trying to tell an interesting story to people who might not know a lot about this stuff and also I don’t work here so I’ll probably be making some generalizations.

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 04/08/2025

Context for gerrymandering debate “How responsive/congruent is state policy with state public opinion” is one of the most studied poli sci questions Red & blue states both passed more 'extreme' policy in recent decades. Blue state policy shifts were aligned with state opinion. Red states’ weren’t

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Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

Buffoonery aside, I think a lot of Americans can't process that multiple generations of Germans renounce and revile past actions rather than treat them as an aspect of of their culture that must be maintained.

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American Library Association @amlibraryassoc.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

NEW: ALA salutes Dr Carla Hayden for her exceptional service to the nation as the Librarian of Congress. We are deeply disappointed in Dr Hayden's abrupt & unjust dismissal last night, an insult to the scope & breadth of her work. Read ALA Pres. Cindy Hohl's statement: www.ala.org/news/2025/05...

The American Library Association praises servic of Dr. Carla Hayden, decries 'unjust dismissal' of Librarian of Congress. [Image of Dr. Carla Hayden standing in the stacks in a library]

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Jim Casey @jimccasey1.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Dr. Hayden has been such a transformative and inspiring Librarian for the past decade. If you haven't had the privilege to spend time with LC staff, you may not realize what a sea change she brought to our national library. One of the all-time greats. A huge loss for millions and millions.

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Kevin Collins @kwcollins.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

The key is not limiting the actions of lawmakers, but structuring a party system so the radicals who would welcome authoritarianism are kept out of coalitions of power. At least for now, we see this working in Germany's hybrid party-list PR / plurality vote system

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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 01/03/2025

The biggest reason why I dislike the idea of respectability in dress is because it conflates the *appearance* of virtue with *actual* virtue. Wearing a suit doesn't make you respectful, intelligent, or capable, just as wearing a leather jacket doesn't make you rugged.

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Scott Shapiro @scottjshapiro.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

The exchange between Trump, Vance and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office today in which our country attacked the victim in defense of a brutal aggressor has to be one of the most shameful moments in Modern American history.

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Jamal Greene @jamalgreene.bsky.social · 13/02/2025

It is not within our modern constitutional tradition for the Executive Branch to make no apparent effort to conform its behavior to law. This is an incredibly dangerous development, indeed a "crisis" in any reasonable sense of that word, regardless of what courts do. (fin)

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Jeremy Littau @jeremylittau.com · 07/02/2025

I teach NYT v. Sullivan in my intro class because it's important for them to know this ruling is what gives them the right to broadly criticize public officials without worrying about being harassed via lawsuit by the rich and powerful. It would be devastating to free speech to overturn Sullivan.

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Claire Willett @clairewillett.bsky.social · 07/02/2025

saw this circulating on Instagram the other day and I can’t stop thinking about it. “Who cares anymore what particular knot they used in the binding?” is such a perfectly expressed repudiation of the “economic anxiety” framing

"Historians have a word for Germans who joined the Nazi party, not because they hated Jews, but out of a hope for restored patriotism, or a sense of economic anxiety, or a hope to preserve their religious values, or dislike of their opponents, or raw political opportunism, or convenience, or ignorance, or greed. That word is "Nazi." Nobody cares about their motives anymore. They joined what they joined. They lent their support and their moral approval. And, in so doing, they bound themselves to everything that came after. Who cares any more what particular knot they used in the binding?"
A.R. Moxon

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Auschwitz Memorial @auschwitzmemorial.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Auschwitz was at the end of a long process. It did not start from gas chambers. This hatred was gradually developed by humans. From ideas, words, stereotypes & prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization & escalating violence... to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.

A bird's-eye view of a former Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp showing a wide dirt pathway flanked by parallel rows of barbed-wire fences. Groups of visitors walk along the path, surrounded by the remnants of brick structures and barracks, now reduced to foundations. Green grass contrasts with the somber history of the site, as the path leads toward a guard tower in the distance.

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Tor Ekeland @torekeland.bsky.social · 19/11/2024

My dad was tortured by the Gestapo for 4 days and thrown in a concentration camp for being in the Norwegian Resistance. Growing up, he would tell me things he learned in the Resistance. I thought, I'm never going to need this stuff. Here's some of those things #Thread

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Justin Zimmerman @jztidecat.bsky.social · 04/12/2024

We didn’t have any semblance of a democracy until 1965 for those that forget.

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Atrios @eschatonblog.com · 03/12/2024

forgive and forget, but "did you support the iraq war" remains an almost perfect predictor of "are you an asshole over 20 years later"

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Ashley C. Ford @smashfizzle.bsky.social · 01/12/2024

I didn’t leave X because people there had different opinions and ideologies, I left because it stopped being fun. I get on social media to chat with people who think thinking is fun. X stopped being a place where that was true.

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Tim Carvell @timcarvell.bsky.social · 05/11/2024

I’m sorry, I know we’re all distracted and busy but you don’t get to try and sneak “swang” by us today.

NYT headline:

These 15 Voters Swang Between Trump and Harris for Months. Here's What Decided Things.

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Alexandra Petri @petridishes.bsky.social · 26/10/2024

I guess it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to endorse Harris for president wapo.st/3UqHWRM

The Washington Post is not bothering to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential election. (Jeff Bezos, the founder of Blue Origin and the founder and executive chairman of Amazon and Amazon Web Services, also owns The Post.)
We as a newspaper suddenly remembered, less than two weeks before the election, that we had a robust tradition 50 years ago of not telling anyone what to do with their vote for president. It is time we got back to those “roots,” I’m told!
Roots are important, of course. As recently as the 1970s, The Post did not endorse a candidate for president. As recently as centuries ago, there was no Post and the country had a king! Go even further back, and the entire continent of North America was totally uninhabitable, and we were all spineless creatures who lived in the ocean, and certainly there were no Post subscribers.

But if I were the paper, I would be a little embarrassed that it has fallen to me, the humor columnist, to make our presidential endorsement. I will spare you the suspense: I am endorsing Kamala Harris for president, because I like elections and want to keep having them.
Let me tell you something. I am having a baby (It’s a boy!), and he is expected on Jan. 6, 2025 (It’s a … Proud Boy?). This is either slightly funny or not at all funny. This whole election, I have been lurching around, increasingly heavily pregnant, nauseated, unwieldy, full of the commingled hopes and terrors that come every time you are on the verge of introducing a new person to the world.
Well, that world will look very different, depending on the outcome of November’s election, and I care which world my kid gets born into. I also live here myself. And I happen to care about the people who are already here, in this world. Come to think of it, I have a lot of reasons for caring how the election goes. I think it should be obvious that this is not an election for sitting out.

The case for Donald Trump is “I erroneously think the economy used to be better? I know that he has made many ominous-sounding threats about mass deportations, going after his political enemies, shutting down the speech of those who disagree with him (especially media outlets), and that he wants to make things worse for almost every category of person — people with wombs, immigrants, transgender people, journalists, protesters, people of color — but … maybe he’ll forget.”
“But maybe he’ll forget” is not enough to hang a country on!
Embarrassingly enough, I like this country. But everything good about it has been the product of centuries of people who had no reason to hope for better but chose to believe that better things were possible, clawing their way uphill — protesting, marching, voting, and, yes, doing the work of journalism — to build this fragile thing called democracy. But to be fragile is not the same as to be perishable, as G.K. Chesterton wrote. Simply do not break a glass, and it will last a thousand years. Smash it, and it will not last an instant. Democracy is like that: fragile, but only if you shatter it.

Trust is like that, too, as newspapers know.
I’m just a humor columnist. I only know what’s happening because our actual journalists are out there reporting, knowing that their editors have their backs, that there’s no one too powerful to report on, that we would never pull a punch out of fear. That’s what our readers deserve and expect: that we are saying what we really think, reporting what we really see; that if we think Trump should not return to the White House and Harris would make a fine president, we’re going to be able to say so.

That’s why I, the humor columnist, am endorsing Kamala Harris by myself!

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 21/10/2024

If you're at the airport and the pilot says he's going to crash the plane, you refuse to board. You don't say "well, he says lots of crazy things and the first officer will keep him from doing anything too dangerous." We can argue about the exact probabilities, but you wouldn't get on that plane.

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Andrew H. Smith @ahsmith923.bsky.social · 03/09/2024

Optimist: the cup is 1/2 full Pessimist: the cup is 1/2 empty Judicial Politics scholars: the cup is as full as the ideological majority on the US Supreme Court says it is

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Nate O @nateo.bsky.social · 02/09/2024

Uh it’s definitely been charted

The hard right takes Germany into uncharted territory
The parties in Olaf Scholz's coalition are crushed in state polls

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Christina Wolbrecht @cwolbrecht.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

But that IS gender! The “small and weak” critique hits Trump in a specific way because his claim has always been traditional male power over. And Harris as prosecutor was presented as strong in defense and protection of others.

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David Waldman @kagrox.bsky.social · 23/08/2024

The kids murdered in the Sandy Hook school should have been voting this year.

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Charles Louis Richter @richterscale.bsky.social · 21/08/2024

the kids have repeatedly said they want to stay up past their bedtime, but their parents have not let them do that; therefore, it is an exaggeration to claim that the kids want to stay up past their bedtime

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Miranda Yaver @mirandayaver.bsky.social · 20/07/2024

If you only trust election results when you/your candidate wins, you don’t respect election results. And headlines should reflect that.

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Neil Lewis, Jr. @neillewisjr.bsky.social · 11/07/2024

There is a lot of research on this. Learning about racism doesn't make white kids feel guilty. Here is what it does. Summary of some of the studies here: fivethirtyeight.com/features/wha...

Nelsen also found that white students reported a greater appreciation for the contributions that Black, Latino and Asian Americans have made to American society.

when white children learn about racism they are more likely to value racial fairness and show more positive attitudes and empathy toward Black people.

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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 11/07/2024

Without even clicking the link, I’ll guess the reason — all the talk of racism makes white kids feel guilty. Again, if your kids are reading histories of slavery or segregation and identifying with the racists in the story, that suggests you’ve got your own problems to work through. Leave us out.

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 03/07/2024

The Supreme Court's right-wing supermajority didn't happen overnight. This is the inside story of how Leonard Leo built a machine that reshaped the American judiciary and legal system.

propublica.org

We Don’t Talk About Leonard: The Man Behind the Right’s Supreme Court Supermajority

The inside story of how Leonard Leo built a machine that remade the American legal system — and what he plans to do next.

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Steve Silberman @stevesilberman.bsky.social · 02/07/2024

This is one of the most dystopian signs I've ever seen. Republicans are quickly turning this country into an unrecognizable freakshow.

STOP
Pursuant to Idaho Code §18-1514 That become effective July 1,2024.
To proceed beyond this point you must:
Be 18 years of age or older.
(if you are under 30 please be prepared to show Photo ID)
Or
Have an unrestricted library card.
(Please have your card ready to be scanned)
Or
Be accompanied by your parent or legal guardian who must sign an affidavit every time you come to the library.

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 01/07/2024

Anyhow, now I have to find some motivation to keep teaching students about American democratic institutions as if they still matter.

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 29/06/2024

The idea that Biden is uniquely doomed and any other Democrat is guaranteed to beat Trump was always Aaron Sorkin fantasyland

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Peter @notalawyer.bsky.social · 26/06/2024

the Supreme Court’s jurisprudence on corruption is basically at a point where the only thing that counts as a bribe is someone handing a public official a giant bag of money with a dollar sign on it while saying “this is a bribe” out loud

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Jeff Lazarus @jlazarus.bsky.social · 25/06/2024

America isn't a conservative country. It's a center-left country with a democracy problem.

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