iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Steven Hale @iamstevenhale.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Story here. Attorneys say Pike is unconscious, on a ventilator and that both of her arms were “swollen, burned, and blistered” upon her arrival at the hospital Wednesday night. nashvillebanner.com/2026/10/02/c...

nashvillebanner.com

Christa Pike on ventilator after failed execution attempt - Nashville Banner

Christa Pike was unconscious and on a ventilator a day after she survived two doses oft the lethal injection drug pentobarbital, according to a court filing.

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Daniel Suitor @danielsuitor.com · 02/10/2026

Will is 100% right. Has happened to multiple clients of mine. One judge (not my case) has said that this isn't really release and ordered the person *actually* released. But it's forcing us habeas attorneys to win our cases twice (or more)

On September 9, 2026, Respondents permitted Pablo F. to exit the building where
he was detained, but he was immediately swarmed by four ICE officers and handcuffed as
soon as he stepped outside. (Doc. No. 25-3 at 4:48:45–4:49:26.)3
The officers drove him
to the back of the Whipple building and returned him to a holding cell. (Doc. No. 21 ¶¶ 8–
9; Doc. No. 25 ¶ 5.) During this encounter, officers dislocated Pablo F.’s shoulder. (Doc.
No. 21 ¶ 7.)4
Pablo F. now bringsthis Motion seeking to enforce the Court’s Order granting
the Petition.

Again, Respondents make no attempt whatsoever to support their assertion that
Pablo F. was released. Absent any such argument, the Court cannot agree that a reasonable
person would have felt free to leave when exiting the detention facility and immediately
being stopped by ICE officers. Likewise, absent some argument, the Court necessarily
concludes that Pablo F. was subject to restraints not shared by the public generally when
he took one step outside of the detention facility and was immediately stopped by ICE
officers who forcibly returned him to a detention cell. Because Respondents do not make
any legal argument that Pablo F. was ever meaningfully released from custody, the Court
grants the motion and orders Pablo F.’s release.6
6 To be clear, Pablo F. is not arguing, and the Court is not concluding, that an order of
release in a habeas matter renders unlawful any future arrests. Rather, the Court reaches
the narrow conclusion that because Respondents advance no legal argument in this case to
support their assertion that Pablo F. was released from custody, and because the
uncontested facts show that ICE officers immediately swarmed Pablo F. as soon as he
stepped out of the building, Pablo F. was not released from custody.

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Suuuuper interesting, I was not tracking this. The judge found the law criminalizing noncitizen voting is a voter qualification statute, and therefore outside of Congress’s power. Surprisingly, this is an issue of first impression! Decision is here: storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

The best reading of the actual statute that underpins this criminal case yields an inescapable
conclusion: 18 U.S.C. S 611 is a voter qualification statute, and the Constitution does not authorize
Congress to legislate voter qualifications for federal elections. Except for very specific constitutional
provisions (that cannot support this statute; we will go through them, Congress has no power to say
who can vote or who cannot vote in federal elections-that foundational power is reserved for the States,
and limits Congress.
Some legal principles are so fundamental that they form American constitutional bedrock, and
this case reveals a big one: When you're prosecuted based on a law that Congress did not have the
authority to pass, the prosecution cannot stand. That principle in federal law harkens back to cases
like Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 180 (1803), and United States v. Hudson, 11 U.S. 32, 34 (1812), and
has had explicit and unbroken support in criminal cases since Ex Parte Siebold, 100 U.S. 371, 376-77
(1879) ("An unconstitutional law is void, and is as no law. An offence created by it is not a crime. A
conviction under it is not merely erroneous, but is illegal and void, and cannot be a legal cause of
imprisonment."). The principle is so fundamental that it even predates our constitutional republic; it
lies at the very heart of our constitutional heritage. See, e.g., Bayard v. Singleton, 1 N.C. 5, 9-10 (1787) (striking down a legislative act as unconstitutional and holding that a court cannot enforce an
unconstitutional law in any type of proceeding). This principle acts as a shield for every person facing
criminal prosecution in the United States, citizen and non-citizen alike. That shield protects the
Defendant here, and none of the Government's arguments break through it.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

they don't "coincide" with the release of a book: he is a government official going on a media tour to promote a book he wrote because it is one of the few unambiguously legal ways he has to profit off of his position

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Saying something differently than I did in the replies here and don't want to keep bugging Gabriel but it spurred a thought: maybe the best way to think of why this isn't defamatory is, ironically, by reference to the questionably determinate fact/conclusion distinction in Iqbal

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Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

if you've been wondering how thin the commitment to the cultural is as an. 'alternative' to explicit racism of the more clearly segregationist sort, consider the implications of "the mere fact of us being able to notice" that someone is of South Asian heritage as ruling our assimilation

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FEARsten @k-a-aitch.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"When you criticize Cornell administration, here's who you're really hurting" [holds up a human shield made of rape victims]

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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

UPDATE: At a call with the federal court tonight, "the state [of Tennessee] represented that medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion."

ORDER finding as moot 123 Motion to Expedite. At a conference call with counsel for all parties, the state represented that medical personnel have begun to administer medical care as requested in the motion. This is the complete order of the court. There is no document associated with this docket entry. Signed by District Judge Clifton L Corker on 9/30/2026. (Corker, Clifton) (Entered: 09/30/2026)

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Jonathon Booth @jboothhistory.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Alright here's my American Legal History syllabus drive.google.com/file/d/1FZY1...

drive.google.com

_American Legal history Syllabus 2026.pdf

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

add this to Project 2029. The Court should be able to intervene to stay executions but where a lower court has ordered a stay to preserve its own jurisdiction to hear the claim, the Court has no business vacating those stays. executions are never emergencies.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Congress should, inter alia, take away the Court's jurisdiction to grant stays of lower court orders halting executions

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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Good thing we can sort out her legal claims tomorrow.

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Heidi Kitrosser @heidikitrosser.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

I still can't get over the fact that SCOTUS (minus Sotomayor, Kagan & Jackson) did this yesterday *on the shadow docket.* Nary a word of justification. Not even a nod to the lower court opinions finding it unlawful to deport to 3rd countries w/o due process to flag torture & persecution risks.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

me, a first amendment sicko, staring down the barrel of teaching the commerce clause next semester

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Anthony Michael Kreis @anthonymkreis.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Law is a moral practice. And there are many ghouls amongst us.

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James “Hell” Brooks @robborigoberto.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Jack Smith is a better person than me. I have seen the Hawks play in person in three cities not named Atlanta. If asked under oath if I ever attended a Hawks game, I would unflinchingly say no. Catching perjury charges would be less humiliating than admitting the truth.

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Rodger Sherman @rodger.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

the right's crippling lack of ball knowledge strikes again

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Ann M. Lipton @annmlipton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

seriously, SpaceX showed the way and Anthropic is following it. Selective leaks of the "confidential" prospectus to gin up enthusiasm for the IPO, which is wildly illegal under the federal securities laws but no one cares about that anymore www.reuters.com/legal/transa...

reuters.com

EXCLUSIVE: Anthropic leaders to control AI lab via 'Founder LLC' to promote public good over market forces

Anthropic has long positioned itself as the virtuous AI company. An early look at its IPO filing shows how it is creating a new "Founder LLC" vehicle aimed at serving the common good, while insulatin...

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

this article unscrambles the literature's egg. this article puts prior observers' toothpaste back in the tube. this article wrangles the literature's cats. this article boldly goes. (getting these out of my system.)

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Here's the "statement" from Kennedy and Thomas in that case, which all but instructed the lower courts to overturn themselves because the court didn't have a quorum. Super weird case.

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David Froomkin @dfroomkin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Beyond Neoliberal Administration," my forthcoming chapter in Building Democratic Capacity (Cambridge University Press, edited by @blakeprof.bsky.social, @joshuamacey.bsky.social, @ksabeelrahman.bsky.social, and Bijal Shah, forthcoming 2027), is now posted to SSRN. papers.ssrn.com/abstract=752...

Abstract: Recent developments in administrative law limit Congress’s ability to confer regulatory discretion on its administrative agents. Commentators have tended to view these developments as undermining progressive social policy, which has operated throughout the twenty-first century primarily through the administrative state. But Congress can respond by avoiding reliance on regulatory discretion in the first place. The new judicial doctrine does not constrain the use or acquisition of public resources. Thus, Congress has incentives to rely on a different set of tools: Pigouvian instruments (taxes and subsidies), redistribution, public infrastructure, and social control of investment. Despite recent progressive coding of regulatory bureaucracy, this alternative toolkit might well result in more egalitarian consequences. In many ways, the regulatory state was the instrument of a neoliberal mode of governance that offloaded ownership and control of resources onto private parties. The ultimate victim of the Roberts Court’s war on the regulatory state might be neoliberalism.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

I'm writing (tangentially) about this. Most of them do not own individual stocks. The last time this came up was in litigation about the tribune leveraged buyout where basically every mutual and index fund in the country was a defendant.

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Mark Graber @mgraber1.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Copyedit, page proofs, and index for Constitutional Democracy in Crisis? II are complete. Book is almost done. Lots of information at Oxford University Press. Much thanks to Mark Tushnet, Sandy Levinson, and Antonia Baraggia. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

global.oup.com

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Dell C. "DC" Toedt III @dctoedt.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Sounds quite promising.

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Eric Segall @espinsegall.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

My review of Bowie and Renan’s new book, "Supremacy: How Rule by the Court Replaced Government by the People.” A lot to like but if you “Come for the King, You Best not Miss.” www.dorfonlaw.org?m=1

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Free several billion dollar idea for the STEM-minded: Bluetooth except it works

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ProPublica @propublica.org · 26/09/2026

9/ A month in, I was betting so much that DraftKings’ quick-tap deposit buttons had increased to $500, $750 and $950, making it even easier to mindlessly transfer money into my account. I was also getting pummeled with push alerts inviting me to bet more.

A pile of phone notifications from DraftKings layered on top of one another. Each notification offers a promotion or boost.

A dropdown menu reads “Deposit” and shows dollar amounts for $500, $750, $950 and Other, along with a “Slide to Deposit” button.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

there is nothing whatsoever stopping a state attorney general's office from nuking this kind of behavior as an unfair trade practice

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Now try going on a winning streak and see how fast your account gets closed/limited

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

they're calling it the most thorough jurisdictional analysis of all time.

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Andrew Jennings @andrewkjennings.com · 25/09/2026

KalshiEX LLC v. Schuler Sixth Circuit holds that sports-event contracts are not "swaps" under the Commodities Exchange Act, and thus state gambling regulation is not preempted. I anticipate the Supreme Court granting cert on this issue and to reach the same conclusion.

opn.ca6.uscourts.gov

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Julian Davis Mortenson @jdmortenson.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

As a theoretical matter I am torn on all of these Qs. Concretely: there's a handful of urgent-feeling essays that are fully formed in my head, but that I'm 2-3 years away from getting to. And I'm confident me and Claude could knock them out quickly. At some level, OBVIOUSLY I ought to do this!

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Edward Swaine @edswaine.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Preaching to the choir, but we might need a scheme that generates a Will Baude (and others worth emulating) in the first place, and thus might need to avoid schemes that discourage their intellectual and scholarly development.

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Jacob Schriner-Briggs @jschrinerbriggs.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

I... I worked on this article for months... and... he just... tweeted it out

FIRST AMENDMENT RETALIATION AND THE HOLMESIAN BAD STATE

Jacob M. Schriner-Briggs*

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
I. FREE SPEECH IN THE HOLMESIAN BAD STATE 7
A. From Bad Man to Bad State 7
1. The Bad Man: Morality, Law, and Ordered Preferences 7
2. The Trump Administration as Holmesian Bad State 13

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Hannah BW @hbwhbwhbw.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

If ever there were a post to force tenure and hiring committees to confront hard questions this might be it

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Quinn Yeargain @yeargain.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

this is very interesting, not least because Pangram only tagged it as 48% AI-generated! setting aside the metaphysical question of what it really means for something to be "AI-generated," that suggests a pretty big problem with the supposedly flawless AI detector.

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Edward Swaine @edswaine.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Whenever I hear anyone claiming their city's pizza is best, I suppose they have only eaten it and St. Louis-style pizza, and on those terms every one of those claims is right.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

people in New Haven will literally post this and tell you that it's the best pizza in the world

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Liz Sepper @lsepper.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

My contribution to Texas Law's psychedelics and the law symposium is out! Psychedelic churches have faced lots of skepticism and resistance. But the religion clause doctrine that the Supreme Court designed for conservative Christians is so expansive that these churches should be winning exemptions.

yalejreg.com

Psychedelic Churches in a Time of Religious Exemption - Yale Journal on Regulation

Religious use of psychedelics is largely thought to be bookended by two Supreme Court decisions. The first, Employment Division v. Smith (1990), rejected a constitutional exemption for Native American...

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Jake Anbinder @jakeanbinder.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

can't believe the car that runs on millions of tiny explosions transmitting energy through a complex series of oily metal parts doesn't last as long as the one that's four wheels attached to a battery

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @reichlinmelnick.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Incredible. First Secretary Mullin claimed that DHS had identified 15,903 noncitizens on Nevada’s voter roll. Then DHS officials told a skeptical Nevada, no no no, that’s just people we flagged. Here are the names of 185 people we KNOW aren’t citizens. All 185 were citizens. DHS got 100% wrong.

When the Department of Homeland Security sent Nevada a list of 185 names last month that it claimed identified noncitizens who had been improperly allowed to register to vote, state election officials got to work.
On Tuesday, the state sent a strongly worded rebuke to the federal government: Every single person on the list was a lawful citizen.
"As for the 185 individuals, our records indicate that they were citizens," Greg D. Ott, a deputy attorney general in Nevada, wrote, according to a copy of a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security officials obtained through open records requests.
"You have provided nothing of substance to suggest otherwise."

Following the meeting, Ms. Vogt sent a clarifying email to Nevada officials. "I also wanted to be sure I clarified that we did not reduce the 15,903 to 185," she wrote. "We've manually reviewed some of the 15,903 and confirmed 185 are not U.S. Citizens."
Now, Nevada officials are saying even that 185 number is wrong. They also took issue with a letter D.H.S. sent them in early September, in which the agency reiterated its initial claims about nearly 16,000 noncitizens on the rolls and pressured state officials to review each case in a letter to Nevada officials in early September.

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LSM @slukemorgan.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

[scenes from a house with a toddler in daycare] Me: little itch in the throat... ahh it's just allergies it'll be fine Me after four hours of lecturing: (raspy croak only barely approximating human language)

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Adam Steinbaugh @adamsteinbaugh.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

BREAKING: An Iowa state court dismisses President Donald Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against veteran pollster J. Ann Selzer (represented by @thefireorg.bsky.social) and the Des Moines Register newspaper, a victory for First Amendment rights. Opinion here: www.fire.org/research-lea...

This case sets a President, a member of Congress, and a former state senator against a pollster and a newspaper, and it arises out of an election. A case of that kind invites the reader to look for a political result. The Court’s role is narrower. It is to sit as an impartial arbiter, to apply the law without passion or prejudice, and to rule without regard to the politics of the day. As such, the only question before the Court is whether the Petition states a claim the law recognizes. At its core, the Plaintiffs’ Petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability. After considering the parties’ arguments, the Court must conclude that the protection is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed.

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Scott Nover @scottnover.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

SCOOP: Justifying its ban of Politico, the White House said the news outlet used anonymous quotes from a "senior administration official." But those quotes were provided to Politico and other outlets by the White House during a background briefing. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

washingtonpost.com

The White House cited anonymous quotes in Politico ban. It was the source.

In a letter defending its ban of Politico, the White House critiqued a report based on a press call it conducted, where reporters were told not to name the speaker

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Victor Pickard @victorpickard.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

A profound disappointment & major blow against any hope for democratic governance over our media system. Individual policymakers & media owners keep failing us, succumbing to perverse incentives. It's a systemic failure, requiring a structural overhaul of our entire media system from root to branch.

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Guha Krishnamurthi @ggkrishnamoomoo.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Some thoughts about a tension between textualism and originalism. It seems like the way the "history and tradition" test is being applied is anti-textualist... 🧐 Thanks to @dorfonlaw.bsky.social as always

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