Dorf on Law
Opinionated Views on Law, Politics, Economics, and More from Michael Dorf, Neil Buchanan, Eric Segall, & (Occasionally) Others
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Latest posts
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Why I Vote in Person on Election Day But Shouldn't Have To
Today is Election Day. If I lived in a state in which elections are conducted primarily by mail , I almost certainly would have mailed in my ballot rather than attempted to vote in person. New York State is not such a state, although I have sometimes sought, received, and…
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Faith Based Discrimination is Still Discrimination and the Government Should not be Forced to Subsidize It
St. Mary Catholic Parish ("St. Mary") is a private school in Denver, Colorado that openly discriminates against LGBTQ families. Because St. Mary is a private school, nothing in the Constitution forbids it from admitting whomever it pleases or requiring its students and families…
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The Root Causes of the Two Dan Sullivans Problem
Yesterday I was on SiriusXM with Dan Abrams, who has a law and politics podcast, talking about the two Dan Sullivans issue in Alaska and related issues. He was more focused than I would have chosen to be on the possibility of criminal prosecution but it was an otherwise useful…
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Twenty Years On, It's Still About Sentience
Yearly on this blog, Professor Buchanan writes a "Veganniversary" essay, the portmanteau of his own creation marking another year since he became a vegan. His first announcement of adopting a vegan lifestyle was in July 2008 , which was a little less than two years after I…
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The Trump DOJ's Incompetence Shouldn't Distract From Its Awfulness
In President Trump's second term, the Department of Justice has been illegally firing and inducing the departure of many of its best lawyers. Although many competent lawyers remain, those that do are overworked. In addition, they must toe the line laid down by DOJ leadership who…
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Democracy on the Ballot: Taxing the Oligarchs
Next Tuesday, and most assuredly for several months thereafter, the wheels of America's creaky constitutional democracy will -- through elections and a gazillion legal challenges thereto, all of which could be upended by military and paramilitary violence -- determine whether or…
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It Can Kill Us All, So We Will Build It
In July 2026, several AI agents, unleashed by OpenAI, hacked into servers of Hugging Face, a company that develops tools and datasets for machine learning. OpenAI set up a sandbox to test the capabilities of its AI models using tests created by Hugging Face. AI agents, tasked…
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Postcard From Koyasan--and a Thought on Jewish Cultural Identity
Because I am not teaching this semester, I tacked an extra week onto my fall break and have spent the last week and a half in Japan--partly touring in Tokyo and Kyoto but mostly on a bicycle tour that took me and the rest of the group through ancient Japan, beginning with Nara…
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Taxing the Billionaires: Essential Information About Anti-Tax Dogma
On Tuesday of this week, in " The Other Huge Election Issue: Taxing the Billionaires ," I wrote this about next month's US midterm elections: [B]eyond control of Congress, there are other fundamentally important matters to be determined at the ballot box, including state-level…
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Reflections on the Ruination in France
The recent spasm of nihilistic violence in France will almost certainly have terrible consequences, including, not least, the election of Marine Le Pen next year. The 1968 U.S. presidential election was close. With George Wallace carrying the Deep South, Richard Nixon and…
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The Other Huge Election Issue: Taxing the Billionaires
Understandably, almost everyone's focus during the US midterm election campaign this year has been on the possible swing of one or both houses of Congress to majority Democratic control. That is without doubt the most important question that will be determined two weeks from…
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Trump Russia Capitulation: Stupid, Corrupt, or Vindictive? Why Not All of the Above?
Are you struggling to make sense of President Trump's series of moves to lift sanctions on and import diesel fuel from Russia? The reported reason for the diesel move is that Americans, including key Republican constituencies, are very unhappy with the price of diesel fuel, but…
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I Read Justice Alito's Book so You Wouldn't Have To (And You Shouldn't)
Justice Alito titled his new "book," " So Ordered: An Originalist's View of the Constitution, the Court, and our Country. " This project is not new, and it is not quite a "book." It is a compendium of previously given speeches reproduced in no particular order. Moreover, Justice…
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Re the Faux Nobel, "Don't Be That Guy," Sez That Guy
Trigger warning: After warming up with some relatively pedestrian backstory, this column becomes a full-on festival of sarcasm. Richly deserved sarcasm, to be sure, but even by my standards, today is a lot. Proceed at your own risk. The Prizes from Norway and Sweden have now…
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Harm SCOTUS Could Do Versus Harm It's Likely to Do
My latest Verdict column previews the current Supreme Court Term. Yes, I'm aware that the Term is underway, so this is a preview of the cases yet to be argued. You can think of it as also a preview of how the Court will likely rule in cases already argued. I discussed one of the…
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Telling Non-Americans that the US Has Abandoned the Rule of Law
What happens when you tell a group of international legal experts that the US is now post-legal? Today, I found out. They are, to understate the point, worried. But before getting there, I should lay the groundwork for this story. My good fortune often brings me back to Vienna…
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Trump Lionizes Columbus Because, Not in Spite, of his Atrocities
Today is what we here in Ithaca recognize as Indigenous People's Day . In many parts of the United States, however, today is Columbus Day. Ithaca and various other progressive locales were inspired to change the designation in light of the fact--long known to historians and…
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The Debate About Banning Fraternities: Overdue Reform and Possible Unintended Consequences
An issue that has unexpectedly dominated the news in recent weeks is the justified public outrage at Cornell University's wholly unacceptable response to allegations of rape at a 2024 fraternity party, a response that is at long last being exposed and condemned. This entire…
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"Innocent" Sanewashing, the Gish Gallop, and Bad-Faith Arguments from Republicans
"Where do I even begin?" I feel confident that almost everyone reading this column will have uttered that rhetorical question at least once, because we have all been faced with people who spew out a long series of crazy or objectionable statements that pile up so quickly as to…
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Malcolm Gladwell, Confused Originalist
In 1950, Immanuel Velikovsky published Worlds in Collision , in which he argued that astronomical events such as the supposed expulsion of Venus as a comet from Jupiter occurred within the span of ancient human civilizations, that the resulting planetary interactions led to…