UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in United States v. California, which held that the federal government is certain to succeed in its Supremacy Clause challenge to California’s “No Vigilantes Act” (SB 805), a law requiring non-uniformed law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, to display identification while on duty. Professor Amar praises the panel for recognizing that a state law directly regulating federal officers on the job is invalid absent federal assent, however small or evenhanded its burden, but argues that the court’s attempt to distinguish the traffic-law dicta in Johnson v. Maryland was unpersuasive and that the better explanation may lie in historical evidence of federal assent.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the federal government’s lawsuit seeking an emergency injunction to bar California election officials from counting federal ballots cast next month by about 20,000 individuals the United States suspects are noncitizens, situating it among the Trump administration’s broader efforts to intervene in state administration of the midterm elections. Professor Amar argues that the suit is likely to fail because the federal ban on noncitizen voting can rest only on Congress’ immigration power, which the anti-commandeering principle of New York v. United States and Printz v. United States limits, so the federal government cannot compel California to investigate and set aside suspected noncitizens’ ballots, and neither its preemption nor its aiding-and-abetting theory, nor the request for relief so close to an election, changes that result.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the U.S. Supreme Court’s third rejection of Republican officials’ attempts to use Missouri’s 2025 redistricting map (HB1) for the 2026 congressional election, situating the ruling within the broader national redistricting conflict and analyzing what it reveals about the Court’s emergency docket practices. Professor Amar argues that the decision undercuts claims that the Court’s shadow docket favors Trump, demonstrates the Court’s insistence that lower federal courts respect its prior rulings and state supreme court authority under Rooker-Feldman and Moore v. Harper, and shows the Justices applying the Purcell doctrine while placing blame for the electoral confusion squarely on Missouri’s Republican Secretary of State rather than on the state courts.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Eighth Circuit’s latest ruling reinstating Missouri's Republican-drawn HB1 congressional maps for the 2026 election, examining how this decision fits into the ongoing legal battle following the Supreme Court's September 10 stay of a similar lower court order. Professor Amar argues that the Eighth Circuit's ruling is legally untenable because it contradicts the Supreme Court’s implicit merits assessment from September 10 and violates the Purcell doctrine’s prohibition on late judicial interference with elections already underway, leading him to predict the Supreme Court will again intervene to block HB1’s maps from being used in November.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Missouri Supreme Court’s ruling that blocks HB1, the state’s new congressional map, from taking effect until voters decide a referendum on it, and he explains why that ruling will probably withstand the state’s expected appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Amar argues that Missouri’s federal constitutional objections are weak because the Missouri Constitution plainly permits the referendum, Supreme Court precedent has long allowed such referenda in congressional redistricting, and the U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to disrupt the state court’s decision so close to the election.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss three recent California legislative measures aimed at federal law enforcement: a “converse-1983” civil rights statute titled the “No Kings” Act, the “Get the Feds Out” Act, and a ban on electric shock gloves. Professors Amar and Mazzone argue that while the “No Kings” Act establishes a constitutionally sound remedy for federal constitutional violations, the other two measures constitute performative legislation that unconstitutionally attempts to regulate federal operations in violation of the Supremacy Clause.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Fourth Circuit’s decision in Grant v. Belangia, which invalidated a South Carolina law restricting automatic absentee voting to seniors and created a federal circuit split on the Twenty-Sixth Amendment. Professor Amar contends that the bipartisan panel correctly applied originalist principles to hold that the Constitution strictly forbids age-based discrimination in voting procedures, establishing a sound textual model for eventual Supreme Court review.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar offers his periodically updated advice to the incoming law school class of 2026, distilled into six tips covering work ethic, tolerance for legal indeterminacy, conversation with classmates, ideological engagement, strategic effort, and active reading. Professor Amar argues that law is an academic discipline demanding depth, discipline, and sustained reflection, and that students should resist undergraduate habits—and the temptations of AI-generated “answers”—because a lawyer’s value lies precisely in shaping ambiguity and advocating persuasively among plausible alternatives.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses three unexpected aspects of the Supreme Court’s end-of-term decisions from its 2025-26 term, focusing on the late-arriving ballots ruling in Watson v. Republican National Committee, the Court's departure from constitutional avoidance in three separate cases, and its mootness ruling in Little v. Hecox. Professor Amar argues that the Watson outcome was correctly decided despite media mispredictions based on oral argument, that bypassing narrower statutory grounds was justified in the birthright citizenship and Federal Reserve cases given their pressing national importance, but that the Court’s refusal to dismiss Hecox as moot—despite the plaintiff's dismissal with prejudice—was legally unjustified and appeared driven by suspicion of strategic litigant behavior rather than sound doctrine.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone examine the federal district court’s rulings on Judge James R. Brown’s lawsuit against Illinois Supreme Court Justices who terminated his recall appointment allegedly in retaliation for partisan public statements. While Professors Amar and Mazzone find the court’s bottom-line decisions to abstain and deny a preliminary injunction defensible, they argue the court’s reasoning was seriously flawed—particularly its cursory abstention analysis, its logically inverted First Amendment irreparable-harm rationale, and its mistaken treatment of a stay as functionally equivalent to a dismissal on qualified immunity grounds.

UC Davis Law professor emeritus Alan Brownstein and professor Vikram David Amar survey recent examples of overt government religious speech—at both the federal and state levels—to examine the constitutional principles underlying Establishment Clause limits on such speech. Professors Brownstein and Amar argue that government religious speech is constitutionally impermissible because it usurps individuals’ authority over their own faith, coerces religious conformity, favors some religions over others, and distorts the marketplace of ideas in ways only a robust Establishment Clause can offset.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Virginia Attorney General’s emergency application for the U.S. Supreme Court to stay a state supreme court ruling that invalidated a redistricting-related constitutional amendment. Professor Amar argues that the challenge will fail because the state court’s decision rests on an independent interpretation of the Virginia Constitution and constitutes a routine exercise of judicial review that warrants deference under Moore v. Harper.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the ongoing debate surrounding the Supreme Court’s “shadow docket” in light of recent criticism from Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and the release of historical internal memos regarding the 2016 EPA Clean Power Plan. Professor Amar argues that while some common criticisms of the Court’s emergency-relief practices are inconsistent or misguided, the Court should enhance its legitimacy by adopting more robust procedures, such as requiring expedited briefing and providing transparent, reasoned explanations for its decisions.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss the federal lawsuit brought by former Illinois judge James Brown against the Justices of the Illinois Supreme Court following his removal from a temporary recall appointment. Professors Amar and Mazzone argue that while judicial immunity likely bars the plaintiff’s claims for monetary damages, the case presents complex, unresolved questions regarding the application of First Amendment speech protections to judicial appointments and the extent to which states may manage their own judiciaries.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the California legislature’s attempt to salvage its law restricting federal law enforcement officers from wearing masks by introducing SB 1004 to achieve legal parity between state and federal agents. Professor Amar argues that this effort is performative and legally futile because the statute constitutes an unconstitutional direct regulation of federal operations under the Supremacy Clause, regardless of whether it is applied evenhandedly.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar examines the legal challenges facing President Donald Trump’s March 31, 2026 executive order directing federal agencies and states to cross-check voter lists against a federal citizenship registry to prevent non-citizen mail-in voting. Professor Amar argues the order rests on shaky constitutional footing because the Constitution assigns voter qualification authority to states rather than the President, the executive order’s primary statutory basis (18 U.S.C. § 611) has never been closely scrutinized and may not survive it, and several provisions exceed federal power even under the most favorable reading of existing law.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses the Ninth Circuit oral argument in United States v. California regarding SB 805, a state statute requiring all law enforcement officers—including federal agents—to wear identification on their uniforms. Professor Amar argues that the law violates the Supremacy Clause as an unauthorized direct regulation of federal sovereign functions and asserts that courts should focus on the lack of federal assent rather than the perceived burden or generality of the state mandate.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss the future of the Major Questions Doctrine (MQD) following the Supreme Court’s decision in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, particularly focusing on debates among the Justices about its constitutional basis and scope for limiting executive power. Professor Amar and Mazzone argue in favor of Justice Gorsuch’s robust, constitutionally grounded approach to the MQD as an essential safeguard against the unchecked accumulation of presidential authority, and urge the Court to more firmly adopt this interpretation to preserve the balance of powers.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar discusses a federal district court ruling that preliminarily upheld California’s SB 805, which requires ICE officers to display visible identification, while blocking a related masking prohibition law (SB 627). Professor Amar argues that Judge Christina Snyder’s decision fundamentally misunderstands the constitutional distinction between “direct” and “indirect” state regulation of federal activities, contending that both California laws directly regulate federal employees performing their job duties and should therefore be invalidated under the Supremacy Clause absent explicit federal consent, regardless of any “functional” analysis of actual harm to federal operations.

UC Davis Law professor Vikram David Amar and Illinois Law professor Jason Mazzone discuss President Trump’s Executive Order 14160, which seeks to deny birthright citizenship to U.S.-born children of non-citizen, non-permanent resident parents, and the Supreme Court case Trump v. Barbara challenging its validity. Professor Amar and Mazzone argue the executive order is unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment and also unlawful under the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act, which explicitly codifies birthright citizenship based on birth within U.S. territory, regardless of parents’ immigration status.