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.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses President Trump’s promise to send every adult U.S. citizen $5,000 if Republicans retain Congress in the midterms, examining both the legality of such a scheme and whether it deserves the “socialist” label some have attached to it. Professor Dorf argues that while the payments would likely be legal if authorized by Congress, they are almost certainly unfunded “vaporware” that—far from being progressive or socialist—would be financed through borrowing that fuels inflation, ultimately harming the poor the most rather than redistributing wealth from rich to poor as genuinely socialist proposals would.

Criminal defense attorney Jon May discusses the risk that Donald Trump and MAGA supporters could disrupt the midterm elections through coordinated unrest at polling places, potentially enabling Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and use federal troops to control voting. Mr. May argues that January 6 showed how a mob can paralyze democracy, and that the best defense is for states and legal officials to deter disruption through prosecution, voting-access measures, and advance warnings to military officers that obeying unlawful election-deployment orders could itself be a crime.

Austin Sarat discusses the Trump administration’s refusal to appeal a federal court decision striking down National Firearms Act regulations, framing the move as part of a broader pattern of selective non-enforcement. Professor Sarat argues that routinely abandoning and refusing to defend disfavored laws violates the executive’s constitutional duty to faithfully execute the law and fundamentally threatens the separation of powers.

In this second of a series of columns on the recent uproar over U.S. federal debt surpassing $40 trillion, law professor and economist Neil H. Buchanan examines the scope of government borrowing, including debt crises and interest-rate effects. Professor Buchanan argues that the headline number itself is not the real problem; what matters is whether debt grows unsustainably and, more importantly, whether the government borrows for productive public purposes rather than wasteful or politically motivated spending.

Law professor and economist Neil H. Buchanan discusses the public debate over the U.S. federal debt, focusing on how media coverage of the “$40 trillion debt” relies on confused, misleading, or context-free comparisons and on basic terminology mistakes such as mixing up debt, deficit, gross debt, and net debt. Professor Buchanan argues that the raw debt figure is not meaningful on its own and that sensible analysis requires context—especially debt relative to GDP—so scare-driven coverage distorts the real fiscal issues.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the Board of Immigration Appeals’ request for amicus briefs on whether it must follow U.S. Supreme Court and circuit precedent on constitutional questions even when doing so would require finding a statute or regulation unconstitutional, a power agencies otherwise lack. Professor Dorf argues that while the two obligations can often be reconciled through careful distinctions (such as those between facial and as-applied challenges), he warns that a BIA now dominated by Trump appointees may exploit this tension in bad faith to consistently rule against immigrants, leaving the courts to correct any opportunistic or inconsistent application of these principles.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf examines the Democratic Senate primary in Maine, where progressive candidate Graham Platner—despite a compelling populist platform—has faced mounting scrutiny over a series of personal controversies including offensive social media posts, a controversial tattoo, and allegations of infidelity and abusive behavior. Professor Dorf argues that, while Platner’s character flaws are genuine cause for concern, Democratic voters can rationally support him in the general election against incumbent Susan Collins, because his flaws—more akin to Bill Clinton’s than Donald Trump’s—do not threaten constitutional democracy and should yield to the practical calculus of a binary electoral choice.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses the settlement of a lawsuit between Donald Trump and the Department of Justice, which established a $1.776 billion “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and granted the Trump family permanent immunity from various tax claims. Professor Dorf argues that this arrangement constitutes a corrupt exploitation of the Federal Judgment Fund and urges Congress to implement structural reforms to prevent future presidents from bypassing the constitutional power of the purse through collusive litigation.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat examines the recent surge of anti-Semitic violence in the United States, using the March 2026 attack on a Michigan synagogue as a launching point for a broader historical and political argument. Professor Sarat contends that attacks on Jews threaten America’s democratic foundations—not just its Jewish community—and that the Trump administration has failed to respond meaningfully while cynically weaponizing anti-Semitism concerns for political ends.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses the Trump administration’s lawsuit against Harvard University, which seeks to compel the production of detailed, individual-level admissions and student performance data. Professor Sarat argues that the administration uses this litigation as a pretext for a “racial shaming campaign” intended to stigmatize people of color and weaponize data to serve a divisive political agenda.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat discusses a federal court ruling blocking the Trump administration’s transfer of Biden-commuted death row inmates to a federal supermax prison, examining the constitutional and procedural issues surrounding that action. Professor Sarat argues that the court was right to intervene, because the administration violated due process by bypassing individualized assessment procedures to pursue a predetermined punitive outcome, and that upholding constitutional protections for even the most heinous offenders is essential to preserving the rule of law and human dignity.

Attorney Lauren Stiller Rikleen discusses the Trump administration’s aggressive verbal attacks and social media rhetoric directed at the federal judiciary following the Supreme Court’s adverse ruling against his global tariffs. Ms. Rikleen argues that such hostile language from the executive branch incites threats against jurists and their families, ultimately endangering the physical safety of judges and undermining the foundational principle of judicial independence.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses widespread speculation that Justice Samuel Alito may retire from the Supreme Court soon, examining both the evidence (particularly his book’s release date and strategic timing before the 2026 midterms) and the broader institutional problems this speculation reveals. Professor Dorf argues that the real issue is not the Supreme Court’s lack of transparency, but the combination of life tenure and ideological polarization, which creates an unhealthy obsession with Justices’ retirement timing and makes Supreme Court appointments depend on accidents of health and political calculations rather than a sensible democratic process.

University of Pennsylvania professor Marci A. Hamilton discusses the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files, criticizing the selective release of documents and attempts to minimize their importance to the public. Professor Hamilton argues that none of the powerful men in Jeffrey Epstein’s orbit acted with moral decency by reporting the obvious abuse of young girls they witnessed, and she calls for complete transparency rather than allowing officials to suppress information and avoid accountability.

Amherst professors Ruxandra Paul and Austin Sarat discuss the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization and its push to make vaccinations optional, arguing these actions undermine public health infrastructure both domestically and globally. Professors Paul and Sarat contend that the administration’s “America First” approach, which prioritizes individual autonomy over collective health measures and uses U.S. withdrawal as leverage for political aims, will leave Americans and the world more vulnerable to disease outbreaks and reverse decades of public health progress.

Cornell professor Joseph Margulies discusses how the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies led to violence in Minneapolis, examining the gap between campaign promises to deport violent criminals and the reality of mass deportation tactics targeting peaceful undocumented immigrants in Democratic cities. Professor Margulies argues that the administration’s use of immigration enforcement as political retaliation, combined with performative authoritarian tactics designed to appeal to Trump's base, made the violent clashes and killings by federal agents inevitable.

Cornell Law professor Michael C. Dorf discusses Donald Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS over the unauthorized disclosure of his tax information by former IRS employee Charles Littlejohn, examining the legal basis and problems with the case. Professor Dorf argues that while the lawsuit has some factual merit, it should be dismissed because the damages claim of $10 billion is fantastical and implausible, Trump himself was responsible for IRS management during the breach, the case likely falls outside the two-year statute of limitations, and it represents an unprecedented and improper attempt by a sitting president to sue his own government for monetary damages.

Touro University, Jacob D. Fuchsberg Law Center professor Rodger Citron reviews retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s 2025 memoir Life, Law & Liberty, examining his life, career, and legacy as the pivotal “swing vote” on the Court from 1987 to 2018. While Professor Citron expresses admiration for Kennedy as a person and finds the memoir gracefully written, he argues that Kennedy fails to adequately account for his role in shaping the current political and legal landscape and erosion of democracy. Further, Professor Citron suggests that Kennedy’s moderate influence has become irrelevant as his successors have moved the Court sharply rightward, overturning precedents like Roe v. Wade that Kennedy himself helped preserve.

Amherst professor Austin Sarat and attorney Lauren Stiller Rikleen critique Chief Justice John Roberts’s 2025 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary, arguing that it fails to address the recent constitutional challenges and the Supreme Court’s role in enabling presidential overreach. The authors contend that Roberts’s report offers a misleadingly sanitized view of the judiciary’s actions, ignores historical lessons from figures like Thomas Paine, and ultimately gaslights the public by omitting the Supreme Court’s complicity in the erosion of democratic norms and the rule of law.