Dorf on Law

Participating in politics never has been, is not now, and indeed must never involve engaging with others solely on the grounds of pure reason.  Emotion matters, evidence matters, and we have seen to our horror what can happen when those who pretend to rely on cold, supposedly objective reason get their hands on the levers of power. For most of the last few decades, however, I have been remarking on the notable decline in standards in US politics regarding what counts as an argument.  Reason is not at all sufficient, but it certainly is necessary.  And although Democrats offer more than the occasional example of forehead-slapping silliness, there is emphatically no equivalence between the two parties. Long before Donald Trump came along, Republicans had decided that "message discipline" was more important than the message itself.  Rote repetition of talking points became their standard operating procedure, no matter what any reporter or political opponent might do to ...

Just over a week ago, President Trump described the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Iran that at that point had not yet been made public as "achiev[ing] everything we set out to accomplish - everything, and much more. Ending the current conflict, reopening the Strait of Hormuz and preventing Iran from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon." It was obvious that that statement was false when Trump made it. The various stated goals of the war the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran included regime change and eliminating the threat posed by Iran's nuclear and missile programs. "Ending the current conflict" was not one of the original goals because there was no direct military conflict before the war began. Nor was opening (or reopening) the Strait of Hormuz because it was open before the war.  Now that the MoU's full text is publicly available , it is even more obvious that the U.S. achieved none of Trump's objectives. Consider the MoU's declaration...

For some reason, the White House is not hosting a raucous Juneteenth celebration today.  Strange. We at Dorf on Law chose not to put a bouncy house on our virtual front lawn, instead commemorating one of the country’s most important dates quietly and respectfully. We wish all of our readers peace and justice. - Neil H. Buchanan

Today's Supreme Court decision in United States v. Hemani is interesting for multiple reasons. (1) It is the first Second Amendment case on the Court's plenary docket in which the judgment was unanimous. Caetano v. Massachusetts was unanimous but was a per curiam GVR (grant, vacate, and remand), not a case in which there was full briefing and oral argument. (2) The unanimity is readily explained: at least as applied to the facts of this case, the underlying law at issue in Hemani is almost as stupid as the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision in Caetano. That court said that stun guns are not protected "arms" within the meaning of the Second Amendment based on reasons that pretty obviously contradicted the mode of analysis required by Dist. of Columbia v. Heller . The law at issue in Hemani,  18 U.S.C. § 922 (g)(3), criminalizes firearm possession by anyone "who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance." Hemani, fully co...

With almost no time to write today, I did want to comment briefly (albeit mostly via other writers) on the current madness in US financial markets.  In case anyone has missed it, several huge companies are “going public” this summer, which will make the superrich superricher.  The first such market splash has been playing out for the last few days. None of it makes sense, but that should surprise no one.  Here are a few examples of sane analyses of the financial markets' recent insanity. (1)  Hype and Glory: The SpaceX frenzy continues , Paul Krugman, June 17, 2026, an excellent analysis that demonstrates that SpaceX's financial "fundamentals" are completely insane.  Krugman includes this gem: Robin Wigglesworth, editor of the Financial Times blog Alphaville , memorably described Elon Musk’s company as a "very successful but fairly small satellite launch company, bolted onto a stagnant money-losing social media company [X, formerly Twitter] and a money-incinerat...

Yesterday's New York Times revealed that in April 2025, White House Secretary Will Scharf--described in the article as such a conservative lawyer that he "had bemoaned John McCain as too moderate for the 2008 Republican nomination, and believed Mr. Trump had been vindictively prosecuted after his 2020 election loss"--wrote a memo explaining in detail why the apparent plan to suspend habeas corpus for undocumented immigrants was unlawful. The big news here is not what was in Mr. Scharf's memo but the fact that he felt the need to write it. The memo is a generally correct, even anodyne, recitation of the constitutional law of habeas corpus. The key case is Ex Parte Merryman , which held that Congress, rather than the president, has the power to suspend the privilege of the writ. Admittedly, Merryman was a decision by Chief Justice Taney in his capacity as a Circuit judge, not a ruling of the full Supreme Court, but its reasoning is sound. Although the Suspension Claus...

Jerry Seinfeld (playing himself in the snippet of a standup routine that began the show in the early seasons of Seinfeld ) poked fun at sports fans who remain loyal to their team, even as the players are traded or sign with other teams as free agents: you're basically rooting for their uniforms, or, as he put it, clothes . And yet, even Seinfeld himself doesn't think that or perhaps thinks or at least feels that, despite its irrationality, there is a reason to root for the clothes. There he was courtside and chatting excitedly with Larry David at the conclusion of the Knicks' astounding comeback in Game 4 . Moreover, the 2026 Knicks are not just a bunch of guys wearing Knicks uniforms. They are, in a sense that is not always true of sports teams, a continuation of Knicks teams--great, terrible, near-great, mediocre, and good--of the last 56 years. I was six years old in 1970 when Willis Reed hobbled onto the court, made two shots, and then ceded the day to Walt Clyde Frazie...

[N.B. The following is the third in my series of essays for the Knight First Amendment Institute's Reconstructing Free Expression project. It is cross-posted on the Knight website . My first entry is  here . The second is here .] There is no perfect way to fund higher education. Relying chiefly on  tuition  favors wealthy students and results in underfunding of the research mission of most colleges and universities because students who see themselves as customers understandably would prefer that the money they spend produce concrete benefits to them in the form of teaching and administrative services rather than add to the general storehouse of knowledge available to all of humanity. Relying chiefly on   donors   risks directing an institution’s mission to the donors’ priorities, which will not always align with the priorities of faculty, students, administrators, and other stakeholders. A wealthy alum who is the CEO of an oil company might be happy to fund...

The news cycle this week included coverage of a tantrum that Donald Trump threw before he walked out of an interview with NBC's Kristen Welker.  Trump was shouting about how the recent California primary elections were "crooked," because he was of the opinion that the vote counting took too long.  There was plenty of material in that rant-filled interview for comedians and pundits to ridicule, but for my money, this brief exchange at the end perfectly captures the mindset not only of Trump but of his entire political movement. Trump: They're cheating on the election. Welker: What ... do you have evidence to support that? Trump: All I have to do is look.  All I have to do is look. Well, since he repeated himself, we are all convinced!  Seriously, however, this is no small matter, because that moment was only the latest reminder that Trump and his followers have abandoned the very idea that they need to present evidence and logic in order to try to persuade people....