Dorf on Law

Later today, the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in  Chatrie v. United States . The case presents the question "whether the execution of the geofence warrant violated the Fourth Amendment." Wait. The execution  of the warrant? The warrant? And what's a geofence? The case is on cert from a Fourth Circuit en banc decision that my co-blogger Professor  Matthew Tokson discussed and critiqued in July 2024 . Here is how he introduced the case: On May 20, 2019, a man wearing a fisherman’s hat and a traffic vest robbed a bank in Midlothian, Virginia. Unable to identify the robber, police served Google with a geofence warrant—a warrant targeting all cellphone users in a certain area at a certain time. They obtained information on several cellphones in the area of the bank at the time of the robbery, including the phone of Okello Chatrie, who was eventually identified as the culprit. Chatrie challenged the validity of the geofence warrant, arguing that it was unconstitutiona...

To Dorf on Law’s readers: Yesterday, I wrote that I planned to “ return[] tomorrow with some additional thoughts” about the various ways in which Trumpists will try to abuse and mangle the US electoral system to stay in power.   Due to unforeseen circumstances, I am unable to post that column today.  I will return next week to belatedly deliver on my promise. In the meantime, Professor Dorf published an excellent new column today on Verdict: “ The Fifth Circuit Overrules the Supreme Court and Nullifies the Establishment Clause .”  That column should get everyone’s weekends off to a thoughtful start. - Neil H. Buchanan

Yesterday and today, The Review of Democracy  (or  RevDem ) published my new analysis of the Trump/Republican threats to rig or simply negate the results of the 2026 US midterm elections.  Although I originally wrote it as one (long) op-ed, the editors sensibly broke it in two and published the parts under separate titles: " The Threats to Nullify (or Ignore) the US Midterm Elections are Very Real ," and " US Midterms: Will The Results Matter? " My analysis in those op-eds expands upon my  Dorf on Law  column from two months ago, " What Would "Nationalizing the Election" Look Like, and Could It Be Stopped? " Interestingly,  RevDem is an especially important outlet right now, because it has been a key part of the opposition to Hungary's so-called "illiberal democracy."  When I wrote my first op-ed for them last November, I noted in passing in a Dorf on Law column that RevDem  " is the online journal of the CEU De...

In the 1988 film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? , the viewer eventually learns (spoiler alert!) that the villainous Judge Doom (played by Christopher Lloyd) is the sole owner of the Cloverleaf Corporation, which plans to destroy Toontown to build a freeway and decommission the city's effective public transit system. In the movie, Doom is thwarted. In the reality of 1940s Los Angeles on which the plot is based , car culture was born. I don't know whether Donald Trump ever watched Roger Rabbit . If he did, I imagine that, when he wasn't leering at Jessica Rabbit, he was identifying with Doom. At least that is the inference one must draw based on the policies Trump's administration is pursuing. Immediately after Sean Duffy was confirmed as Transportation Secretary in January 2025, his department issued a press release  announcing the end to various efforts to combat or even measure climate change and decrying "woke" policies of the prior administration. Apparently, bik...

In a  2008 paper  titled “Conspiracy Theories,” Cass R. Sunstein and Adrien Vermeule described the key dilemma involved in a government responding to a conspiracy theory. As they put it, “Ignoring the theory allows its proponents to draw ominous inferences from the government’s silence,” but “to rebut the theory may be to legitimate it.” This is fairly intuitive: if your belief is that the government is covering something up, any denial is just more proof to you of the coverup. Sunstein and Vermeule propose “cognitive infiltration” as a solution to this dilemma. Their idea is in many ways as dystopian as it sounds: the government would send in agents to the breeding grounds of conspiracy theories (in the modern day, perhaps 4Chan or Truth Social) where the agents would raise doubts and reveal logical holes in the freshly coalescing theories.  Sunstein and Vermeule were primarily concerned about conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11th terrorist attacks from...

An astonishing event occurred last week at the University of Texas. Justice Clarence Thomas gave a speech in which he accused progressives of betraying the core principles of the Declaration of Independence. He said that: Progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever…. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based. Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people. Others have criticized Thomas's bizarre view of history, so I want to make a different point. The event was hosted and paid for by The University of Texas School of Civic Leadership, a part of the University funded at least in par...

I have spent a fair bit of time over the past year or so pondering a surprisingly difficult and recurring question: Does it matter which specific people work for the Trump regime, such that personnel changes could make a difference in what happens to people in the US and around the world? Last month, for example, I opined that removing now-former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem would make no substantive difference to the horrors of Trump's ongoing anti-immigration atrocities.  (To be clear, those atrocities are also being visited upon non-immigrant US citizens who are being racially profiled -- with the blessing of the Republican appointees to the US Supreme Court.)  In that piece, I wrote that "the question here is what would change if Noem were no longer in office (via impeachment or any other means, such as being fired for some reason).  The answer is nothing." Over time, I have begun to think of this as a nearly universal rule of Trumpism: Nobody matters, because someon...

Two of the major US stock indices hit record highs yesterday (and are up again today, although markets are still open), even as the Iran war looks more and more like a quagmire and consumer sentiment is at an all-time low .  How could that be happening?  I will eventually get around to refusing to answer that question, but I will begin this column with a digression. There are some truly terrible jobs out there.  Some are shockingly dangerous, such as logging and roofing.  Some are deeply unpleasant as an assault on the senses, such as sanitation workers and " professional armpit sniffers " for deodorant companies.  Some are possibly even more unpleasant as an assault on one's sanity, such as staffers for politicians and late-night TV hosts who watch right-wing cranks on podcasts and cable news for a living. That said, one of the most pointless, soul-deadening jobs that I can imagine is being the person who has to try to explain why stock markets went up or down ...

In 1868, Congress passed a law forbidding home distilleries. That law remains on the books today. It is codified as 26 U.S.C. § 5178 (b). Last week, a unanimous 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held that the law is unconstitutional  because it exceeds the powers granted to Congress. As I shall explain, in light of a key concession by the government, that holding is arguably correct. As I shall also explain, the concession was a blunder, and while the outcome of the case is defensible, much of the Fifth Circuit opinion is not. Let's start with the statute's text. As relevant here, it provides: "No distilled spirits plant for the production of distilled spirits shall be located in any dwelling house, in any shed, yard, or inclosure connected with any dwelling house . . . ." Although codified in Title 26, which is the Internal Revenue Code, and thus arguably an exercise of the power of Congress to impose taxes (about which more in a moment...