Beau Baumann 🍎

Here's your weekly helping of Beau & Tell Scholarship with references to @katejackson.bsky.social @mtokson.bsky.social and others! I highly recommend Kate's new substack and Matt's tremendous (albeit bleak) new paper on "Near-Total Law Enforcement".

Let me know if anybody is interested in a panel on reconstruction, constitutional politics, or LPE + history! 🙂

Here's your weekly helping of Beau & Tell Scholarship with references to @katejackson.bsky.social @mtokson.bsky.social and others! I highly recommend Kate's new substack and Matt's tremendous (albeit bleak) new paper on "Near-Total Law Enforcement".

Excellent @gregsargent.bsky.social piece on Congress's power of the purse, how that intersects with its oversight power, and how Dems might use them newrepublic.com/article/2171...

I just think that this is where the rubber meets the road when I say I’m against ~American~ juristocracy. In many places, courts do this crazy thing of trying to protect democracy!!!

Almost typed, “really wish I too could have a disordered attachment to the Cheesecake Factory, but not in this economy.” Couldn’t pretend that if I were awash in cash, I’d really be spending it at the Cheesecake Factory of all fucking places.

Inaugural substack from the great @katejackson.bsky.social! I think the last few paragraphs are exactly where I come out.

Inaugural substack from the great @katejackson.bsky.social! I think the last few paragraphs are exactly where I come out.

I mean yeah, but also, we’re like a decade into serious court packing conversations, and nobody on the left flank has tried to instututionalize. Very woeful. Also, its a good reason to distrust that anything serious is gonna come out of 2028.

A major problem on the legal left (more narrowly construed) is a severe lack of institutionalization.

A major problem on the legal left (more narrowly construed) is a severe lack of institutionalization.

on some level, this is just a form of anti-politics.

Prakash very clear that originalists probably going to push UET past principal officers. Civil service up for grabs.

We’ve invited Sai Prakash to Utah for a debate. He said that Humphrey’s Executor resulted from the tyrannaphobia of 1935. It’s bogus, fugazi (he says). Once again reminding us all that this idea is ~crucial~ in the internal world of Unitarians. @jedshug.bsky.social @narosenblum.bsky.social

I just think we should recommit to brakes on hierarchical political authority. Sometimes, there will be costs to that commitment.

For those in the Boston area, don't miss the 2026 BU Law Review Conference on Presidentialism and the Escalation of Executive Power. Featuring panels on Presidentialism and Political Economy, Legal Interventions to Executive Overreach, Administrative Law, and much else! www.bu.edu/law/engageme...

As usual, @beaubaumann.bsky.social articulates the intellectual stakes of our shared project wonderfully: Instead, if industrial policy, administrative democratization, and countervailing power are to succeed, they must be embedded in a settlement that restores legislative primacy.

OLC, OIRA, ICE. Time to rediscover the subtle art of rat fucking institutions that are designed to screw you and yours.

When they do silly things, it’s often just that they are deeply unserious people.

I've been rereading Fraenkel's "The Dual State" lately. And I came upon a page of this absolute banger classic that appears to contain a misleading error. That error sent me on a search for a young protege of Carl Schmitt in Nazi Germany who push Schmittian law to its limits.

Me: “SCOTUS’s juristocrats are a threat to democracy.” Liberals: “very dangerous talk young man.” Juristocrats: “SCOTUS’s juristocrats are a threat to democracy.” @jpygold.bsky.social

I've been rereading Fraenkel's "The Dual State" lately. And I came upon a page of this absolute banger classic that appears to contain a misleading error. That error sent me on a search for a young protege of Carl Schmitt in Nazi Germany who push Schmittian law to its limits.

A thoughtful post! Ironically, the thing that Vladeck and I agree on is that you ought to go in w/the expectation that the GOP retaliates. In the process, they destroy the juristocracy.

My friend @fredbjacob.bsky.social has this banger piece of admin/con law/labor law scholarship live, and I think his work is well worth your time!

This is a fun podcast @lawandchaospod.bsky.social I just discovered. The back end is bonus content about the debate between @stevevladeck.bsky.social and I on court reform. It's very interesting. I don't think either of the hosts are into Steve's plans and arguments. But . . .

Whenever I’m rarely asked for advice on writing, I usually baffle my interlocutor by offering something along the lines of: “invest in a balling-ass robe.” I seem unhinged in the moment. But then fall rolls around and I appear like a prophet.

Okay, I'm just going to acknowledge that I should already know this and whateva. If I'm doing a parenthetical quotation that is a translation of a non-English text, how do you communicate that it's a translation in a bluebook footnote?

Loved this article by @beaubaumann.bsky.social — the phrase about "hospice care for a beleaguered republic" gave me goosebumps for real.

Thanks for the kind words! Prof. Baumann’s article is a great think piece & we all need to have our baseline assumptions challenged. I am on record (video, even!) in 2017 arguing against court expansion for essentially Vladek’s reasons. But 2025+ SCOTUS is just… not a court in any sense.

If you happen to be in Miami this Wednesday evening and are thinking to yourself, "What I'd really like to do with a Wednesday evening in Miami is attend a lecture on the law/politics distinction!" then ... you're in luck! events.miami.edu/event/what-i...

#ELB: RNC takes advantage of Supreme Court decision permitting it to coordinate with candidates by pumping $50 million into midterms https://electionlawblog.org/2026/rnc-takes-advantage-of-supreme-court-decision-permitting-it-to-coordinate-with-candidates-by-pumping-50-million-into-midterms/

Me: “okay, let’s keep it real gang. You guys are the inheritors of a failed tradition. Time to move past the liberal predecessors who got us in this mess.”

Found a lot of good stuff at a used bookstore in Berkeley. And if you’re thinking, “well since when does Beau care about the political economy of early twentieth century Italy?” Patience young man!

These students were great. Somebody was like, “hey but what should the lefty response to originalism be?” And I was just like, your response should be destroy the juristocracy (lol). After that? Your North Star should be multiracial democracy.

I got invited to Berkeley to give a talk and was given practically no rules on what I could talk about. So, I guess that means I get to play it straight? Some of my opening remarks below. 👇🏻

I got invited to Berkeley to give a talk and was given practically no rules on what I could talk about. So, I guess that means I get to play it straight? Some of my opening remarks below. 👇🏻