Dan Epps

Dan Epps

@epps.bsky.social

Howard and Caroline Cayne Distinguished Professor of Law, WUSTL. Con law 📜, crim law/pro 👮, SCOTUSology 🏛. Cohost 🎤 @dividedargument.bsky.social.

4.5K followers262 following151 posts

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

This misunderstands the issue in the case. The question is whether, when the plaintiff can show the admissions policy was adopted with the *intentional* goal of changing the racial makeup of the student body, there is an *additional* heightened disparate impact element that needs to be proven.

Mike Masnick@masnick.com

It is likely that we're about to get a 6-3 decision that disparate impact *only* counts when white people are impacted negatively.

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Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

These skills do work with lower-tier paid accounts, but to really use them effectively having a higher-tier account helps.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

You shouldn’t use these skills to write your articles for you. I don’t (feel free to run my Pangram scores). Don’t paste stuff in blindly. Check everything. But when used properly these kinds of tools can be incredibly helpful in speeding up your workflow.

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Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Even many people I’ve spoken to who think of themselves as AI power users don’t seem to have figured this out. There are some startup costs, and it may seem intimidating.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

But the AIs themselves can walk you through them (even before you have the skills installed as long as you point them in the right direction). You can use the desktop apps; you don’t have to work in the Terminal/command Line.

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Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

So I worked with Claude Code and Codex to build skills with structured workflows that divide complicated tasks among subagents, look in the right place for primary sources, and include strong “deterministic” checks to minimize hallucination risk.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

“Aren’t they just for coding?” No. Claude Code and Codex are just way more powerful than the regular chat window. They operate on folders where you can store your research and docs, they can access services like CourtListener w/ some setup, and they are immensely customizable.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Most law professors, lawyers, and students I’ve talked to about AI only use it through the ordinary chat window. And many people have found it unreliable for the work we do. I did.

Dan Epps reposted

KProfsBlog
@kprofsblog.bsky.social

With help from @williambaude.bsky.social and @epps.bsky.social and their @dividedargument.bsky.social podcast, today’s post explores the law of appeals waivers in plea bargains as articulated in SCOTUS’s Hunter opinion from this year. www.contractsprofblog.com/2026/08/plea...

contractsprofblog.comPlea Bargains as ContractsI mentioned in Friday’s post that today’s post is indebted to the Divided Argument Podcast. I try to follow the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) pretty
Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Thrilled that my and @donfro.bsky.social's new paper, "Constitutional Rights and General Private Law," will be in the Harvard Law Review next year. It's a sequel to our 2023 Yale L.J. piece, "The Fourth Amendment and General Law." We need to revise, so no @SSRN yet, but here's the abstract:

Dan Epps reposted

Shalev Gad Roisman
@shalevroisman.bsky.social

New draft paper on SSRN: "Fact Avoidance," forthcoming in the Harvard Law Review Supreme Court Issue. This Essay identifies a recurring feature where the Court decides presidential power cases entirely on legal grounds without engaging at all with the facts /1 papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

papers.ssrn.comFact Avoidance<p><i><span>The legality of the President’s exercise of statutory power depends on questions of both law and fact. Yet courts often focus exclusively on the for
Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Our latest, with more to come this week as the SCOTUS opinion dump wraps up.

Divided Argument@dividedargument.bsky.social

🎙️ New episode: "Mechanical / Animal" We're in triage mode as SCOTUS clears its backlog. We dig into Wolford v. Lopez, Pung v. Isabella County, a Landor flip theory, and the week's 6-3 wins. https://dividedargument.com/podcast/divided-argument/episode/mechanical-animal

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Unfortunately, there are some features of legal cites that aren't possible to implement using a CSL style. (For example, generating "hereinafters" for two cites by the same author in the same FN. I'm working on some plugins that might fix that (using Claude ofc). Please flag other things like that!

Dan Epps@epps.bsky.social

Law profs/students/anyone doing legal scholarship: If you're not using @zotero.org to manage cites and research, you should. An unbelievable time saver. I've revised the Bluebook style for rendering footnotes, w/ detailed instructions on using Zotero: danepps.github.io/bluebook/

danepps.github.ioBluebook Style — Epps VersionA Bluebook CSL citation style for Zotero, customized by Prof. Daniel Epps.
Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

For more on my and @willsortman.bsky.social's Defender General, see this NYT article by @adamliptak.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/u...

nytimes.comA Proposal to Offset Prosecutors’ Power: The ‘Defender General’ (Published 2020)
Dan Epps@epps.bsky.social

A great development, but I disagree w/ the article's claim that this is totally different from my & @willsortman.bsky.social's "Defender General." This helps w/ problems we identified & resembles our proposal even if it doesn't go far enough. Article here: repository.law.upenn.edu/Documents/De...

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

A great development, but I disagree w/ the article's claim that this is totally different from my & @willsortman.bsky.social's "Defender General." This helps w/ problems we identified & resembles our proposal even if it doesn't go far enough. Article here: repository.law.upenn.edu/Documents/De...

Jimmy Hoover@jimmyhoover.bsky.social

SCOOP: Federal judiciary approves new Supreme Court defender office to help represent indigent defendants at #SCOTUS. Its full-time director will serve as a counterweight to the U.S. solicitor general in federal criminal cases. The first will be former Kagan clerk and SG atty Ashley Robertson.

Dan Epps reposted

Matthew Lawrence
@mblawrence.bsky.social

At the 2026 National Conference of Constitutional Law Scholars. The Rehnquist Center at Arizona Law puts together a great program. Neat to see tomorrow’s debates forming…and the sunsets aren’t bad.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

I am 43 years old. I would like to think that if 13-year-old me could see the life I would build three decades hence, he would be pleased.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

I very much appreciate Mark’s engagement and think he makes some good points worth reading!

Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social

I finally had a chance to digest this thread and I actually agree with much it … up to the point that it accuses me of refusing to engage with differing views and trying to “burn it all down!” I think Amicus listeners know that’s untrue; we actually get flak for being too soft on the court.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

What you want today: Tariffs, Voting Rights What you’ll (probably) get instead: USPS v. Konan (liability for undelivered mail); Coney Island Auto Parts (time limits for motions to set aside void judgments)

Dan Epps reposted

Divided Argument
@dividedargument.bsky.social

NEW EPISODE: "The Marshal and the Margarine" We catch up on Trump v. Illinois, the national guard case, after first warming up with new Erie scholarship, state criminal jurisdiction over federal officers, and some recent online discourse. dividedargument.simplecast.com/episodes/the...

dividedargument.simplecast.comThe Marshal and the Margarine | Divided ArgumentWe're back with the first episode of the new year, breaking down the interim docket opinion/order in Trump v. Illinois, the national guard case, after first warming up with new Erie scholarship, state...

Dan Epps reposted

Chad Oldfather
@oldfatherc.bsky.social

The entire thread is worth your time. The portion around and including this post gets at a point I tried to make in my book - the less common ground within the profession about what the rule of law entails, the less likely we are to be able to sustain the rule of law.

Dan Epps@epps.bsky.social

That's why I don't like the rise of two separate legal-ideological bubbles. If conservatives only talk to other conservatives, and feel no need to take seriously any arguments on the other side—things go badly. And we're a way down that slippery slope.

Dan Epps
@epps.bsky.social

Regardless of one's view of politics, is it a better world if courts declare—even in ordinary breach-of-contract cases—that "Plaintiff wins because he's a Dem" (or R based on who appointed the judge)? Even if you dislike judicial review, we need courts for ordinary disputes. We need law for those.

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