Steve Vladeck

I'm thrilled to share that my new book about #SCOTUS, "The Court We Need: What's Really Wrong With the Supreme Court—and How to Fix It," is now available for pre-orders: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/812983... The book is set to be published by @vikingbooks.bsky.social on May 4, 2027.

This @washingtonpost.com editorial doesn’t make it past the second paragraph without a glaring (and telling) factual error. President Washington didn’t create the War Department in 1789; *Congress* did: www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

Two things can be true: 1) The President has legal authority over the D.C. police and the D.C. National Guard that he doesn't have *anywhere else* in the country; & 2) Even if this doesn't set a legal precedent, it sets an ominous *political* precedent for pretextually overriding local government.

#SCOTUS all-but overruled a unanimous, 90-year-old precedent through an unexplained "administrative" stay this morning, and that's only the second-most-problematic thing it did before lunchtime.

"Never interrupt your enemy while he is making a mistake."

“The fact that we as a society have moved away from public executions would have mattered a lot for that earlier doctrinal understanding. That it wouldn’t mean nearly so much today is, in my view, a pretty telling indictment of #SCOTUS’s entirely recent jurisprudential shift.” Me on Nidal Hasan:

In the year of our lord 2026, a pull-down list for "state" as part of a vendor registration form provided by an Ivy League university does not offer the District of Columbia as a possible choice. C'mon people.

Right after Justice Kennedy retired, #SCOTUS materially shifted its Eighth Amendment jurisprudence, moving away from a test tied to "evolving standards of decency," and toward a static assessment of what was cruel and unusual in 1791. That shift will matter a *lot* if there's a challenge in Hasan.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home Alone

The best part of the exchange between Mike Rogers and me to which @abdulelsayed.bsky.social is referring here is what Stephen Colbert did with it: crooksandliars.com/cltv/2013/10...

Umm, *I was the “somebody”! www.c-span.org/clip/house-c...

D.C. people: Come see @rachelshelden.bsky.social and me talk about her fantastic new book about #SCOTUS at @politicsprose.bsky.social (the Connecticut Avenue location) on Monday, October 26, at 7 p.m.: politics-prose.com/rachel-sheld...

The second Trump administration has now officially surpassed the first Trump administration with its 42nd application to #SCOTUS for emergency relief. This one is in the same case about lower ad rates for political parties in which the Court previously granted a stay in September. It’ll be 26A476:

I’m visiting a colleague’s class today (to evaluate them), and grabbed a notebook for those purposes on my way out of my office. This is what I saw when I opened it (Maddie is my 10YO):