January 2026
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2025 in review, 3rd quarter: July, August, September (moving to front from Dec. 30 for those who may have missed it)
July The SCOTUS decision on nationwide (or “universal”) injunctions Let’s remember some facts, the propaganda barrage of the Trumpistas notwithstanding The worst President in the history of the U.S. has now ruled for six months (a list of his malfeasance) Does your university/college have a faculty hiring freeze? August It did happen here The University…
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New Arkansas Law Dean has offer rescinded…
…after threats from state legislators to cut funding to the school in Fayetteville. Why? The candidate, Professor Emily Suski, had signed an amicus brief on behalf of transgender athletes. Not a good look for Arkansas, and it raises a serious question about who would want the job given this?
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This is what authoritarianism looks like: the “siege of Minnesota”
This editorial from the centrist Minnesota newspaper is worth reading; an excerpt: Minnesota has endured unrest before. What the state is now experiencing looks and feels different. Battalions of armed federal agents are moving through neighborhoods, transit hubs, malls and parking lots and staging near churches, mosques and schools. Strangers with guns have metastasized in spaces where…
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Babies have an innate sense for numbers
Philosophers Jake Beck and Sam Clarke discuss the evidence (with reference to Plato, of course).
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Profiles in real courage: Frank and Beatrice Lumpkin
This is an inspiring read about an interracial, working class couple, united by politics and love, who spent the bulk of their activist careers in and around Chicago.
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“25 Most Influential People in Legal Education”…
…based on the annual poll by The National Jurist. I’m the highest rank person on the list (at #13) who isn’t a Dean or head of the AALS or LSAC or some other major law school-adjacent organization. I’m just a guy with a blog, which means I owe this recognition to you, loyal readers. Thank…
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Joe Rogan compares ICE tactics to the “Gestapo”
That’s actually important, given his influence. Given recent events, the comparison is also apt. UPDATE: Reader Chris Byron points out to me that the full Rogan clip is full of the idiocy one usually associates with him. Fortunately, what’s being widely reported is the Gestapo comment.
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“Why a U.S. attack on Iran would backfire”
This seems right, but the monster child seems headed in that direction. Curious if well-informed readers have a different view and, if so, why?
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2025 in review, 2nd quarter: April, May, June (MOVING TO FRONT FROM DEC. 29 FOR THOSE WHO MAY HAVE MISSED IT)
April OUP’s policies on providing books for review An interview in the Shanghai Review of Books Information on the European job market? Getting ChatGPT to take a stand The Trump war on universities Another journal, this time in math, abandons Wiley Suitably scathing assessment of the first two months of Trump War on the universities,…
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Texas A&M Interim President: Plato is not banned, it’s being taught (except in that one course…)
While it’s true that many a click-bait headline about the story we broke last week said the university was “banning Plato” (or similarly) one might think this reply by the Interim President does’t really come to terms with the actual academic freedom issue: I want to address recent reports that we’re banning Plato altogether at…
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APA returning to in-person divisional meetings
The APA sets out the reasons here. In brief: online meetings attracted much lower rates of submissions and participation, and many who participated in them said they would not do so again.
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The Trump threat to Canada remains
As this article notes, [W]ith Greenland, Trump and his advisers are seeking control — even raising the possibility of military action — of a territory that is democratic, strategically located in the Arctic, and part of NATO. Canada is all of those things, too. Greenland and Canada also have substantial natural resources (Canada has far more). But Greenland is a…
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Most cited Anglophone books in philosophy of law over the last century
I list all those with at least 1,500 citations (rounded to nearest 100 as usual), since numbers drop off more quickly here (philosophy of law is a lower citation field than political philosophy).
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JHP Article Prize for 2025
Philospoher Deborah Boyle, editor of the Journal of the History of Philosophy, kindly shared this news: The Journal of the History of Philosophy has awarded its 2025 article prize to Joe Stratmann (Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville) for his paper “Autonomy without Compromise: Wolff, Kant, and the Grounds of Moral Laws” (JHP 63.1…
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2025 in review, 1st quarter: January, February, March (moving to front from Dec. 26, for those who may have missed it)
January What articles in general jurisprudence form the first quarter of the 21st-century should you read? PGR in the real world, an ongoing saga The monster child’s first day with political power Should book authors consent to have generative AI train on their work? Tonight we’ll learn something about the next four years in America…
The Tractatus book is beautifully done, and the pop-out model is a great teaching aid when I discuss the Tractatus…