Stanford Law visiting professor Joanna L. Grossman and Boston University law professor Linda C. McClain discuss the sexist and misogynistic rhetoric employed by Donald Trump and J.D. Vance in their political campaigns, particularly focusing on their attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris. Professors Grossman and McClain argue that these attacks, which include criticizing Harris for being “childless” and labeling her a “DEI hire,” are part of a broader Republican strategy to reinforce patriarchal values and undermine women’s progress in politics and society ..read more

In Part One of this series, I analyzed what I think was a profound failure by Judge Aileen Cannon, in dismissing the improper-documents-handling indictment by Special Counsel Jack Smith, to properly appreciate and operate within the bounds of federal district court power. In particular, her tunnel vision caused her to improperly ignore relevant rulings already reached by courts higher up the ladder, in particular actions and statements from the U.S. Supreme Court in the famous United States v. Nixon case. A district court is bound to follow such precedents that have direct application ..read more

If all goes well, Vice President Kamala Harris will be sworn in as President on January 20, 2025. If that happens, she will bring her experience as a local district attorney and California’s attorney general to the Oval Office. That will be a very good thing. Others are now arguing that those experiences will be important in her campaign, but I want to argue that they also will help make her a good president. Harris has already signaled that she will make her prosecutorial work a central theme in her campaign and use it to offer voters a choice between “a cop and a con man.” On ..read more

Judge Aileen Cannon’s decision last week to dismiss the Mar-a-Lago improper-document-handling indictment against former President Donald Trump came as a shock to most observers. Judge Cannon found Special Counsel Jack Smith’s prosecution of the case was constitutionally flawed because his appointment to his post by Attorney General Merrick Garland was not authorized by Congress and was thus unconstitutional. (She also ruled, provisionally, that because no statute authorized his appointment, Smith has been getting paid out of a pot of money that Congress hasn’t designated for paying pe ..read more

By now, regular readers know that most of my writing presses people to take the measure of the word us. It is an enormously powerful term, but the perennial question is whether it acquires meaning only if it also implies its opposite. I don’t think so; I don’t believe us necessarily implies them, and in my writing, I challenge readers to take this moral possibility seriously. Among other things, I expose the ubiquity of us-them thinking in daily life, and trace its connection and contribution to so many things that we (a close cousin of us) wish were otherwise. Lately, there have be ..read more

Baseball fans watching last week’s MAGA-dominated Republican National Convention likely would have admired the dexterity with which the party succeeded in pulling off a political version of the “hidden ball trick.” The hidden ball trick is a play in which “a team deceives the opposing team about the location of the ball, usually to tag out a runner. The ball that the Republicans were concealing is the party’s real position on such hot-button issues as abortion, January 6, and election denialism. The hope was to deceive independent voters in swing states into thinking that former Pre ..read more

This is the first article in a series exploring ethical concerns about patient informed consent when Artificial Intelligence is used for clinical decision-making. A cornerstone tenet in bioethics is that patients must be respected as autonomous beings and that their preferences should determine what is acceptable and unacceptable in their health care. Justice Benjamin Cardozo’s 1914 opinion in the case of Schloendorff v. Society of New York Hospital that “Every human being of adult years and sound mind has the right to determine what shall be done with his own body” ensconced ethics ..read more

In the time since the shooting at a rally for Donald Trump this past weekend, some key facts have been uncovered, while many questions remain. Although one might hope that something we could call “the real story” will come into focus at some point, it was clear from the outset that there could never be any amount or type of evidence that would resolve to everyone’s satisfaction the issue of what truly happened. This is a tragedy, because the hope of healing a divided nation rides in large part on everyone knowing what it is that we are trying to heal. The problem is that the very in ..read more

I feel like the preacher whose pews are suddenly full. The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump has awakened people, at least for now, to the evil of demonization. But I have been preaching this sermon for many years. I suppose I ought to just welcome all the new congregants, but now that everyone is here, I thought I would help people understand what they’re signing up for. Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit. If you want to reject demonization, you can’t describe anyone as a demon. It sounds easy, but it’s actually much harder than you think, at least judgin ..read more

An unspeakable Supreme Court decision, a debate debacle, followed several weeks later by an assassination attempt. Trauma, different kinds of trauma, but trauma, nonetheless. The Supreme Court sold out the Constitution and the country by granting once and future Presidents immunity from prosecution. Who would have thought that, on the cusp of an election where a coup plotter and would-be authoritarian may take back the White House, the Supreme Court would have offered an open invitation for criminality? Then there is the Biden problem. The debate that President Joe Biden hoped wou ..read more