Like virtually anyone older than their mid-20s, I remember exactly where I was the morning of September 11, 2001.  I was three days into my freshman year at college, and I awoke to a classmate pounding on my door.  I was one of the few kids in the stairwell to bring a TV, and the student -- from Westchester, NY -- needed to turn on the news.

I've always been intrigued by civil lawsuits between individual states; they're like fights between angry neighbors in a subdivision, writ large.  On Monday, in a one-sentence opinion, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a complaint by Nebraska and Oklahoma against Colorado that challenged the Centennial State's proposition legalizing recreational marijuana.  

A dive into the Republican National Committee's rules -- is there any secret to stopping Trump?

Right now, Barack Obama and the GOP Senate are in a standoff regarding the replacement of Justice Antonin Scalia. As part of their justification for refusing to consider Obama's nominee, Senate Republicans have begun to argue that an unwritten rule prevents the Senate from considering any nominees that would replace a vacancy that occurs during an election year.

Does the law recognize an asshole?  A dance through the relevant case law.

In the last couple democratic debates, Hillary Clinton has criticized Bernie Sanders regarding his support for a 2005 law that created immunity for certain suits against gun manufacturers -- the "Protection for Lawful Commerce in Arms Act."  The candidates have referenced the Sandy Hook victims' suit against Bushmaster, but the plaintiffs face an uphill battle.

The legal debate between Apple and the FBI concerning encrypted phones mostly concerns the extent to which the government can compel a private third party to assist in a law enforcement investigation.  But if you read Tweets, comments and commentary surrounding the FBI/Apple debate you sometimes get the sense that the public feels, at some level, that the act of unlocking the phone itself is an invasion of privacy.  

There's something eerily similar in the way liberal America celebrates writer Ta-Nehisi Coates and rapper Kendrick Lamar, something that bothers me, and I think I've figured out what it is: the casual insult that comes with acting like these two are so qualitatively beyond their peers.

I think the biggest Overton shift this cycle is that anybody thinks they're qualified to be president, and the electorate seems not to mind.  Perhaps we should blame Obama, who came in as a one-term Senator.

Jeb Bush just suspended his campaign, turning $150 million of donor money into nothing.  It seems like a lot, until you realize that this is the combined effort of the American plutocracy to put a favored son into the presidency, the single most important job on planet earth, a man with power over nuclear weapons that can obliterate all human life -- and they spent a little less than Walt Disney did making Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

Justice Scalia died a month shy of 80.  What are the ages of the remaining eight?

In the wake of Justice Antonin Scalia's unexpected death, and the celebrations from friend and foe of Scalia's consistency on the bench, it seemed like a good time to revisit Judge Richard Posner's classic takedown of Scalia in The New Republic, in the form of a review of Scalia and Bryan Garner's book, Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts.  In Posner's words:

Back in October 2015, the New York Times ran a three-part series regarding the rise of private arbitration clauses in commercial contracts.  The series discussed the rise of binding arbitration clauses in consumer contracts.  Most of the time when we click the “I Agree” box on some check out form, we’re agreeing to a contract saying that any disputes will be sent to private arbitration firms and that you are waiving your right to bring a claim in court.