Steve Vladeck
banner
stevevladeck.bsky.social
Steve Vladeck
@stevevladeck.bsky.social

@ksvesq.bsky.social’s husband; father of daughters; professor @georgetownlaw.bsky.social; #SCOTUS nerd @CNN.com

Bio: www.law.georgetown.edu/faculty/stephen-i-vladeck

"One First" Supreme Court newsletter: stevevladeck.com

Book: tinyurl.com/shadowdocketpb .. more

Stephen Isaiah Vladeck is an American legal scholar. He is a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, where he specializes in the federal courts, constitutional law, national security law, and military justice, especially with relation to the prosecution of war crimes. Vladeck has commented on the legality of the United States' use of extrajudicial detention and torture, and is a regular contributor to CNN. .. more

Political science 64%
Law 14%
Pinned
I’m really excited about this — and about the chance to work with Allison Lorentzen and the entire @vikingbooks.bsky.social team!
The best guy I know just sold his (second) book and I COULD NOT BE MORE PROUD!

“The Court We Need” — scheduled for Fall 2026 release. More important than ever.

Yes, the piece makes that rather clear.

See this paper on this exact point:

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
papers.ssrn.com

papers.ssrn.com

Reposted by Stephen I. Vladeck

Tell me you live in a house of Swifties without telling me…

Reposted by Stacy D. VanDeveer

Ten years ago today, #SCOTUS issued five unsigned and unexplained 5-4 rulings granting emergency applications to block President Obama’s Clean Power Plan—a completely unprecedented move that helped to usher in the Court’s modern … (mis)adventures … with its shadow docket.

Me in today’s “One First”:
209. The Modern Emergency Docket Turns Ten
The February 2016 rulings blocking the Clean Power Plan were unprecedented; in retrospect, they were harbingers of a paradigm shift in the Supreme Court's role.
www.stevevladeck.com

Their piece may not fairly describe the arguments of at least some of the folks they're criticizing:

www.stevevladeck.com/p/198-progre...
198. Progressive Judicial Institutionalism
There's important daylight between those who are critical of the present degree of judicial power in the United States in general and those who are critical of the current Supreme Court, specifically.
www.stevevladeck.com

Yes, as the linked post explains.

Yes, as the linked post explains.

Yes, as the linked post explains.

Yes, as the linked post explains.

See the post, which goes into this in detail.

Yes, as the linked post explains.

Sure, but imagine your parents brought you into the U.S. in 1965 when you were 3 years old. You're now 64; you've lived in the United States for 61 years; but unless you've somehow obtained lawful immigration status (or citizenship), on the Trump administration's view, you're an "arriving alien."

A bad Fifth Circuit ruling is not the same thing as having "lost the courts."

And it wasn’t chosen lightly.

It’s in the post.
“Late Friday night, the Fifth Circuit adopted the extreme minority view—that the government can indefinitely detain without bond millions of non-citizens who have been here for generations; who have never committed a crime; and who pose neither a risk of flight nor any threat to public safety.”
208. The Fifth Circuit Jumps the Immigration Detention Shark
Late Friday, two of the nation's most right-wing circuit judges adopted an odious legal claim that district court judges from across the country (and ideological spectrum) have overwhelmingly rejected
www.stevevladeck.com

They changed the URL; here’s the updated one:

www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov/internet/jud...
www.opn.ca6.uscourts.gov

Different policies for now... This may lead them all toward automatic stays.

Right. But they may well become so...

Reposted by Robert C. Richards

Among (lots of) other things, this is going to flood the federal courts of appeals with cases in which the BIA might previously have cleaned up the IJ's messes.

When something like this happened in 2004, the circuit courts ... did not respond favorably to the government's positions in those cases.
🚨HOLY CRAP. The Trump admin just took a SLEDGEHAMMER to due process, largely eliminating the Board of Immigration Appeals process and MANDATING DISMISSAL of ALL appeals (which cost $1,000 thanks to OBBBA) filed after tomorrow unless a majority of the BIA votes to hear the case.
🚨HOLY CRAP. The Trump admin just took a SLEDGEHAMMER to due process, largely eliminating the Board of Immigration Appeals process and MANDATING DISMISSAL of ALL appeals (which cost $1,000 thanks to OBBBA) filed after tomorrow unless a majority of the BIA votes to hear the case.

Reposted by John Palfrey

For today's bonus issue of "One First," I wrote about Monday's @nytimes.com scoop regarding Chief Justice Roberts having clerks and other employees sign non-disclosure agreements, and why #SCOTUS's transparency problems run far deeper and wider than just NDAs:

www.stevevladeck.com/p/bonus-207-...
Bonus 207: The Court's True Transparency Problem(s)
Monday's New York Times scoop on Chief Justice Roberts having employees sign non-disclosure agreements would hit differently if the justices were *remotely* committed to more transparency elsewhere.
www.stevevladeck.com

Reposted by Jacob T. Levy

As expected, #SCOTUS denies the emergency application to block California’s congressional redistricting—with no public dissents.

Among other things, this is also a good addition to the “be cynical but not nihilistic about the Court” file.

It's just a tricky balance to strike between trying to reach the most people / provide the broadest public access to these topics and having the capacity to accomplish both of those things.

The fact that you didn't click through to the second post in my thread (which provides a free pass-through link to the post) before criticizing me is part of the very problem we are currently facing.
Even if you don't have time to read all 83 pages of Judge Reyes's opinion barring the Trump administration from rescinding Temporary Protected Status for 350,000+ Haitians, please at least check out the four-page introduction.

It's a tour de force:

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I'm planning to write about this for Thursday's newsletter. But as a quick preview, I think there are even bigger transparency issues with the current Court, and this is ... of a piece ... with the efforts to resist formal and informal access to more of the Court's work.