* Ely Samuel Parker, seated at left (LC) Ely Samuel Parker, "a member of the Senecans," was admitted to the New York State Bar, 176 years after being denied entry on account of his race  (NYT).   * John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School) has published an editorial in the New York Times: "The Idea That Once Held America Together Died in 2025." (The idea: procedural fairness/regularity.) * Samuel Bray summarizes his and Drew Keane's book chapter, "Of Canon Law and Kings: The Legal Thought of James Ussher (1581-1656)" (Divided Argument).    * "The American Historical Association (AHA), in collaboration with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard University’s lawsuit against the federal government over the university’s ability to host foreign scholars and students." Link.  * Theda Skocpol in conversation with Edwin Amenta (Sociologica).  * An impressive lineup of historical talks at the University of London's Institute of Historical Research.  * Lawbook Exchange's  December 2025 (Part II) catalog of Scholarly Law and Legal History.  * ICYMI: Damon Root on Mercy Otis Warren, "the Founding Mother Who Opposed the Constitution" (Reason).  Adam Serwer thinks "Conservatives Want the Antebellum Constitution Back" (The Atlantic). Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Catherine Baylin Duryea, St. John's University School of Law, has published Emergency Oversight in the FIU Law Review.  It is an excellent study of an institution familiar to Federal Courts scholars but not enough others, the Emergency Court of Appeals, which heard challenges to the orders of the Office of Price Administration during World War II and to that extent ensured the the United States fought, not in a state of exception, but, as Charles Evans Hughes might have put it, under "a fighting constitution." Here is the abstract: This Article examines one of the most pressing questions in administrative law: How much judicial oversight should administrative agencies face during an emergency? This issue was particularly salient during the COVID epidemic, but it is not new. The Second World War saw a significant expansion and consolidation of the power of administrative agencies as well as experimentation with the appropriate oversight role for courts. This Article analyzes one such experiment: judicial oversight of agencies implementing wartime anti-inflationary measures, i.e., price controls and rationing. During the war, Congress created a specialized court, the Emergency Court of Appeals (ECA), to hear disputes arising out of these domestic economic programs. The ECA took a minimalist approach to oversight of agency decisions; it intervened to protect individual rights only so far as it could do so without impairing the overall regulatory scheme. The court embraced the view that its responsibility was to protect constitutional rights and guard against wartime inflation. The Supreme Court fully endorsed the approach of the ECA. This vision of courts and agencies working in harmony during a crisis stands in stark contrast to their contemporary relationship. This Article makes two significant contributions. The first is a descriptive analysis of the relationship between administrative agencies and courts with respect to price control and rationing during WWII. That relationship, described in detail here for the first time, provides a valuable historical comparison for the contemporary era, where the courts similarly found themselves navigating expansive economic regulation in the context of national emergencies. During COVID, the court took a far more interventionist, restrictive approach towards limiting agency action. That tees up the second contribution of the Article, which is to raise the normative question: Is it desirable for courts to strictly limit administrative responses to national emergencies? The historical comparison cannot provide an answer, but it highlights another, more collaborative model for balancing individual rights with effective and efficient governance. --Dan Ernst 

Did the Supreme Court Lose or Gain Legitimacy in 2025?

[We have the following announcement from Boston College’s Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy.  DRE] Constructing the Constitutional Imagination: A Symposium in Honor of Ken I. Kersch On February 20, 2026, the Clough Center will host a conference in honor of Ken I. Kersch, who passed away last November. In addition to directing the Clough Center from 2008 to 2012, Kersch served as a professor in BC's Political Science Department, where he taught classes on American conservatism, political thought, constitutional development, and civil liberties. A revered teacher and author of 5 books, Kersch was the recipient of, among other honors, the American Political Science Association's 2020 C. Herman Pritchett Award for the best book on law and courts.  The Clough Center's conference will coincide with the publication of a special issue of the Journal of American Constitutional History that engages with Kersch's work in political science, history, and law. Speakers include Aziz Rana (Boston College), Sophia Lee (Penn), Mark Graber (Maryland), Justin Dyer (UT Austin), Mary Ziegler (UC Davis), Sanford Leinvson (UT Austin), Julie Novkov (SUNY Albany), Jonathan Gienapp (Stanford), Rogers Smith (Penn), Linda McClain (BU), James Fleming (BU), George Thomas (Claremont McKenna), Logan Sawyer (Georgia), Michael Dichio (Utah), Paul Herron (Providence), Sean Beienburg (Arizona State), Clement Fatovic (Florida International), Austin Steelman (Clemson), and Calvin TerBeek (Claremont McKenna).  The Law School and Political Science departments are co-sponsoring this event. [Register here to attend.]