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Today in Supreme Court History: August 9, 1974

2026-08-09T13:29:41.043-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 9, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/9/1974: President Richard Nixon resigns from office, President Gerald Ford takes oath of office.

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Open Thread

2026-08-09T09:29:25.810-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 9, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 8, 2009

2026-08-08T11:29:07.820-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 8, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/8/2009: Justice Sonia Sotomayor takes oath.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

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After 2 Decades of Raids and Prison Stints, Liverpool's 'Cannabis Martyr' Is Still 'Fighting for Freedom'

2026-08-08T08:29:25.865-04:00

By Mattha Busby - August 8, 2026 at 06:00AM

On the night of the World Cup final, televisions glow from almost every pub in Liverpool. But just six bus stops from the city's famous Anfield stadium, Gary Youds has opted not to show the match at his cannabis social club and harm reduction center.

Inside the Chillin' Rooms on Holt Road, about 30 members sit shoulder to shoulder on old church pews, drinking tea beneath a portrait of John Lennon and a sign declaring "ALCOHOL KILLS, CANNABIS CHILLS." Members are smoking spliffs, although a powerful ventilation system keeps the air surprisingly clear. At the far end of the room is a fully equipped stage where local musicians perform most nights. There is no television in sight.

The place could be heaving with soccer fans. But Youds says live sports would ruin the decidedly mellow vibe.

"I don't want no screens in here," says the 56-year-old Liverpudlian, dressed in his customary white T-shirt bearing the Chinese character for cannabis. That same symbol is unmissable outside, on the black metal gates that the police have sawed through more than once. The arms of Youds' glasses are neon green. A "Chillin' Rooms" tattoo peeks from beneath his left sleeve. He is wearing a pair of green Crocs dotted with cannabis-related symbols. He holds a mug of tea in one hand and a joint in the other. "I want people connecting and talking face to face," he adds. "No gimmicks."

It is an unusually strict rule for a man who has spent more than two decades defying the U.K.'s cannabis laws. The father of two, who uses cannabis to manage his spinal arthritis, has been arrested more than 30 times, been convicted 10 times, served four prison sentences, been repeatedly raided by ransacking police, and lost his home. The local newspaper anointed him "The Cannabis Martyr." He sleeps in his elderly mother's living room and claims to live on less than 100 pounds per week (about $135). Yet the club is thriving.

Youds believes the Chillin' Rooms model could be replicated nationally, turning dwindling pubs and vacant shops into alcohol-free cannabis cafés. "This would chill the country out if we had one in every town and city," he says. "It's going to create jobs and put the country back to work. This is a self-seeded community, and it's oven-ready for the whole of the U.K."

A third of Britons admit to having used cannabis, and consumers sustain an illegal market worth billions, none of which reaches the taxman. "We're taking cannabis off the streets, " Youds says. "That's why I'm holding my head up high. There's no empty building in this city that couldn't be repurposed for this industry."

Over four nights at the Chillin' Rooms in July, I meet members from Brazil, Sudan, India, and Australia; young men arriving alone; trans and gay regulars; entrepreneurs, students, scientists, and builders; and elderly patrons greeted by name. Many describe cannabis as medicine. Longtime neighbors tell me the only disturbances they have witnessed come when dozens of police officers descend on the building.

To the authorities, Youds is a persistent criminal. In the Chillin' Rooms, he is treated like an elder statesman. "The congregation is growing," he says. "Jailing me again would just elevate my profile more."

How the Cannabis Café Serves the Community

Until August 3, 2024, entry to the Chillin' Rooms required a referral. There was no Chinese character emblazoned on the gates, and new members generally arrived by word of mouth. That day, as anti-immigration protests spread across Merseyside, the county that contains Liverpool, Youds told his probation officer that "the city needs to chill out" and that his multicultural café could serve as a bastion of racial unity.

It was also his first night without an ankle tag enforcing an evening curfew. He returned to Holt Road, pulled open the gates, and stood outside.

Nobody came in that night. But Youds' doors have remained open from 11 a.m. to 11pm, seven days a week, ever since. The Chillin' Rooms receives hundreds of visitors per week. "Right now, it's the best I've ever seen it," says stuntman Eddie Sarsfield, who suffered serious burns on his arms working on Gladiator II and now has a medical cannabis prescription. He has visited the club since it reopened after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Recently, he says, two visitors from Portugal arrived after asking an AI chatbot where they could smoke cannabis in Liverpool.

"This is a ray of sunshine for the community," Sarsfield adds. "Gary has become a messianic figure. For so long, he's just consistently been a good guy. He's done nothing but say the exact same thing and fight the exact same cause for nearly 25 years. He deserves a break. Everyone knows that."

Mattha Busby

The contrast with the surrounding back streets can be stark. Holt Road sits in a deprived area where bike-riding dealers sell crack to fund their own addictions and women sell sex on nearby Shiel Road. Territorial feuds between Liverpool gangs are common. Yet rivals who might clash elsewhere have made peace inside the Chillin' Rooms. "People are coming here from all different parts of Liverpool," says Lee, who works at the club and does not want to use his real name due to the cannabis laws. "In any other place, you would not get this. I've worked in bars for years—there'd be some sort of fight."

A few months ago, Lee says, members of two rival gangs arrived on the same night and tension began to build. Youds persuaded them to sit down together. "They talked it out and squashed their beef," Lee says. "He's an absolute legend. He's out litter-picking every day. People come from the other end of the country to visit and have a joint with Gary."

Members describe the place as an urban oasis: part café, part community center, part informal clinic. People with epilepsy, Parkinson's disease, and chronic pain come through its gates. Some arrive carrying medical cannabis prescriptions; others remain locked out of that expensive system, which relies almost entirely on private clinics rather than the National Health Service. "They come in shaking," says Lisa, who also works at the Chillin' Rooms and did not want to give her surname. "But once they've had a smoke, they've stopped shaking."

Dave, a disabled member with complex regional pain syndrome, was among the first people in the country to obtain medicinal cannabis flower legally and has driven more than an hour with his wife from Cheshire to visit the Chillin' Rooms. "People would be at home consuming their medication alone, but here we can connect with each other," he says. Before he discovered that cannabis abates his pain, he recalls, he was a "morphine zombie."

"I was a drooling mess," Dave says. "I had to be maintained 100 percent of the time. I was on morphine and fentanyl and couldn't string a sentence together. But now I can contribute." He spends around 1,000 pounds a month (about $1,350) for enough cannabis to manage his condition, consuming the plant four times a day. But obtaining cannabis legally has not stopped patients nationwide from being harassed by police, arrested, and taken to court.

Dave's neighbors have reported him over the smell, and police have repeatedly visited his home, arriving in three cars on one occasion. "I was in the kitchen having my medication, and the copper put his foot in the door and tried to walk into our house," he says. "My son asked him, 'Do you think fentanyl and morphine's safe just because it's prescribed by your G.P.?' The copper did not know what to say."

Others say the club has helped them stop drinking. One member, a lifelong alcoholic in his early 70s, tells me he gradually lost the urge to visit the pub after he began spending time here. For him and many others, the Chillin' Rooms offers the familiarity and companionship of a local bar without the alcohol, aggression, or pressure to keep spending money. "This is my pub now," he says.

On busy evenings, the Chillin' Rooms becomes a neighborhood music venue with up to 100 people filling the pews. Youds says one of his greatest pleasures is watching musicians rehearse during the week and gradually perfect their performances, which often reference the café's caretaker. "He ain't a criminal or gangster / He's just a cannabis martyr / To be free, in what will be," sings one local artist.

"We hate the raids, but they just bring us closer together," Lisa tells me. She helped organize protests against Youds' imprisonment outside court, where musicians performed beneath "Free Gary" banners. "He's giving us community," she adds. "You can just come here and play. You never know what's going to happen." She compares it to The Cavern Club, the Liverpool nightclub made famous by the Beatles.

The party came to a screeching halt on February 18, when police raided the Chillin' Rooms on a packed night right as a band was preparing to play. Members were ordered to put their hands on the tables while officers searched the building. Youds was led away to prison, and the evening abruptly ended. "About 30 officers flooded into the place," Youds recalls. "I told them in the interview that [medical] cannabis is legal and I'm looking forward to getting in front of a jury." According to a police report, he told officers, "Cannabis isn't a drug; it's a flower."

After pleading guilty to permitting his premises to be used for smoking cannabis, Youds was released on April 28. He reopened the Chillin' Rooms yet again a month later.

The Story of U.K. Weed Legalization—and Youds' First Arrest

Back in 2004, when Youds first attempted to open the Chillin' Rooms legally, a police officer appeared at the licensing hearing to oppose his application. Youds had remortgaged his home to spend 60,000 pounds (almost $81,800) transforming a derelict former taxi office on Holt Road into a private members' club for weed smokers. Inspired after attending a 2002 cannabis conference in Liverpool called "Shaping a New Agenda," held months after the government had announced plans to downgrade cannabis from a Class B to a Class C drug, Youds fitted a ventilation system into the premises, kitted it out with fire alarms, and installed a kitchen and toilets.

Youds hoped the change in the law, which reduced penalties for cannabis possession, meant police would ease their enforcement approach. Around the same time, the U.K.'s first cannabis social clubs, including Quantum Leaf in Worthing and the Dutch Experience in Stockport, popped up elsewhere.

Youds applied to the local council for a license, hoping that Britain's then-softening approach to cannabis might afford him some room to maneuver. He passed a fire inspection, and his premises were deemed structurally sound, but officials rejected the application. His prospective members even petitioned the mayor, underlining Youds' desire to pay taxes, but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

In early March 2005, at 4:20 p.m., Youds opened his doors anyway. Within weeks, the club had amassed 400 members and won the approval of the local residents association. Not one neighbor submitted an official complaint, according to local news reports.

Mattha Busby

In late March, however, a police officer stumbled upon the establishment during his rounds. "It was just a bobby on the beat who walked in," says Youds. "He was so startled. He couldn't believe what was going on, like it was a coffeeshop."

A conditional discharge did not stop Youds from continuing to operate the Chillin' Rooms. That April, a police Land Rover allegedly ripped the metal gates off; scores of officers from the newly formed Matrix Unit, created to tackle gun crime, streamed into the café, shouting at members to freeze. Youds says everyone cooperated.

In a front-page Liverpool Echo story after that raid, Youds insisted: "We are doing nothing wrong. All we want is tolerance." Police said he was supplying cannabis, but Youds said his premises were used only for consuming the plant, adding that he had a zero-tolerance policy regarding alcohol and other drugs. "I just want to be left alone to open a business," he told the BBC. "And if the police don't put me in prison, I will come here and open up every day."

Merseyside police took that threat seriously. They distributed a 33-page operational guide to officers, offering advice on how to deal with cannabis cafés. "It is essential that a cannabis café is prevented from opening or is successfully policed, closed and prosecuted if one does open," it said. The guide recommended "disruption tactics," including visits by council and fire officials looking for health, hygiene, or safety violations.

A year later, in April 2006, Youds was sentenced to 12 months in prison, having pleaded guilty to two offenses of cultivating cannabis. As a result of that case, a café bank account with more than 13,000 pounds (over $17,500) was later frozen. "Either you wanted to martyr yourself in the cause of the pro-cannabis lobby or you wanted to set up a café, a deliberate and blatant challenge to the law," Judge Brian Lewis told Youds before consigning him to jail.

The judge had intended "martyr" as a rebuke. For Youds, it would be something closer to a calling.

Gary Youds Waits a Decade Before Reopening the Cafe

Youds served three uneventful months behind bars, partly at the notoriously ill-kept, Victorian-era Walton prison. Not being there for important family moments hurt the most. "I missed my oldest son's first day walking," he says. "I feel really guilty."

But when Youds emerged from prison in July 2006, he was not ready to immediately reopen the Chillin' Rooms. For nearly a decade, the cannabis martyr disappeared from public view. He worked a minimum-wage job maintaining a hotel, spending much of his time gardening, and focused on raising his young son.

During Youds' decade in the wilderness, Britain's brief liberal turn on cannabis went into reverse. In 2009, the government returned cannabis to Class B status against the advice of its chief drug adviser, David Nutt, whom it subsequently dismissed. Police raided the other cannabis cafés.

Yet elsewhere, legalization was moving from stoner fantasy to public policy. When Colorado and Washington state legalized recreational cannabis in 2012, Youds began contemplating a return. "I felt it was the right time," he says.

Youds got the place back up to scratch and reopened in early 2015. "I didn't make any fanfare about it," he says. "I invited a few friends, and before you know it, it's entirely functional and we're having the time of our life." Patrons could again "stay medicated and live the dream," as one poster advised. But in June 2015, the police came again.

"There were all these police cars sealing the roads," Youds says. "It was surreal." He was outside the gates when dozens of officers barged in. "About 30 officers dressed like Robocops jumped out the back of this van," he recalls. "It was 'Go, go, go.' They were running in with helmets and axes, smashing all my doors in. I was saying, 'There's no one even in there. Why are you smashing my doors in?'"

The police claimed to have discovered 11,000 pounds worth of cannabis (almost $15,000), plus grinders and bongs. In court in January 2017, Youds told the prosecuting barrister that the estimated value of what was found was vastly exaggerated: "I said it'd fit in a seven-inch-square margarine tub, so don't tell me about '11,000 pounds worth of weed.'" Despite his protests, Youds was sentenced to nine months in jail, away from his two children, then aged six and 12.

The Walton prison was worse when he returned. Routine drug testing had sharply reduced cannabis use in prison, but more-dangerous synthetic cannabinoids were widespread. "Spice" dealers came to Youds' door daily, and he saw inmates overdose across the wing. Because batches varied wildly in quality and concentration, dealers made vulnerable inmates test them to see whether they collapsed.

Conditions at Walton caused a national scandal during Youds' five-month stay. He plugged gaps in his windowless cell's brickwork with pieces of sponge, and his toilet regularly broke. "It was the worst time of my life," he says. "I feared for my life every day. I was scared to leave my cell. There was so much violence, and so many overdoses."

Gary Youds Gets Arrested Again—and Again and Again and Again and

Prison was supposed to put out Youds' campaign, but he emerged more convinced that his moral compass was pointing in the right direction. "The people here are my jury," he tells me at the café one night. "There's always at least 12, and not one is standing up and saying this isn't acceptable." And unlike in many pubs, "there's no one snorting white in the toilets."

After reopening in the second half of 2017, Youds sought support from U.K. Cannabis Social Clubs, an advocacy group that was calling out the treatment of cannabis growers. At one meeting in Leicester, he met James Tisdale, a terminal cancer patient and successful businessman, and his wife, Joanna Drinkwater.

Youds was soon ferrying cannabis oil to Tisdale in Birmingham. He made the train journey at least three times—and he refused any payment, Drinkwater later told a court. But the police were still targeting Youds. By his count, he was arrested nine times in 2019.

One of the raids has lived long in his clientele's memory. "We were sitting here and Gary said, 'This place, I'll never get raided again,'" says J.J., a musician who has been a member since 2015. "And then literally before he finished the word raided, two coppers came through the fire exit and put him straight in headlock and got him on the floor. They started to punch him and all sorts."

Youds steadfastly continued reopening and providing cannabis oil to Tisdale. "I'd provided it to him three or four times," Youds tells me as we stand outside Liverpool Lime Street station. "He was getting much better. He had his appetite back, and he was sleeping well."

On October 24, 2020, Youds entered Liverpool Lime Street carrying the oil, but a group of undercover police officers nabbed him before he could board the train. That led to a new set of charges.

After Youds reopened the Chillin' Rooms in 2021 after a pandemic pause, and still facing charges over the oil, he suffered the most violent raid yet: "They carried me out, smashed my glasses, scraped all my face on the floor, and pepper-sprayed me at the same time. It fucking terrified me, honest to God."

Upon inspecting Youds' home, officers found six "very large and well-maintained" cannabis plants up to six feet tall and three feet wide, describing them as "some of the largest plants [they] had ever seen." Youds said after his arrest that he was "growing the fruits of the earth for medicinal purposes" and was "saving the city by producing the fruits of the earth for the people."

Drinkwater testified at the trial that Youds' cannabis oil "is well known as one of the best in the U.K." and that he had "helped many people," adding: "There was no exchange of money or anything. Gary just wanted to help us, and we are eternally grateful for that help."

Even though Britain had legalized prescribed medical cannabis in November 2018, Youds was given a three-year prison sentence in February 2023. "I didn't even have a bag packed," he recalls. "I spent the first three weeks in prison in complete shock."

Will the U.K. Ever Legalize Weed?

Youds was released from his longest stint inside after a year, but prison still had not reformed him. "All revolutionaries go to jail," Youds told Vice upon his release. He reopened in 2024 on April 20, the most important day in the stoner calendar, a few months before he cast the gates open for all passersby during the riots. His incarceration "made me want to fight for the people inside," he says. "Hopefully I'm the one who can bring the change and put things right."

Youds was recently in court, defiantly demanding the return of 1,000 pounds in cash (about $1,350) that police had seized during the February raid, which he says had accumulated from the 5-pound entrance fees members pay ($6.75). He will be back in court on November 25. "The policeman was shocked that I'd turned up as I'd just come out of jail," Youds says. "I told him it was a real business."

Youds believes his criminal record cost him the home he bought on the other side of Anfield back in 2000. Unable to obtain a loan to repay his mortgage, he was forced to sell it in March. "No one lent me the money," he says outside his old home, where former neighbors greet him warmly near a towering palm tree that he planted in 2005. "I was on some kind of list. They mention your convictions. I went to court at least 10 times to get the repossession order canceled or stayed. I was devastated. I was going to live in that house for the rest of my life." Cannabis convictions, he says, "are holding so many people back."

When Youds got out of prison earlier this year, he moved in with his 80-year-old mother, Joan Youds, who had a stroke four years ago and now requires care. "He's just obsessed with that cannabis club," she tells me in her living room, opposite her son's single bed, as he prepares her lunch. "They'll bash it, knock it all to pieces—he'll start again."

Mattha Busby

He is "a son in a million," she adds. "Potheads are just calm, peaceful. They just want to be left alone." Does she believe he will ever give it up? "He'll never stop," she replies.

Back in the club on my final afternoon, I hear a musician playing Bob Marley's "Redemption Song" while Youds tells me he sees his defiance as distinctly Liverpudlian. His family has lived for generations in a port city shaped by Irish migration, deindustrialization, and a distrust of distant authority. "We stand up to tyranny," he says. "If good men do nothing, tyranny prospers."

Youds hopes the new prime minister, the Labour Party's Andy Burnham, a fellow 56-year-old Merseysider, will be the man to liberate him once and for all, as figures like Virgin founder Richard Branson lobby for marijuana reform. "The community needs this right now," Youds says. "There's millions of us, and we want change. They should just let it be. The Chillin' Rooms is what the future looks like the day after the drug war. This is where the drug war ended. I think Andy is the man."

One Labour insider recently told me he is not optimistic that drug policy reform will be a priority for Burnham. But Youds has received support from the pro-legalization Green Party, which won more than 6 percent of the vote in the 2024 general election. "We have long supported the social club model championed by Gary Youds," a spokesperson for the Green Party's drug policy working group tells me, "and strongly believe this model will provide a necessary framework to engage all community stakeholders from the bottom up."

The cannabis social club model that Youds operates does not diverge from what is increasingly a norm in some parts of Europe, most notably Barcelona, says Kojo Koram, a professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University, and the author of The Next Fix: The Winners and Losers in the Future of Drugs. "Part of the value for lawmakers is that they see becoming a member of a social club creates a much more supportive environment if someone does find themselves struggling with their use of the plant, or other issues in life."

Youds takes me on his daily litter-picking round. "I'm not anti-establishment," he tells me as he fills a garbage sack. "I'm a model citizen. I pick my litter up. I get the bus. I don't do anything wrong. There are just laws that are wrong. I'm harmonizing with nature." He picks up an empty can of Red Bull from a flower bed. "The revolution will be cultivated," he says, dropping the can into the sack. "I'm sowing the seeds."

Mattha Busby

Does Youds worry about returning to prison and again leaving his ailing mother and his two sons, now 21 and 16? "I think the war is over," he says. "You can't be extinguished if you're working with nature."

With that, he dumps his second sack in a refuse bin and returns to the Chillin' Rooms, where he rolls a joint.

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Open Thread

2026-08-08T04:29:24.178-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 8, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Brickbat: Not Your Steppin' Stone

2026-08-07T08:29:26.921-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 7, 2026 at 04:00AM

Jason Rogers, who taught in Minnesota's Underwood School District, was sentenced to two years of probation and permanently gave up his teaching license after pleading guilty to three counts of malicious punishment of a child. During a school lockdown drill in 2025, Rogers, who weighed more than 350 pounds, stepped on three students' backs while they were lying on the floor because he believed they were not taking the drill seriously. One student suffered severe back pain and was walking "like an 80-year-old" and "sobbing in agony" afterward, according to court documents. As part of his sentence, Rogers must complete anger management, perform 90 hours of community service, write apology letters to the students, and pay $2,250 in fines and fees. Rogers received a stay of adjudication, meaning the charges will be dismissed if he successfully completes probation.

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Open Thread

2026-08-07T06:29:20.482-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 7, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Trump Calls Roberts's Bluff With New Executive Order On Birthright Citizenship

2026-08-07T02:29:27.554-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 7, 2026 at 12:42AM

I am, slowly but surely, making my way through the end of the October 2025 term. I've already published my take on Wolford and Hemani. I've recently completed my essay on Slaughter and Cook, which should appear in Law & Liberty next week. I've written an piece on Mullin v. Doe and Mullin v. Al Otra Lado, which should appear thereafter. Randy Barnett and I wrote an essay on Landor, which was the sleeper case of the year. SCOTUSBlog is also publishing my series of essays on Court reform. (So far, they have built some consensus; future installments may not.)

So far, at least, I have not yet published anything on Trump v. Barbara. That isn't due to a lack of thoughts. I have a lot. Indeed, Randy and I spent much of July figuring out how to present the case in the Fifth Edition of our casebook, which should be available for adoption in December 2026.

Barbara may be one of the most important decisions the Supreme Court has ever issued. Ultimately, I agree with Justice Thomas that the Chief Justice's ruling is not one for the ages. I am already dreading having to teach the case. A question I often ask is "State the holding of the case in one sentence." Try it. What is Roberts's rule of order? What is the standard of citizenship of a person born on U.S. soil? It's harder than it may seem. Your answer, whatever it is, should discuss "extraterritorial fiction." I assure you, read through the debates in the Congressional Globe, and you will not find a reference to "extraterritorial fiction." This line may be of of the most slippery blue plate specials that the Chief Justice has ever served.

In the Chief's mind, failing to issue a clear rule is the best rule of all. But surely the Chief anticipated how Trump would respond to this decision. Justice Kavanaugh surely understood that the President would not surrender.

The President has signed a new executive order on birthright citizenship. The order offers this account of what Trump v. Barbara held, and what room remains to deny citizenship to the children of certain aliens:

On June 30, 2026, the Supreme Court decided in Trump v. Barbara, 609 U.S. ___, 146 S. Ct. 2438, 2449 (2026), that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution extends the privilege of citizenship to children born to parents in the United States "for whom no extraterritorial fiction applie[s]." This order identifies, non-exhaustively, and prescribes action concerning certain categories of children of aliens who do not fall within the rule of birthright citizenship as announced by the Supreme Court.

Did Trump v. Barbara provide a "closed set" of exemptions to the rule in Calvin's Case or was the list "exhaustive"? I don't think the majority settled this issue, so the roster is "non-exhaustive."

The order explains that the child of an alien enemy is not a citizen at birth. I welcome a lawsuit from the ACLU demanding citizenship for the children of members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

The order also excludes the child of a parent engaged in birth tourism. I think the argument here is that there is an "extraterritorial fiction" for this group, as the birth is the product of "fraudulent activity."

The order further provides that citizenship is denied to a "person . . . born in a territory or territorial waters of the United States where citizenship is not conferred by Federal statute." I am not certain if there are any such jurisdictions where citizenship is conferred by executive order and not statute. But here is a test to the Insular Cases.

What will the Chief do? What will Justice Barrett do?

Stay tuned.

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 6, 1792

2026-08-06T10:29:27.721-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 6, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/6/1792: Justice Thomas Johnson takes judicial oath.

Justice Thomas Johnson

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Brickbat: Cash Back

2026-08-06T06:29:12.056-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 6, 2026 at 04:00AM

New York Assemblywoman Nikki Lucas (D–Brooklyn) has proposed a bill that would require supermarkets and other retailers to give customers who use self-checkout a 10-percent discount. Lucas argues that shoppers are doing work once performed by cashiers, such as scanning and bagging, which saves the stores money on labor. Her proposal would give customers part of those savings in the form of a discount.

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Open Thread

2026-08-06T05:29:18.102-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 6, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Open Thread

2026-08-05T06:29:40.738-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 5, 2026 at 03:00AM

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The En Banc 11th Circuit Granted Relief In Drag Show Case Where Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett Did Not

2026-08-05T03:29:28.138-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 4, 2026 at 11:02PM

Justice Kavanaugh has used the phrase "interim docket" to refer to the Supreme Court's emergency rulings, as they often set the interim rule while the issue percolates in the lower courts. Sometimes that "interim" can last years.

Such is the case with Griffin v. HM Florida-ORL. A Florida law prohibited restaurants from showing "adult live performances." A federal district court judge issued a universal injunction against the law that applied to the plaintiff, Hamburger Mary's, as well as non-parties. Back in October 2023, Florida asked the Supreme Court to limit the injunction to Hamburger Mary's.

Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted that relief, b ut they were in the minority. Justice Kavanaugh, joined almost entirely by Justice Barrett, concurred in the denial of the stay. Kavanaugh explained that the question of the universal injunction was complicated by the overbreadth doctrine. He wrote, "This case is therefore an imperfect vehicle for considering the general question of whether a district court may enjoin a government from enforcing a law against non-parties to the litigation." (I'm sure the parents of children in Florida exposed to drag were comforted by this vehicle problem.) Kavanaugh went further to explain that this issue was "distinct" from the set aside function under APA 706. Remember, this ruling came nearly seven months before CASA. Justice Barrett did not join the footnote about the APA. I discussed the concurrence at some length here. Ultimately, Kavanaugh said "this Court is not likely to grant certiorari on the only issue presented in Florida's stay application." I suppose that finely-parsed statement about cert-worthiness was true, but the issue remained alive.

Over the next three years, Florida's law remained in interim docket purgatory. Today, at long last, the en banc the en banc Eleventh Circuit declared the Florida law as constitutional. Judge Brasher's majority opinion explains:

After additional briefing and with the benefit of oral argument, we are convinced the district court erred in preliminarily en-joining the enforcement of the Act. This is so for two reasons. First, the district court lacked authority to impose a universal injunction that prevented the enforcement of the Act against everyone in Florida. The Supreme Court has held that a so-called "universal injunction" "falls outside the bounds of a federal court's equitable authority under the Judiciary Act," id. at 847, and we see no exception that would apply in this case. Second, Hamburger Mary's was not entitled to even a more limited preliminary injunction to prevent the enforcement of the Act because its claims do not have a substantial likelihood of success on the merits. The Supreme Court of Florida's definition of "lewd" eliminates any overbreadth, and the use of the phrase "age of the child present" does not render the Act unconstitutionally vague. Accordingly, we vacate the district court's preliminary injunction in its entirety.

Judge Grant (who clerked for Justice Kavanaugh), joined by Judge Newsom, would only have decided the First Amendment issue, and not settled the scope of the injunction.

Still, no matter how certain we may be that the district court erred in the scope of its injunction, we should not say so. Because we conclude that the statute is constitutional, any follow-on decision about the district court's earlier injunction is simply advisory.

As a result, only six members of the fourteen-member en banc court decided the question concerning the universal injunction. So the universal injunction issue remains alive.

Now this case liekly goes back to the Supreme Court. Given the sharp split of the en banc court, one would think Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett now see this issue as cert-worthy. As I noted in my recent National Review essay, the clearest indication of change at the Court will be fewer cert denials accompanied by three dissentals.

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Alex Nowrasteh on "Ten Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Arguments for Socialism and Why They're Wrong"

2026-08-05T01:29:38.362-04:00

By Ilya Somin - August 4, 2026 at 10:38PM

"Democratic Socialism" is a growing movement on the US political left. Thus, it's important to pay attention to its ideas, and outline where they go wrong. My Cato Institute colleague Alex Nowrasteh recently posted a succinct, but thorough and insightful critique of ten ideas in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) platform. DSA is probably the best-known currently active socialist organization in the US. Here's an excerpt:

1. "Under socialism, 'You have no debt. You don't need health insurance. You don't pay a mortgage or have a landlord, because comfortable housing is a human right.'"

There are prices on housing, medicine, food, and energy because these goods are scarce and have alternative uses. "Scarce" means that there are not enough of them to satisfy all demand at a price of zero. Those goods must be produced by people who must be fed, trained, equipped, and persuaded to show up to work. In a free-market economy, workers produce those goods because they are paid to do so, the owners of firms organize production efficiently because their profits depend on it, and the owners of capital sell it to the most profitable firms. All that activity is guided by the incentives and information provided by prices.

Similarly, there are many different uses for these goods. Prices provide a signal and an incentive to producers to decide what to build and to consumers to decide what to buy. Abolishing prices abolishes neither the costs of production nor the choices of consumption. It destroys the information and incentives that tell producers what to make, in what quantity, where, and at what sacrifice of alternatives. No socialist economy has ever solved the problem of efficiently allocating those resources without prices set by market exchange…..

3. "As free market economies fail, they turn to right-wing authoritarianism, but 'if we lived in a classless society and governed ourselves, we could freely build a world without war or poverty.'"

Economic freedom and political freedom are correlated. The Economic Freedom of the World report finds that the freest quartile of economies enjoys average incomes 6.2 times higher than the least free. Incomes for the poorest tenth are 7.8 times higher, and life expectancy is 17 years longer. Denmark, the democratic socialists' favorite exhibit, is nothing of the sort. It ranks ninth in the world for economic freedom, and its prime minister traveled to Harvard to say, "Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy." The regimes that actually abolished private ownership ran the authoritarian experiment themselves. More than two dozen socialist trials ran over the past century, and every one that collectivized its economy ended in one-party rule. Socialists will often deny that those countries were really socialist because they are selecting on outcomes, but there is a long history of Western socialists celebrating each new socialist government at the beginning of its reign, only to sour on it when the disaster strikes….

The classless society fared no better on its other promises of peace and social harmony. Each trial produced a new ruling class of party officials with better apartments and worse manners than the bourgeoisie they replaced; peace among nations tracks commerce rather than collective ownership,…. Authoritarianism follows the concentration of economic power in the state. That concentration is the DSA's core proposal….

4. "Guarantee universal healthcare at no cost to individuals."

"At no cost to individuals" doesn't include the individuals who will pay for it. The Mercatus Center's Charles Blahous estimated that Medicare for All would add $32.6 trillion in federal costs over 10 years under assumptions favorable to the plan, and the left-leaning Urban Institute put the figure at $34 trillion. That mostly shifts spending from premiums to higher taxes, but the new expanded tax bill would start near a tenth of GDP, grow from there, and exceed what doubling all projected federal individual and corporate income tax collections could cover. And presumably the entire point is to expand health care consumption, which randomized experiments show does little to improve health, so these estimates understate the additional resources such a scheme would require. Single-payer systems also pay with longer wait times, because a monopoly provider whose patients cannot take their business elsewhere doesn't have an incentive to change. England's National Health Service carried 7.3 million waiting cases as of this spring, and the median Canadian patient now waits 28.6 weeks between referral and treatment, triple the wait in 1993.

America's own health care problems cannot be blamed on free markets because the United States does not have a free market health care system. The US government controls 84 percent of health spending through a complex system of tax rules, expenditures, and other mechanisms. That's higher than in 27 out of 38 OECD countries. The share of the US health care sector under government control "is closer to communist Cuba (89%) than the average OECD nation (75%)," according to Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute. The specific portions of national health care systems under direct government control, and the ways they are controlled, vary across countries. American health care is a largely government-run system.

As they say, read the whole thing!

For those interested, Alex is just as tough on right-wing versions of economic statism. See our coauthored article, "The Case Against Nationalism." Nationalist and socialist central planning have much in common.

I previously wrote about "The Perils of Democratic Socialism" (a 2019 post that remains relevant to today's DSA agenda), and more recently about "The Contradictions of Socialist Prison Abolitionism" (which highlights the clash between socialists' coercive economic agenda and the desire of many of them to abolish prisons). In 2024, I wrote about how Venezuela - a nation until recently held up as a model by many Western socialists - exemplifes the dangers of democratic socialism.

Socialism - in the DSA-endorsed sense of government control over all or most of the economy - has led to disaster wherever tried. We are unlikely to make it work much better than the Russians, Chinese, Cubans, North Koreans, and others who came before.

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Elena Kagan's Warning to Progressives

2026-08-04T12:29:48.113-04:00

By Damon Root - August 4, 2026 at 07:00AM

The U.S. Supreme Court is seemingly under fire right now from every political direction.

From the right, President Donald Trump has spent the last year pestering, bullying, and lambasting the Court, including launching repeated attacks against two of his own judicial appointees for daring to rule against him.

Meanwhile, from the left, progressive activists are apparently gearing up to launch another big political push in favor of court packing, judicial term limits, and other measures designed to strip the Court's conservative justices of the 6–3 majority they now command over the bench.

Is anybody willing to say even just one kind word for the Supreme Court as it is currently constituted?

Enter Justice Elena Kagan. At first glance, Kagan may appear to be the progressive opposition's greatest legal champion. She has sharply dissented from many of the conservative legal movement's biggest SCOTUS victories in recent years, and she is now widely seen as the intellectual leader of the dissenting liberal bloc.

Yet Kagan is also working hard to distance herself from the Court's harshest progressive critics. You might even say that Kagan is now trying to warn those critics to chill out before their approach begins to backfire.

A recent example of such a warning occurred in late July when Kagan spoke to the annual 9th Circuit Judicial Conference in Washington state. As Josh Gerstein reported in Politico, Kagan devoted a notable chunk of her remarks to "rejecting claims that the high court's conservative majority is in President Donald Trump's corner."

"I don't see this as a court that is just like, 'We're just going to rubber stamp what the current administration does.' You know, quite the opposite," Kagan said. "I think that that is a bad rap."

As a prime example, Kagan pointed to the tariffs case, which Trump lost 6–3 and in which Trump-appointed Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett both ruled against him. "Tariffs is probably the key policy issue for this president. I mean, something he campaigned on, he ran on, he cared an enormous amount about," Kagan said. "I don't think that there are all that many decisions in the recent times, where a court strikes down such an important policy to a sitting president."

Of course, the Supreme Court did strike down President Joe Biden's student debt cancellation plan in 2022, though it seems safe to say that Biden's loss in Biden v. Nebraska did not aggrieve him to anywhere near the same degree that the loss in Learning Resources v. Trump has maddened Trump.

Why is Kagan making such a point right now of defending her conservative colleagues against the "bad rap" that progressive critics have laid on them?

Kagan may be worried about where the left's political winds are blowing and what it means for the future independence of the judiciary. She may be concerned about a cadre of progressive activists who are sharpening their proverbial knives in the hopes of hacking and slashing until the Supreme Court is unrecognizable.

This newsletter's left-leaning readers may wonder, "What's wrong with that? Why shouldn't progressives use whatever national political power they manage to obtain to fundamentally transform the Court?"

Kagan may oppose that kind of partisan move against the Supreme Court for the same reasons why her recently retired liberal colleague Stephen Breyer opposed it. Namely, Kagan may agree with Breyer that court packing is a race to the bottom that will harm liberals and Democrats in the long run by destroying the Court's ability to ever act as any kind of meaningful check against an overreaching president, whether that president happens to be Trump or whoever comes after him.

The way things seem to be going, I would expect to hear more warnings along these lines from Kagan in the months and even years ahead. What remains to be seen is just how many progressive voters and politicians will be willing to hear her out.

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Brickbat: Where in the World?

2026-08-04T07:29:34.939-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 4, 2026 at 04:00AM

The U.S. State Department apologized after showing a map of Africa at an international AIDS conference in Brazil that mislabeled every country it highlighted. The incorrect map, which appeared to have been created with AI tools, placed countries such as Ivory Coast, Mozambique, and Nigeria in the wrong locations. The State Department blamed a staff member for making last-minute changes to the presentation.

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Open Thread

2026-08-04T05:29:34.964-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 4, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Brickbat: The Other Side of the Street

2026-08-03T08:29:24.229-04:00

By Charles Oliver - August 3, 2026 at 04:00AM

City officials in Bnei Brak, Israel, have set up gender-segregated sidewalks near event halls and wedding venues, with signs and barriers directing men and women to walk on opposite sides of the street. This followed a directive from the city's ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who want to promote modesty and let wedding guests arrive already separated by sex. City council member Yaki Vider strongly criticized the plan, saying the municipality should focus on real problems like fixing infrastructure, cleaning streets, improving transportation, and providing basic services, instead of acting as a "modesty patrol" that polices public behavior.

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Open Thread

2026-08-03T05:29:26.445-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 3, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 2, 1923

2026-08-02T09:29:42.439-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 2, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/2/1923: President Calvin Coolidge's Inauguration. He would appoint Justice Harlan Fiske Stone to the Supreme Court.

President Calvin Coolidge

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Archives: August/September 2026

2026-08-02T08:29:18.549-04:00

By Reason Staff - August 2, 2026 at 06:00AM

5 years ago
Aug/Sept 2021

"In the two decades since the September 11 attacks, the absence of REAL ID enforcement has not made domestic flights more vulnerable to terrorism. Meanwhile, the federal government and the states have not been able to implement REAL ID at scale, and the general public does not seem to see a need for it. The next time Congress debates the future of REAL ID, it should repeal the requirement for good."
Scott Shackford
"Even COVID-19 Couldn't Kill  REAL ID"

15 years ago
Aug/Sept 2011

"After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, it became fashionable on the right, and among some hawkish liberals, to defend and even promote the idea of an American Empire to keep us safe from terrorists, hold rogue nations in check, and secure global commerce…..In the middle years of the last decade, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan grew steadily worse, this jingoism fell out of favor, leaving only a shrinking core of committed neoconservatives to champion the virtues of empire. Still, the questions posed by American global military dominance were far from settled in public opinion."
John Payne
"Temptations of Empire"

"If we are getting over 9/11 in ways big and small, it's not because we have worked through the pain and the terror and the anger but simply because we are forgetting it ever happened in the first place. Within another decade at most, we will walk by 9/11 memorials the same way we stroll by the World War I cenotaphs installed in town squares across the country. Catharsis be damned; this is probably the way we always get over trauma. Repression and historical amnesia are among the most powerful tools God or evolution has handed us."

Nick Gillespie
"Why Art Failed Us After 9/11"

"Looking back at the few bright moments during those first days and weeks after the attacks, I can think of hardly any that emanated from a politician or figure of influence….The strength of America on display 10 years ago did not result from centralizing new bureaucracies in Washington, unionizing new sets of federal employees, or devising easier ways for the government to snoop on and even kill its own citizens. It came from individual human beings, accustomed to living in freedom, acting in a decentralized manner to make an atrocious event slightly less painful. There's an important lesson there, waiting to be learned."
Matt Welch
"The Day Everything Continued To Change"

55 years ago
September 1971

"The [Federal Communications] Commission has an impossible job; it cannot police the thousands of licensees across the nation to ensure that they remain within the charters granted them. Lacking an overall conceptual framework, it cannot respond rationally to the technological advances which continually outpace and outscope the political and jurisdictional rules and regulations it sets forth."
Michael Bloom
"The Data Communications Battle"

"The Democratic Party Platform of 1888 called tariffs and quotas the 'mother of monopoly.' The famous trusts of the time (e.g., sugar and tobacco) were protected from foreign competition. It was wisely argued that free trade would protect the American consumer by allowing the whole world to compete for his business. Monopolizing the world production of a product is infinitely more difficult than monopolizing a national market. When Brazil tried to restrict her coffee sales to raise prices, she only succeeded in causing coffee to be grown in other countries, which meant greater production and lower prices than before."
Rod Manis
"Free Enterprise and the Monopoly Myth"

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Open Thread

2026-08-02T06:29:28.065-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 2, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Today in Supreme Court History: August 1, 1942

2026-08-01T09:29:30.281-04:00

By Josh Blackman - August 1, 2026 at 07:00AM

8/1/1942: Military commissions conclude for eight nazi saboteurs. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of these trials in Ex Parte Quirin.

The Stone Court (1942)

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Walt Whitman's American Vistas

2026-08-01T07:29:11.486-04:00

By Anthony Comegna - August 1, 2026 at 06:00AM

On Democracy, by Walt Whitman, introduction by David Bromwich, Library of America, 210 pages, $12.50

When Walt Whitman was born in 1819, traversing Long Island took days and was probably best done on foot. Brooklyn, still independent of New York City, was a farm-country alcove for Quakers, freethinkers, and country writers and educators. Whitman became a teacher while still a teenager (and included a student of color in his classes, a rare thing for teachers to accept at the time). His home was the sort of scene you might see on a gigantic puzzle today: old wooden fences, dirt roads, a few lonely wisps of chimney smoke out in the hilly distance.

Over the next two to three decades, New York City and the surrounding area experienced probably the most turbulent era in its history. First a transportation revolution extended roads, canals, and railroads across the east. Then a market revolution connected the economies of the coast, the hinterlands, and the globe. Finally, a communications revolution knit the young country together with telegraph lines. Everything changed during the formative period of Whitman's life. The city's politics reflected the constant flux of a new country launching itself forward in history. A good two centuries later, as we reach the country's 250th birthday, it's a fitting time to rediscover Whitman's political writings—especially Democratic Vistas, a long-form musing on the meaning of America and the American people. On Democracy, a new collection from the Library of America, offers a useful selection.

During this rapid development, New York became the country's population and economic center. It also became the focal point of the most significant challenge to mainstream politics: the Locofoco movement, represented electorally by New York's Equal Rights Party, then the Free Soil Party, and finally a critical faction within the early Republican Party. The Locofocos left a long legacy, and Whitman read their work voraciously during his youth. His politics was a young artist's locofocoism, and his master was the editor, poet, Navy man, and theater critic William Leggett.

Leggett was born in the Old West but moved east as a young man. He was interested in studying math and writing poetry, but instead joined the Navy and always regretted it. Leggett was court-martialed for neglecting his duties and for threatening his commanding officer during a suicidal spell. The officer had led a long bullying campaign against him, and Leggett never stopped resenting being exploited by the powerful and privileged.

Leggett was hired as a theater critic at William Cullen Bryant's New York Evening Post, and he worked through the early 1830s under the condition that he never be asked to write about politics. He just wasn't interested. But after a few years, Bryant took an extended trip to Europe and left the paper in Leggett's hands—including the responsibility of serving as politics editor. The city was never the same (and the paper nearly failed from chronic financial mismanagement).

Leggett turned out to be a radical among radicals, and the more he wrote, the more radical he got. He was a free market extremist, an absolute abolitionist, virtually an anarchist. He was for free trade, free banking, free coinage—a libertarian before the word's common usage. He was a radical abolitionist who called for the dissolution of the Union even earlier than William Lloyd Garrison did. He opposed special grants of incorporation and opposed intellectual property laws back when each of those positions was considered as radical as abolition. He championed the rights and liberties of all persons, bridging the color line and Jacksonian workingman's democracy more clearly and consistently than any other figure of the era. His premature death from respiratory disease in 1839 was a hard blow to passionate young men such as Whitman.

Leggett helped found two sister movements: the Equal Rights Party (nicknamed the Locofoco Party) and the Young America arts movement. Young radicals aligned with Leggett's Evening Post challenged the mainline Democratic Party in its stronghold of Tammany Hall from 1835 to 1837. The radicals pushed both major parties toward libertarian positions by controlling the balance of power in the city's elections. Leggett was unrelenting on every issue, but the Democrats expelled him when he crossed the color line and advocated abolition. The Whitmans of the city gleefully fled with Leggett to more principled ground. The Locofoco Party fell victim to the usual fate: endless factional infighting, poor organization, and betrayal by its own elected officials (mostly disguised Whigs). But where the political quest failed, the artists' mission began.

Young America began as a conscious effort on behalf of New York City's literati, functioning as a sort of dinner circle. The group expanded to wider cultural producers, such as John L. O'Sullivan's Democratic Review, which showcased up-and-coming writers and visual artists. Their glue was Locofoco politics and a firm conviction that the American arts must distinguish themselves from their European forebears. The Young Americans believed the United States occupied a unique place in history, able to leapfrog past the feudal societies of the Old World to a grandiose and free future.

Fueled by radical, abolitionist politics and nationalist, futuristic artistic commitments, Whitman launched into a career as a journalist (and a vocal critic of the Mexican-American War)—and into his life's mission to find and cultivate the great American literatus who could bring the nation's world-historical mission for emancipation to fruition. He sought the poet, the artist, the bard who could speak into existence the freest country on earth. He cherished American democracy and sought its perfection here, now, and then, but he did not seek to force it abroad. The Republic could welcome sisters into the fold, but not through a war for slaveowners.

The fundamental force driving that perfection forward was individualism. This was the core of Leggett's political theory: the morally absolute, universal, equal individual rights shared by all human beings. Put that political principle into practice in a nation like the United States, and you have the perfect mix for the maximal human being: each of us like a nesting doll with infinite layers of the self to explore; each of us containing multitudes, like New York or America itself.

This infinite play of the self within the infinite possibilities of America led to what Whitman called "personalism," which complements individualism with a feeling of "adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties and aggregates, making the races comrades, and fraternizing all." For Whitman, the limits of America's possibilities depended upon the quality of its individuals, stacked back up into the infinite nesting doll of the nation. When its people failed their promise, their possibilities, so the country failed its potential, its historical abilities.

For Whitman, depression set in after he begrudgingly voted for slaveholder James K. Polk in the presidential election of 1844. Whitman remembered Polk's locofoco leanings as speaker of the House, but as president Polk helped end the locofoco era of hopeful, emancipationist expansionism by taking half of Mexico for the planters. Rather than see America turned into a slaveholding empire, Whitman dedicated the rest of his life to finding the right person, in politics or literature, who could reunite the country on the grounds of individual liberation and the expansion of every self within our borders.

While Democratic Vistasis hampered by Whitman's artistic spirit and the relative fuzziness with which he described political concepts, the more journalistic writings included in this volume put the case as forthrightly as Leggett did in the old Evening Post. "The berths, the Presidency included, are bought, sold, electioneered for, prostituted, and filled with prostitutes," Whitman wrote. "In the North and East, swarms of dough-faces, office-vermin, kept-editors, clerks, attaches of the ten thousand officers and their parties, aware of nothing further than the drip and spoil of politics—ignorant of principles, the true glory of a man."

Add to that: "The President eats dirt and excrement for his daily meals, likes it, and tries to force it on The States. The cushions of the Presidency are nothing but filth and blood. The pavements of Congress are also bloody….All outside the influence of government, (for ever the largest part,) thrives and smiles. The sun shines, corn grows, men go merrily about their affairs, houses are built, ships arrive and depart. Through evil and through good, the republic stands, and is for centuries yet to stand, immovable from its foundations."

And then there is this blunt warning about life in Whitman's day: "The United States are destined either to surmount the gorgeous history of feudalism, or else prove the most tremendous failure of time." If the United States is currently a failure, there is no possible denying that the failure is simply ours. Unfortunately, Whitman's observation of his own times feels shamefully resonant now—but perhaps we can follow his example, his quest to carry our project of infinitude forever forward. To do that, we need to rediscover William Leggett's fire and relight the quest for radical reform.

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Open Thread

2026-08-01T06:29:29.419-04:00

By Eugene Volokh - August 1, 2026 at 03:00AM

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Generic Blog News and Commentary

Today in Supreme Court History: August 9, 1974

Open Thread

Today in Supreme Court History: August 8, 2009

After 2 Decades of Raids and Prison Stints, Liverpool's 'Cannabis Martyr' Is Still 'Fighting for Freedom'

How the Cannabis Café Serves the Community

The Story of U.K. Weed Legalization—and Youds' First Arrest

Gary Youds Waits a Decade Before Reopening the Cafe

Gary Youds Gets Arrested Again—and Again and Again and Again and

Will the U.K. Ever Legalize Weed?

Open Thread

Brickbat: Not Your Steppin' Stone

Open Thread

Trump Calls Roberts's Bluff With New Executive Order On Birthright Citizenship

Today in Supreme Court History: August 6, 1792

Brickbat: Cash Back

Open Thread

Open Thread

The En Banc 11th Circuit Granted Relief In Drag Show Case Where Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett Did Not

Alex Nowrasteh on "Ten Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) Arguments for Socialism and Why They're Wrong"

Elena Kagan's Warning to Progressives

Brickbat: Where in the World?

Open Thread

Brickbat: The Other Side of the Street

Open Thread

Today in Supreme Court History: August 2, 1923

Archives: August/September 2026

5 years ago Aug/Sept 2021

15 years ago Aug/Sept 2011

55 years ago September 1971

Open Thread

Today in Supreme Court History: August 1, 1942

Walt Whitman's American Vistas

Open Thread

5 years ago
Aug/Sept 2021

15 years ago
Aug/Sept 2011

55 years ago
September 1971