Dan Farbman
Law Professor at BC Law, Historian of social movements and local government. Writing a book about Abolitionist Lawyering.
- 100% Roberts’ newfound voice on “rule of law” is consistent with this too. The court has been an institution in service and protection of the status quo since Marshall managed to aggrandize and mystify it in the early 19th C. Trumpism disrupts the status quo in tons of ways.
- Man. It’s local government law all the way down. It’s also so emblematic of this moment: the federal police reject the idea of a government “police power” using paramilitary force.
- And why was Baraka there in the first place? Turns out the private prison facility is violating the law, but also unwilling to be served with legal process apple.news/AV9JgWB8fQq6...
- Local government as a site of resistance. Serious Anthony Burns vibes here.
- I met Justice Souter once. It was just before I started grad school. He told me that sometimes he wished he’d taken 10 years off to read Proust quietly in the woods. We had an amazing (and entirely on-the-nose) conversation about Robert Frost. He was the best.
- The way Trump, in venal ignorance, repeatedly tiptoes up to interesting critical observations about the world whose implications he and his administration would hate… (In this case somewhere between Richard Ford’s “Law’s Territory” and full throated open borders.)
- If you aren’t watching Inter-Barca right now, turn it on now.
- Implement a 100% tariff and ruin a movie: Friday the 26th.
- Dispatch: Atlas Mountains
- The only reverence the founders are due is that we should seek to follow their example and open our imaginations to what is possible together. Emulation, not fetishization. (Though, in the case of 1787, perhaps with fewer wool breeches and a more moderate approach to drinking Madeira.)
- Gonna start adding Reagan heads to all my timelines. Works very well in Con Law (as long as you control for a lag in SCOTUS change).
- Periodic reminder that the “freedom” to drive is actually the product of a huge, socialist, government subsidy in the form of roads. Other kinds of subsidies (i.e. subways) facilitate other kinds of freedom for other kinds of people.
- So many things happening here. But the prospect of moving the seat of the Church to Mar-a-Lago and watching Trump play golf in full papal regalia is legitimately hilarious.
- The Iberian blackout was wild and I fear some were really harmed. But here in our Madrid neighborhood folks were chill. Lots of kids on the park and happy lingering beer drinking on patios. Hard to imagine this much social cohesion in the US. We had a terrace picnic.
- Dispatch: our neighborhood Italian joint in Madrid rules.
- MAKE THE AMERICAN COLONIZATION SOCIETY GREAT AGAIN!!!
- These are essentially the facts of Prigg v. Pennsylvania (where Margaret Morgan’s free children were kidnapped and enslaved with her, ultimately with SCOTUS’s blessing). Please stop making the worst moments in American history great again.
- A two year old baby forced onto a plane by her government—our government. That’s what Ilan Wurman and Kurt Lash and their academic collaborators and defenders have been paving the way for with their bullshit articles. www.politico.com/news/2025/04...
- It’s like these people have never heard of Bull Connor, Thoreau, or MLK. Arresting sympathetic people for doing decent things has not exactly proven to be a winning political formula. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/u...
- Constitutional reverence is what drives folks like Lash and Wurman to insist that Birthright Citizenship (which they dislike) must be unconstitutional. Life gets easier when you accept that some bad things are constitutional and some good things are not. (NB: BRCitizenship is actually good though)
- It’s very cold comfort in the face of this kidnapping. But the fact that these ICE agents feel that they have to disguise themselves (masks, unmarked vans) is a reminder of how deeply unpopular this brutality is.
- Men in plainclothes, one in a balaclava, raided the Charlottesville courthouse today. They abducted a local painter whose case (allegedly fighting with his roommate) was being dismissed, and another who was there paying fines. They took them away in unmarked vans. dailyprogress.com/news/local/c...
- Dispatch from Madrid: tiny (insanely sweet) clams. Before and after.
- Because law school is woke DEI, lawyers for the government must aggressively demonstrate that they learned nothing in law school.
- The best account on the internets. Never misses. Makes the whole technology seem worth it.
- Dispatch: quietly rooting for Athletic at the Bernabeu.
- If you’ve ever read/heard Alito whine about the abuses of process that opponents of the death penalty use, you’ll find these red-tape wrapped, smugly technicality-laced bullet points especially infuriating.
- Sometime around 2009, Justice Alito must have read a biography of Justice McReynolds and thought, “sounds great, that’s what I’m gonna go for.”
- This story is completely insane. Harvard didn’t want to fight but the bullies were too stupid to get their lunch money. www.nytimes.com/2025/04/18/b...
- I am pleased and confused to report that in Gibraltar many of the Indian restaurants also serve sushi…
- Giving vibes of all the conservative northerners who suddenly became anti slavery and militant when South Carolina seceded.
- Unsolicited semi-random restaurant review #19: Serenade Chiringuito in Bolonia. It's the last one on the south side of the beach. Get the Gambones Tempura (seriously) and then get the tuna. Eat outside if you can. boloniaserenade.com
- Re: Gorka and Vance. Southerners in the 1840s were outraged by northern "Personal Liberty Laws" which imposed state process before a person could be enslaved/kidnapped. They insisted that these laws were a burden on "property rights" and insisted on a new Fugitive Slave Law to curtail due process.
- Just noting how this story seems to be breaking through in very mainstream ways. That’s movement work bearing fruit. Lots of opportunities to build not only against Trump, but toward a more humane view of immigration.
- Unsolicited semi-random restaurant review #18: Restaurante Vizcaino in Sentenil de las Bodegas. Out of the tourist flow. Marginally insane menu. Delicious. Get the special burger with green sauce. www.restaurantevizcaino.com
- Dispatch: sunset in Zahara
- In 1844, "Squire" Samuel Hoar was sent to South Carolina to protest the ongoing enslavement of free black sailors from Massachusetts there. He and his daughter fled Charleston under threats of violence. Please stop making my research relevant... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_...
- Judge Xinis is doing a ton of interesting things as she navigates this process. I think it’s a mistake to hope that she can or will be the hero of the story. But she is making space for real political resistance to build and grow. For more on this (in the 1850s): papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....
- Dispatch: Andalusian mountains.
- This is very good. Harvard will no more save us than the courts will. But it wields a ton of influence and would not be doing this absent internal and external pressure. We are building something powerful and it’s manifesting slowly in this kind of good news.
- In the lead up to secession, Southern States (most infamously South Carolina) passed laws saying that there was no such thing as a free black person. These laws facilitated private kidnapping. If you were black, you were at risk of enslavement. This is the precedent we’re dealing with.
- The Personal Liberty law vibes are strong and getting stronger.
- Dispatch: staying in a castle.
- Not for nothing, but if Cambridge wanted to, it could put considerable financial pressure on Harvard to NOT collaborate with the Feds. Local power is real, if we use it.
