How Appealing



Friday, November 13, 2026

“QP3: Justice David Gunn — Questions Presented: A judge’s-eye view of appellate advocacy.” Andrew Gould has this post at his “1910 & Beyond” Substack site.

Posted at 5:57 PM by Howard Bashman



“Guantanamo Dispatches: Six Jurors Chosen, 14 More Needed For First Death Penalty Tribunal At Guantanamo Bay.” Carol Rosenberg has this post at the “Just Security” blog.

Posted at 5:45 PM by Howard Bashman



“Three big legal fights are looming, and Trump needs answers before January; Get ready, America, there is an epic clash coming between the powers of Congress under Article I of the Constitution and the powers of President Trump under Article II”: Online at Fox News, Hugh Hewitt has an essay that begins, “United States Assistant Attorney General T. Elliott Gaiser is going to be a very busy man in 2027. Before the new Congress arrives in January, President Donald Trump should require Gaiser and his team to provide detailed answers to a few very important questions of law.”

Posted at 4:03 PM by Howard Bashman



“Piecing Together The Timeline For The Rudofsky/Hiland Nominations; It is pretty clear that Hiland bombed his interview and the White House selected its first choice, Rudfosky”: Josh Blackman has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy.”

Posted at 3:04 PM by Howard Bashman



“‘Maybe Conservative Justices Will Die or Retire’ Is Not a Plan For Supreme Court Reform; For as long as Democrats do not take Supreme Court expansion seriously, they are just preserving the power of the current six-justice conservative supermajority”: Jay Willis has this post at his “Balls & Strikes” Substack site.

Posted at 2:48 PM by Howard Bashman



“The Progressive Storm Brewing; Come January and beyond, we will all discover the consequences of this election”: John G. Malcolm has this post at Civitas Outlook.

Posted at 2:44 PM by Howard Bashman



“This Lawyer Helped Pete Hegseth Kill Hundreds of People. Senate Republicans Are Racing to Make Him a Federal Judge. Somehow, T. Elliot Gaiser’s paper-thin connections to Texas are the least offensive thing about his nomination.” Madiba K. Dennie has this essay online at Balls and Strikes.

Posted at 2:40 PM by Howard Bashman



“Alito says Supreme Court is caught between the president and a Congress that can ‘turn off the lights’; Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito stressed the importance of an independent judiciary while also complaining about independent judges at an event in Washington, D.C.” Gary Grumbach and Dareh Gregorian of NBC News have this report.

Posted at 2:34 PM by Howard Bashman



“Are Publicly Funded Catholic Preschools Exempt from Antidiscrimination Laws?” You can access the new episode of “The Blessings of Liberty with Jeffrey Rosen” podcast via this link and on YouTube.

Posted at 2:21 PM by Howard Bashman



“NY Prevails in Noncitizen Commercial License Clash With Trump”: Beth Wang of Bloomberg Law has an article that begins, “The Trump administration must disperse more than $73 million in highway funds it improperly refused to dole out to New York in a dispute over commercial driver’s licenses for noncitizens living in the US, the Second Circuit ruled Friday.”

You can access today’s decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit at this link.

Posted at 2:15 PM by Howard Bashman



“Trump picked one judge. Arkansas senators wanted someone else. A new questionnaire sheds additional light on the competing candidacies for an Eighth Circuit vacancy.” Patrick McNeil has this post at his “Nomination Notes” Substack site.

Posted at 12:04 PM by Howard Bashman



Thursday, November 12, 2026

“Harvard Law’s 2026 Scalia Lecture | Jud Campbell: The Federalist Bill of Rights.” Harvard Law School recently posted this video on YouTube.

Posted at 8:45 PM by Howard Bashman



“Hyde-Smith Blocked Colom’s Path to the Bench. Now He’s Replacing Her. Ms. Hyde-Smith, a Republican, blocked Scott Colom from consideration for a U.S. District Court vacancy in Mississippi. Mr. Colom will take her Senate seat in January.” Emily Cochrane of The New York Times has this report.

Posted at 8:35 PM by Howard Bashman



“The Francis Biddle Memorial Lecture | Justin Driver: The Eras of Equal Protection.” Harvard Law School has posted this video on YouTube.

Posted at 8:33 PM by Howard Bashman



“Will the Supreme Court Thwart Congressional Investigations? Lawmakers must dodge rulings on immunity, standing and ‘valid legislative purpose.’” Adam Liptak has this new installment of his “The Docket” newsletter online at The New York Times.

Posted at 8:24 PM by Howard Bashman



“Richard Posner, prominent US judge who butted heads with Justice Scalia, dies at 87”: Nate Raymond and Jan Wolfe of Reuters have this report.

Although the headline mentions Butt-Head, sadly the article contains no mention of Beavis (or Judge Bibas).

Posted at 11:18 AM by Howard Bashman



“What’s the holdup?” Online at The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, law professor Robert Luther III has an essay that begins, “Arkansas U.S. Sen. John Boozman doesn’t have much to show for his 15-year Senate tenure, but this week he accomplished a feat the entire Democratic Party has failed to achieve during President Trump’s second term: He blocked a Trump judicial nominee.”

Posted at 10:44 AM by Howard Bashman



“The American Presidency Post-Slaughter”: Aaron L. Nielson has this post at the “Notice & Comment” blog of the Yale Journal on Regulation.

Posted at 10:38 AM by Howard Bashman



“Bonus 262: “One First” Turns Four(!?!); Four years in, some reflections on the purposes and limits of any newsletter — but especially this one.” Steve Vladeck has this post at his “One First” Substack site.

Posted at 10:35 AM by Howard Bashman



“Does the Dobbs Leak Investigation Violate Separation of Powers?” Michael C. Dorf has this post at his “Dorf on Law” blog.

Posted at 10:32 AM by Howard Bashman



Wednesday, November 11, 2026

“A Diminished Justice Dept. Braces for Fresh Fights After Midterm Loss; The upheaval points to a broader dilemma spurred by the election: whether the department can carry out President Trump’s priorities as career officials eye the exits and senior department officials resign.” Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer of The New York Times have this report.

Posted at 11:16 PM by Howard Bashman



“Making Up for Lost Time on Judges; Trump’s second-term nomination pace hasn’t measured up to the first”: This editorial will appear in Thursday’s edition of The Wall Street Journal.

Posted at 11:06 PM by Howard Bashman



“The Legal ‘Nuclear Option’ That Threatens to Upend the Baseball Lockout; MLB is preparing for the possibility that the players move to dissolve their union and file an antitrust lawsuit, a complex legal strategy with potentially significant ramifications”: Jared Diamond of The Wall Street Journal has this report.

Posted at 11:02 PM by Howard Bashman



“How a Misquote by a Supreme Court Justice Imperils Gun Restrictions”: Mike McIntire and Eli Murray of The New York Times have this report.

Posted at 10:24 PM by Howard Bashman



“The President Nominates Circuit Judges, Not Senators; Circuit seats belong to the circuit, and not to the state”: Josh Blackman has this post at “The Volokh Conspiracy.”

Posted at 10:22 PM by Howard Bashman



“Judge Richard A. Posner Has Died. His Influence in Law Was Beyond Compare. He was the most-cited legal scholar of the latter half of the 20th century and an unapologetic iconoclast, favoring pragmatism over judicial tradition. He was 87.” Adam Liptak of The New York Times has written this obituary.

Paul W. Valentine of The Washington Post has written an obituary headlined “Richard Posner, influential and iconoclastic federal judge, dies at 87; He served nearly 36 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in Chicago and was ranked by many as second in influence only to members of the Supreme Court.”

Joe Palazzolo of The Wall Street Journal has written an obituary headlined “Judge, Economist Richard Posner Dies at 87; Jurist wrote thousands of opinions as well as scholarly articles, more than 50 books.”

And Becky Beaupre Gillespie of the University of Chicago Law School reports that “Law School Mourns the Passing of Richard A. Posner, Senior Lecturer, Law and Economics Pioneer, and Former Federal Appellate Judge.”

Judge Posner participated in this blog’s “20 Questions for the Appellate Judge” feature, and you can access his interview published December 1, 2003 at this link.

Posted at 10:12 PM by Howard Bashman



Tuesday, November 10, 2026

“SpaceX engineers can pursue sexual harassment claims in court, appeals panel rules”: Bob Egelko of The San Francisco Chronicle has this report.

And Edvard Pettersson of Courthouse News Service reports that “Ninth Circuit rebuffs SpaceX bid to force arbitration of harassment claims; In a split decision, the appellate panel rejected SpaceX’s argument that sexual harassment claims must meet federal pleading standards to avoid being sent to arbitration.”

You can access today’s decision of a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit at this link.

Posted at 9:53 PM by Howard Bashman