@historyinmemes And before that traveling medicine men ("mountebanks") were defrauding poor Connecticuters with mesmerizing puppet shows!
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Daniel Nelson
65 posts
Daniel Nelson
@danielznelson
@IJ's Research Attorney for Legal History. Posting amusing historical finds plus the occasional paper. Views mine (or centuries old).
เข้าร่วม Şubat 2026
72 กำลังติดตาม44 ผู้ติดตาม
Clark Stanley boiled a live rattlesnake in front of a crowd at the 1893 World's Fair to sell his miracle cure-all liniment. He paid a $20 fine and coined the phrase "snake oil salesman" forever. Now we just press two buttons to buy an upsell in 0.1 seconds.
Varun Kundra@varkundra
ANNOUNCEMENT: Rokt has just paid out over $1 BILLION to brands. Rokt is a money printing button: Click enable and add up to 10% more profit. RT + comment "Rokt" and I'll send you a FREE Profit Gap Agent.
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You don't know how hard I laughed seeing this the other day. I don't even know what this is supposed to be about, but the image alone is just so funny. Like why is the spectre of Death going through Wellington's pantry 😭
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@OttokarHochman So wild. Maybe Norton was willing to take his chances on finding a place in Rhode Island, where fellow Quakers were beginning to settle.
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I really just don't understand how early modern law worked sometimes
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2. In 1750s Austrian govt created a catalog of forbidden books. But that catalog became too popular because people wanted to know what the good books were. So the government forbade the catalog of forbidden books
Misha Teplitskiy | Science of Science@MishaTeplitskiy
1. Prussian administrators in the 18th (?) century understood very well that academics don't need much money, they just need someone to tell them they're important
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@lymanstoneky Wow! What exactly were these doctors not reporting? Deaths/births? Contagious diseases?
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idaho, 1911
the free western spirit
of sending doctors to jail because they didn't file vital statistics reports correctly
WE USED TO BE A PROPER COUNTRY
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@CaseyMattox_ Kelo (full disclosure, I'm an attorney at the firm that lost that case).
Obviously, Bell's holding is worse than Kelo's.
But, unlike Kelo, Bell will never be applied today, overturned or not (one hopes).
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Which decision should the Supreme Court overturn next?
Kelo: Govt can take your private property by eminent domain not just for roads and utilities, but for private development.
Buck v Bell: Mandatory sterilizations are ok. "3 generations of imbeciles are enough."
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It's time for the DELETE EIGHT! Vote in the polls below to decide which decision the Supreme Court should overturn next. Vote and share!
On Monday - in a first we'll have ONE poll for the Final 4 to decide which decision needs to go.
LET THE WORST DECISION WIN!
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@TiredBambooLaw I see what you did there. (Also, A+ banner.)
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Truly the most surprising thing about going to law school is how much of a grammar nerd it turned me into.
My English teacher's would be very surprised.
Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth)@adamscochran
To simplify this further the phrase: “The dog is tired after jumping” Does not mean the dogs parents, who are not mentioned in the sentence, are tired, nor that they jumped. Legal terminology aside, the question of birth right citizenship is settled by just knowing who the subject of a sentence is.
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Little Kings….. tiny on the inside.
Pitiful.
dontfckwjustice@dontfckwjustice
Judge Nathan Milliron doesn't just berate IT staff, he appears to have a problem with his clerks. And using his position to threaten anyone who disagrees with him. This is just one email exmpale, but check this source for even more: instagram.com/p/DNf6-nsOB96?…
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@ckieser13 I've never not seen him use an exclamation point.
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Did Judge Leon always use this many exclamation points? Had a friend who clerked for him but we lost touch years ago.
Zoe Tillman@ZoeTillman
"After all, the White House does not belong to any one man - not even a president!" Judge Richard Leon drops at least 18 of his trademark exclamation points in ordering a stop to construction on Trump's White House ballroom (delays enforcement for 14 days so DOJ can appeal) buff.ly/WG6ktOX
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Justice Gorsuch’s opinion opener today is so much more sedate than his first opener nine years ago.
So ends #GorsuchStyle?
I miss those days a bit! It gave me something to ponder.
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@RavenLunaTikke I would think those types of disclosure requirements would stand a much better chance under 1A scrutiny. And some withholding of information would have to constitute outright fraud.
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@dilanesper @danielznelson Well, do crisis pregnancy centers have the right to withhold medical information that could affect someone's well-being? They are not medical experts, but they'll still give you an ultrasound, find your ectopic pregnancy and not tell you. Is that free speech?
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I am curious whether people are surprised this was 8-1.
SCOTUS Wire@scotus_wire
🚨 In an 8-1 vote, the Supreme Court holds that Colorado’s ban on “conversion therapy,” as applied to petitioner's talk therapy, violates the First Amendment because it constitutes viewpoint discrimination
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The professional speech doctrine is dead.
Long live free speech.
Today’s decision in Chiles v. Salazar put to rest the once-popular view that “professionals” were categorically entitled to less First Amendment protection than non-professionals.
The First Amendment is stronger without such a cavernous exception. Good riddance.
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@LWHensler3 @PaulMSherman Texas AG issued legal opinion to that effect: texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/….
Other states, like Kansas, have explicit (though vague) First Amendment carveouts for such talk therapy. Had Chiles gone the other way, these states likely would've nixed those carveouts.
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@PaulMSherman Has any conservative state tried to ban "gender-affirming" talk therapy?
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The Supreme Court’s ruling ensures that conservative states can’t ban gender-affirming talk therapy.
Governor Gavin Newsom@CAgovernor
Conversion therapy is discredited junk science that inflicts harm on LGBTQ youth. The Supreme Court’s decision is disappointing and puts vulnerable kids at risk.
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@dilanesper Remember when people derided Justice Jackson for using "full stop" in a dissent? Justice Barrett used the phrase in Corner Post (2024). Justice Gorsuch used it in Barrett v. U.S. (2026). Justice Kavanaugh wrote "Full stop." as its own sentence in Barton v. Barr (2020).
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One more response to people saying Justice Jackson is stupid. One of the claims is that she's too stupid to know her dissent in Chiles today is inconsistent with prior cases.
Well, Justice Alito once issued a lone dissent in a big case completely inconsistent with prior cases.
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@dilanesper @PaulMSherman If you happen to read, let us know if you're not convinced! We're still taking feedback.
Surprisingly, Gorsuch's discussion on malpractice liability v. prior restraints is the most SCOTUS has ever said about the distinction (to my knowledge).
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@dilanesper @PaulMSherman We get into this at p.39 of our paper (both the history and the doctrinal distinctions). Basically, malpractice for bad advice, etc., does have a long history and it is a far narrower restriction than "broad," "prophylactic" restraints on speech for multiple reasons.
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I mean, what were you expecting? This is a Gorsuch/Roberts move.
Only Alito and Thomas go nuts on historical context.
Also, Colorado could have sidestepped all of it had they just simply said therapists cannot affirm or deny someone's gender.
Instead they wanted to allow sometimes affirming care (when person presents as trans), but ban trying to offer counter arguments. Not even necessarily expressly religious ones too.
Also, I'm not even sure how it would work, say someone comes in admittedly c*sgender, but trans curious?
So the therapist can only ever affirm their trans feelings, but never their c*sgender leanings?
GTFO.
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Despite Chiles holding that professional speech is protected speech, governments likely will double their efforts to make a historical case for regulating it. @PaulMSherman's and my paper traces the relevant history and shows no such case exists:
papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf…
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Colorado justified its speech ban by invoking a historical tradition of regulating the conduct of licensed professionals. The Supreme Court rightly held this history was too general, as it did not evince a history of regulating professional speech in particular.
2/
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Today, in Chiles v. Salazar, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Colorado's ban on "conversion therapy" is a viewpoint-based restriction on speech and remanded for full, First Amendment scrutiny.
The outcome was expected, as @PaulMSherman and I note in our forthcoming paper.
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