Gautam Hans

Principles for thee but not for me

I taught Rust v. Sullivan, Legal Services Corporation v. Velazquez, and Walker v. Sons of Confederate Veterans today. I did take some pleasure in seeing my students as turned up into knots as I am about the intersection of unconstitutional conditions, government speech, and viewpoint discrimination…

Federal Judges Are Slowly Realizing They Can Treat Trump Like Anyone Else Federal judges have been reluctant to hold the Trump administration in contempt for violating court orders. Now, they are getting impatient.

There are signs that at least some federal judges are getting tired of the Trump administration simply ignoring court orders

Trump is using immigration policy to suppress speech, lawsuit claims A new lawsuit accuses the administration of violating the First Amendment by threatening the visas of researchers for work on disinformation and content moderation of social media.

""The Trump administration is using the threat of detention and deportation to suppress speech it disfavors"--@carriedecell.bsky.social on CITR v. Rubio, the case we filed this morning www.npr.org/2026/03/09/n...

Wait, is this 2nd circuit or just SDNY on remand? I assume that Upsolve will appeal again to the 2nd Circuit though perhaps with a more uphill battle.

🫠

Honored to find out that I am on this list of top-cited legal scholars again this year: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers..... Lots of others on this list whose work I deeply admire, including @jessicaclarke.bsky.social @miriamseifter.bsky.social @jdmortenson.bsky.social and many others! Congrats, all!

You don’t think you’re good at that as well? 🤔😘

Big tech is hungry for consumer data. Mass. needs privacy legislation now The heart of the privacy bill that the Massachusetts legislature is now considering is a simple but firm rule that companies should collect and use only the personal information that they need to prov...

Today @cogwbur.bsky.social published my op-ed with Neil Richards. We argue in favor of the proposed MA privacy legislation with strong data minimization rules. Surveillance advertising leaves both consumers and small businesses worse off. It only helps Silicon Valley. www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/...

Trump’s Orwellian Board of Peace Consists Entirely of Human Rights Abusers An Intercept analysis finds that every single Board of Peace member state has been rebuked for human rights violations.

"An Intercept analysis finds that every member state of the Board of Peace has been rebuked for human rights violations, including many by Rubio’s own State Department." What a sick joke Trump is. theintercept.com/2026/03/02/t...

DOJ has asked a federal appeals court to un-drop its challenge to lower-court rulings that President Trump illegally targeted law firms he disfavored.

Trump Administration, in Apparent Reversal, Tries to Continue Fight Against Law Firms

Presumption of irregularity

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/03/u...

Judge Lewis Liman (brother of Doug Liman) has ruled that the federal government can‘t unilaterally end congestion pricing, giving the MTA yet another court win on congestion pricing

How does LPE relate to law and econ and legal realism? The University of Chicago L Rev. recently held a symposium on LPE and L&E, so I grabbed the chance to set out some ideas -> papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

My friend & colleague @nelsontebbe.bsky.social has an Article on "First Amendment Inversion," just recently published by the Texas Law Review. It documents a fascinating and important shift in how different political groups have conceptualized free speech: texaslawreview.org/first-amendm...

I just emailed my colleagues about this; truly baffling timing. The only thing I can think is that someone finally realized what the preclusive effects would be of yet another loss. Of course, we all already knew that eight months ago, so… 🤷🏾‍♂️

Victory

The war against Iran is unconstitutional, as I explain on the blog. Trump has already missed the 48-hour deadline for a written report required by the War Powers Resolution. These illegalities compound the war's violation of international law.

theonion.com/this-war-wil...

Every day I despair a little more.

The Conventional Wisdom On Supreme Court Reform Is More Wrong Than Ever For Democrats, running against a historically unpopular Supreme Court is basically a free space on the campaign trail bingo card.

I want Democratic candidates for office to understand just how much voters do not like the Supreme Court, and are dying to elect representatives who are actually committed to doing something about it

no takebacks

Paramount and Warner Bros' deal is about merging studios, and a whole lot more The nearly $111 billion marriage would unite Paramount and Warner film studios, streamers and television properties — including CNN — under the control of the wealthy Ellison family.

Paramount, Warner Bros deal would unite film, news and social media forces in the age of Trump

My analysis for NPR:

www.npr.org/2026/02/27/n...

The Nationwide Revolt Against Flock Safety Cameras From New York to Alabama to Arizona, everyday people are mounting a local resistance to the company’s mass surveillance. And sometimes, they take matters into their own hands.

newrepublic.com/article/2069... One of my star clinic students is quoted in this article. We have had a great experience working alongside our neighbors to reign in mass surveillance in Ithaca this year.

What has happened in Minnesota over the last several months underscores the institutional groundwork that must be laid to catalyze “people power” in the face of authoritarian oppression. State preemption is an important part of that groundwork. Read more in my piece w/ @thelssc.bsky.social 👇🏾

It took Putin and Orban years to do what they’re doing.

“She is an international student w/a visa…She appeared to have been taken from her Columbia-owned apartment on West 121st Street…Ms. Aghayeva posted a one-second video on her popular Instagram account showing her in the back of a vehicle with the caption: ‘Dhs illegally arrested me. Please help.’”

Lawrence Summers Will Resign From Harvard After Epstein Revelations

What is there left to say? www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/u...