Grant Hayden

Lisa Siraganian presents "The Problem of Personhood: Giving Rights to Trees, Corporations and Robots" Should nonhumans have rights in law and politics?

Join @lsiraganian.bsky.social at @redemmas.org on Tuesday, March 24th 2026 for a discussion of The Problem of Personhood!

I’ve seen enough.

No, not the Texas elections. I’m watching the KU basketball game.

Yale Law scholar dismisses and entire field of scholarly inquiry on the grounds that it has not engaged deeply with the law-and-economics literature. It is 6 pages and it cites to only five LPE articles--including none of the articles in the same symposium!

lawreview.uchicago.edu/sites/defaul...

That’s just maddening. @matthewtbodie.bsky.social and I wrote a book critiquing the law-and-econ arguments for the core features of shareholder primacy, and did so taking the standard precepts of economics and social choice theory as given.

Burger King will use AI to check if employees say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ Have it your way?

this is like an episode of Black Mirror. Burger King is launching an AI chatbot that will live in the headsets used by employees, and will check if employees say “please” and “thank you” www.theverge.com/ai-artificia...

Happy to share that my latest project, Copyright as Intuition, is forthcoming in the Minnesota Law Review.

Abstract below; I should have a draft on SSRN soon.

At the centre of the dais sits Tyrannia, with the appearence of a demon, with horns and fangs. The figure of Tyranny has flowing woman's hair, a cloak with gold embroidery and precious stones, a gold cup in her hand and a goat, the traditional symbol of lust, at her feet. Below is the vanquised Justitia: the scales are broken and scattered around her on the ground. Around Tyranny's throne are gathered the Vices. (Taken from the Web Gallery of Art’s description of the fresco.)

Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Allegory of Bad Government, 1338–40, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena

The Misuses of the University - Public Books Have the funds that might have trained the next generation of scholars at the nation’s first research university have been blown on ostentatious new buildings?

“Everyone thinks universities have to do what donors want because they pay the bills. But that gets it backward, and not just at Hopkins.”

I highly recommend reading this piece.

www.publicbooks.org/the-misuses-...

Ken Paxton’s ‘Shoddy’ Prosecution of a Midwife Is Part of a Strategy to Expand His Power. Low-Income Houstonians Are Paying the Price. Maria Margarita Rojas is the first healthcare provider charged for abortion care under Texas’ strict criminal ban. Her attorneys say the state has no evidence—yet her clinics remain shuttered.

Always happy to talk to Mary Tuma, who does great reporting for the Texas Observer on the reproductive rights disasters unfolding in Texas. www.texasobserver.org/ken-paxton-p...

Levitt refutes Leavitt:

This was both false and an irrelevant nonsequitur 14 years ago, and I believe it’s both false and an irrelevant nonsequitur today.

papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Whistling at the Edge of Law The whistle is sounding in Minneapolis. The question before the legal profession is whether we will hear it, amplify it, and act accordingly, or instead insist that the ground eroding beneath our feet...

a beautifully written and powerful piece from University of Minnesota Law professor Emmanuel Mauleón on the stakes of how the legal profession responds in this moment.

lpeproject.org/blog/whistli...

Thank you for your service.

Rock Chalk!

I'm sorry the guy changing the rules on the fly is named what

Can sanctuary/"woke" cities use bankruptcy to politically resist Trump's cutting off of federal funds? My latest essay, "Bankruptcy as Political Resistance" unpacks that question. In short, it's possible for some cities to do so although the road would be messy. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Can avatars deliver babies? Because that’s one of the most pressing needs in said rural communities that are also maternity care deserts.

The Buckley court was right that threats to free speech and association, and the dangers of incumbency-protecting laws, mean that courts should closely scrutinize campaign money laws. But that should not doom all attempts to level the playing field or limit the risk of corruption from nine-figure campaign contributions, mostly to ostensibly independent groups. If Congress passed a law with generous contribution and spending limits, and strong disclosure rules, we could have ample breathing room for vigorous and competitive campaigns without the danger of the wealthy swamping our democracy. Because Buckley was a constitutional decision, there are only two paths to overturn it. One is to get a court majority to rethink the case’s fundamental mistakes. With the current makeup of the court, that seems unlikely. An even harder road is to amend the Constitution to allow for a better balance between the rights of free speech and the risks of corruption and oligarchy. We should not give up the struggle over our money-in-politics rules. But we must recognize that there will be fierce resistance from the moneyed interests who benefit from a system giving them outsize influence over who is elected and what politicians do once they are in office. A real democracy deserves better than Buckley.

My New One at @slate.com on the 50th Anniversary of the Buckley v. Valeo Decision: “One Supreme Court Case Is Most Responsible for Our Oligarchy. It’s Not the One You Think.” slate.com/news-and-pol...

Open Letter to Minnesota Law CommunityJanuary 25 January 25, 2026 To the Minnesota Law Community: We, the undersigned faculty of the University of Minnesota Law School, write in our individual capacities to address the federal government's ongoin...

Standing with 65 of my UMN Law colleagues (and counting) to condemn ICE’s lawless conduct towards Minnesotans: docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Trump Is Destroying Higher Ed. Here’s How Democrats Can Rebuild It University of Utah professor Marshall Steinbaum says American higher education should be reformed so we don’t have well-funded colleges for rich students and underfunded ones that lower-income people ...

Last week I discussed my paper "Rebuilding American Higher Education: from an Engine of Inequality to a Pillar of the Public Interest" (coauthored @andrewelrod.bsky.social @higheredlabor.bsky.social) w/@perrybaconjr.bsky.social at @newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com/article/2054...
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"Anybody get a classic old car from parents? Still looked great, but you couldn't get anyone to do serious work on it, not that you could afford, so you decided to just run it into the ground. And it kept on going, right until it crapped out on the highway at 65 mph.

Anyway, welcome to Con Law I!"

Among the litany of problems with SCOTUS's decision to stay the Texas map: the majority never acknowledges that "the" partisan impetus to adopt the map as a whole does not in any way preclude the improper use of race as a means to get there.

Which is exactly what the trial court found. In detail.

oh no starbucks's biggest sales day of the year is this week...

😏

Maybe Don’t Talk to the New York Times About Zohran Mamdani It’s remarkable, the people you’ll hear from. Teach for even a little while at an expensive institution—the term they tend to prefer is “elite”—and odds are that eventually someone who was a studen…

My old pal Pete Coviello — one of the best writers and thinkers I've ever known — wrote the piece of the moment

lithub.com/maybe-dont-t...

Mamdani's line that billionaires spent more to oppose his candidacy than he proposed to tax them really says it all.

Like a company that shuts down a profitable location as soon as it unionizes. The principle of maintaining control is more important.

They are preparing to fight for our freedom.

People on a DART train holding up their protest signs

People holding up American flags and signs in downtown Dallas.

People wearing frog hats and a man holding up a sign saying “we love America” and “imagine being afraid of diversity but not dictatorship.”

Dallas today

500+ protesters (plus elk) in a town of 5900 is a pretty good turnout.

Four bull elk took time away from mating to join the No Kings protest in Estes Park, Colorado. That’s how serious this is.

🦌 🦌 ANT(ler)IFA 🦌 🦌

This is my effort to collect in one place the top 3 reasons (imho) why 'the free market' should not even be a starting point for analysis - especially normative (legal,policy) reasoning. Also includes a brief account of how the modern idea of the self coordinating market emerged in fits and starts.