Happy Birthday, Law Dork!

That's a year! Also: Sam Alito's new Burn Book entry.

It’s almost unbelievable to me, but Law Dork is one year old today!

I am incredibly grateful to the more than 15,000 of you who have subscribed to Law Dork in the first year — including more than 1,000 of you who are supporting my independent legal journalism with a paid subscription.

It’s a serious time. As I wrote in my first post here at Law Dork, after referencing the then-likely coming end of Roe v. Wade and increasing attacks on LGBTQ people, “the coming months could be increasingly complicated at best and dangerous at worst for many people across the country.”

The Supreme Court overturned Roe a few days after Law Dork’s launch, leading to a year of fallout, and this year’s legislative sessions have included an unprecedented wave of anti-LGBTQ laws across the nation.

It has been both complicated and dangerous. But, I am grateful to have this platform to cover the stories that I think need to be covered whenever I think that coverage is needed.

I’m a one-person shop (for now, at least), so there are certainly limits on how much I can cover, but I’ve covered a lot in the first year — including Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s start on the Supreme Court, Oklahoma’s foiled plan to execute a man in federal custody, the litigation wave against the new anti-LGBTQ laws and policies, the ongoing fight against mifepristone, and the lawsuit against PrEP coverage that’s exploded into a case against the Affordable Care Act’s preventative care coverage requirements.

And, of course, there is my coverage of the Supreme Court’s big decisions this year.

That coverage has led to subscribers from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., as well as from more than 100 countries across the globe, according to Substack’s data. Additionally, I have paid subscribers in 47 states and DC — a true sign of the national scope of Law Dork’s audience.

Because of all of the support that Law Dork has gotten — including the absolutely necessary financial support from many subscribers like you — I am thrilled to be able to continue with Law Dork. While we still haven’t reached the point where Law Dork is sustainable on its own, it’s doing well enough — and I like what I’m able to do here enough — that I’m in for another year.

I’m glad that you all support my work, and I hope to get to a point where I’m not focused on subscribers constantly, but, until then, please urge your friends and colleagues to subscribe. If you’re reading this because you clicked a link or got this forwarded to you, please subscribe today. There are paid and free options. And, if you’re able to support Law Dork with a paid subscription, truly, thank you for doing so today!

In which Sam Alito plays himself

A chance to write about the one and only Justice Sam Alito on Law Dork’s birthday?

OK!

Seriously, I don’t know what Alito is thinking, but nothing proves how truly out of touch the man is than that he thought the smart move when getting questions from a journalist about a forthcoming story is to run to a friendly op-ed page and write a new burn-book entry.

But, that’s exactly what Alito did when ProPublica sent him a series of questions last Friday.

On Tuesday, hours after the responses were due, Alito published a Wall Street Journal “opinion commentary” — that’s what it’s tagged as, but even the editors in introducing the piece simply call it a “response.” The 6:25 p.m. Tuesday missive from Alito appears to be nothing more than Alito’s conclusions about what the ProPublica article was going to look like and why he was going to claim that the story, as he conceived it would be, is wrong — and that, in any event, he had to get out in front of it.

That said, he did so in quite a half-assed way.

First of all, this whole move is trash. This is “bad politician on a mediocre TV show” behavior unbecoming a city council member, let alone a justice, to get questions from one media outlet about a story and go to another one with his response.

Second, we’re two-thirds of the way through June, and he’s still got 18 cases undecided on the docket. Get to work!

Third, Alito leads off by asserting, “ProPublica has leveled two charges against me,” while ProPublica had not yet published anything. Sure, he knew their questions, but he’s “an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,” per his Wall Street Journal bio line, I’d think he should be able to explain to two reporters what they’re missing if they got something wrong.

Fourth, it’s just the most impenetrable writing. The three main paragraphs of the piece — consecutive paragraphs, at that — are 262, 308, and 224 words. Ugh.

Finally, the substance pretty much gives away the game: Alito doesn’t have answers to these questions that would sound good to anyone outside of the rarified, calcified world of the Wall Street Journal opinion pages.

In Sam Alito’s own words:

• “[Paul Singer] allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska.”

• “[W]hen I reviewed the cases in question to determine whether I was required to recuse, I was not aware and had no good reason to be aware that Mr. Singer had an interest in any party.”

• “The flight to Alaska was the only occasion when I have accepted transportation for a purely social event, and in doing so I followed what I understood to be standard practice.”

So, even per Alito, this is a story about Alito’s undisclosed trip to Alaska in July 2008 with a politically active billionaire.

Ah, now it makes sense why (1) he’s worried and (2) why he’d go to the WSJ opinion pages to seek out a sympathetic audience in advance.

And, at 11:49 p.m. Tuesday, ProPublica hit publish.

ProPublica story on the site’s home page overnight

It’s a long story, but the hook Alito’s half-assed response allowed him to get caught on became quite clear very quickly.

“If you were good friends, what were you doing ruling on his case?” said Charles Geyh, an Indiana University law professor and leading expert on recusals. “And if you weren’t good friends, what were you doing accepting this?” referring to the flight on the private jet.

And, of course, Leonard Leo is a key figure in the story. As, somehow, is Antonin Scalia, the former justice who died in 2016.

Read the whole report; Sam Alito clearly doesn’t want you to do so.

Once I have some more time with all of this, I’m sure I’ll have more to write about it, but — if you can’t tell by the format of this — ProPublica published just as I was about to finish writing this Wednesday morning newsletter on Tuesday night. So, for now, I’ll just leave it at that.