Bill Blum
Bill Blum is a former administrative law judge and death penalty defense attorney. He is the author of three legal thrillers published by Penguin/Putnam and a contributing writer for California Lawyer Magazine. His non-fiction work has appeared in a wide variety of publications, ranging from The Nation and The Progressive to the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly and Los Angeles Magazine.
Articles by this author
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Views Thursday, October 19, 2017 Existing Law May Not Solve Presidential Crisis For those of you looking for a legal avenue to cut short the tenure of the 45th president of the United States—our very own real-life madman in the high tower—I have some good news, and some bad. Starting with the upside, your ranks are growing. According to a Public Policy Polling survey conducted... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, October 04, 2017 Judicial Roadmap for the Supreme Court Veers Right There is hardly a political question in the United States which does not sooner or later turn into a judicial one.—Alexis de Tocqueville, “Democracy in America” Get ready for change. After moving to the political center the past three terms, the Supreme Court is poised to take a turn back to the... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 05, 2017 Justice Neil Gorsuch Has Landed, to the Delight of the American Right The biggest story coming from the Supreme Court these days doesn’t concern the cases the court decided during its recently completed October 2016 term. The biggest story—and it’s one that will resound for decades—is that Neil Gorsuch has replaced the deceased Antonin Scalia as the panel’s ninth... Read more |
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Views Monday, April 24, 2017 Why Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III Is Unfit to Be Attorney General Don’t let his languid Southern drawl or physical resemblance to the kindly Keebler elves fool you. Ever. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, the nation’s 84th attorney general, is neither laid back nor kind. To the contrary, he’s the most dangerous member of the Trump Cabinet. What’s more, he’s... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, February 28, 2017 Trump’s War on Immigrants Has Already Reached the Supreme Court If you’ve been waiting for President Donald John Trump’s war on immigrants to reach the Supreme Court, your wait is over. The battle has already begun. No, the conflict hasn’t come to the top court by way of Trump’s high-profile “Muslim ban,” which has been enjoined by a series of lower court... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, February 01, 2017 Meet Neil Gorsuch, the New Antonin Scalia Just when we might have thought we’d seen Donald Trump at his zaniest (say, in the first presidential debate) and most dangerous (say, in his executive order on immigration last week), he outdid himself with the nomination of Neil Gorsuch, 49, a judge from the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, December 06, 2016 Talk of Impeaching Trump May Be Premature, But Its Time Will Come Donald Trump has yet to be inaugurated, but talk of impeachment has been in the air since the day after the election. It’s been promoted by an array of influential commentators, both progressive and conservative—from filmmaker Michael Moore on the left to New York Times columnist David Brooks on... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, October 25, 2016 Donald Trump’s Empty Blustering Reveals a Narcissist Who Can’t Fathom Defeat The highlight of the third and, thankfully, final presidential debate last Wednesday came roughly at the midway point , when Donald Trump refused to say that he would accept the results of November’s election. Since then, Trump has doubled down on his position, declaring he would accept the outcome... Read more |
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Views Sunday, October 02, 2016 A Crippled Supreme Court Awaits an Election in Which Hillary Clinton Is the Lesser Evil As the Supreme Court begins its new term on Oct. 3, an old adage comes to mind. It was first penned by the satirist Finley Peter Dunne in 1901. Purged of its original Irish brogue, the saying admonishes: “The Supreme Court follows the election returns.” Never has Mr. Dunne’s observation seemed more... Read more |
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Views Thursday, June 23, 2016 Antonin Scalia and the Clear and Present Danger of Second Amendment Fundamentalism A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. —Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. If you’re looking for someone to blame for the continuing partisan paralysis on gun control... Read more |