Critical Legal Studies for Nazis

This story (gift link) is completely nuts on multiple levels.

Short version: A second-year law student at the University of Florida who is a literal Nazi, to the very disturbing extent that is possible in America in 2025, wrote a paper for a law school class last fall. In that paper, a copy of which I’m currently attempting to secure, he argued:

In his capstone paper for the class, Mr. Damsky argued that the framers had intended for the phrase “We the People,” in the Constitution’s preamble, to refer exclusively to white people. From there, he argued for the removal of voting rights protections for nonwhites, and for the issuance of shoot-to-kill orders against “criminal infiltrators at the border.”

Turning over the country to “a nonwhite majority,” Mr. Damsky wrote, would constitute a “terrible crime.” White people, he warned, “cannot be expected to meekly swallow this demographic assault on their sovereignty.”

My immediate pedantic law professor reaction to this was “what about the Reconstruction amendments?” It turns out Mr. Damsky didn’t miss those in Con Law: he just thinks they’re unconstitutional:

Mr. Damsky’s paper includes arguments similar to those recently adopted by the Trump administration, including a call to “reconsider” birthright citizenship, and an assertion that “aliens remain second-class persons under the Constitution.”

It also argues that courts should challenge the constitutionality of the 14th Amendment, which ensures birthright citizenship, due process and equal protection under the law, and the 15th Amendment, which protects the right to vote for nonwhite citizens.

Believe me, we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of how deranged this whole situation actually is.

Because:

At the end of the semester, Mr. Damsky, 29, was given the “book award,” which designated him as the best student in the class. According to the syllabus, the capstone counted the most toward final grades.

But wait, there’s more. A lot more, as Marty DiBergi would say:

The Trump-nominated [federal] judge who taught the class, John L. Badalamenti, declined to comment for this article, and does not appear to have publicly discussed why he chose Mr. Damsky for the award.

My wild guess here would be: Fundamental sympathy for the most extreme possible white supremacist views?

We haven’t even gotten started:

The granting of the award set off months of turmoil on the law school campus. Its interim dean, Merritt McAlister, defended the decision earlier this year, citing Mr. Damsky’s free speech rights and arguing that professors must not engage in “viewpoint discrimination.”

To quote one of the lesser-known passages in Blackstone’s Commentaries:

When in the course of human events a law school dean cites academic freedom as a reason for defending a federal judge’s right to give the highest grade in the class to a literal Nazi who argues, on Nazi first principles apparently, that the Reconstruction amendments to the Constitution aren’t actually part of the Constitution, then it’s time for Jules Winnfield to start quoting Ezekiel 25:17.

Are we done with the crazy yet? Oh we are a long ways from that still:

In January, Carliss Chatman, an associate law professor at Southern Methodist University, began a stint as a visiting scholar at the school. It was not long, she said, before a number of Black and Jewish students came to her with concerns about Mr. Damsky.

Ms. Chatman was struck, in part, by her own experiences at the school in contrast to Mr. Damsky’s award. She had proposed teaching a class during her time there called “Race, Entrepreneurship and Inequality.” But administrators at the law school changed the name to “Entrepreneurship,” she said, before listing it in the course catalog.

And why would something like that have happened you may well ask?

She attributed the change to Florida lawmakers’ crackdown on diversity-oriented language and themes in public education, a push that preceded the Trump administration’s broader war on progressive ideology.

The ultimate parody of suicidal liberalism is that a Nazi has to be given the highest grade in the class for arguing that the most important amendments to the Constitution are unconstitutional, because not doing so is “viewpoint discrimination.”

Except it isn’t it a parody: it’s a documentary!

You think I’m done with you yet gentle reader? Not by a damn sight:

One former student, who graduated in May, had his post-graduation job offer rescinded by a large law firm when he told them he had spoken to The New York Times for this article, criticizing Mr. Damsky’s paper and Judge Badalamenti for granting him the award. The student asked not to be identified for fear of jeopardizing other job offers.

The problem with this business is that it’s filled to the brim with unrealistic . . . individuals (Casts glances at Merrick Garland, and the corpses of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and American liberalism in general).

Oh yeah, more more thing for now: The dean of the law school, who is so vigorously defending the Sacred Rights of Nazis to Nazi, is transgender!

I’m going to have a lot more to say about this eventually, but that’s enough for now.