A Random, Forgotten Tumblr Page

To be updated whenever I feel like it.

[nathanalbright151]

Paper 5 — Benefit Regardless of Law: A History of Officeholder Self-Enrichment from the Founding Forward The empirical question The doctrinal papers built a structural account of why the emoluments prohibition is hard to enforce: the harm is diffuse, no plaintiff fits the standing template, the gatekeeper is conflicted, the remedy is uncertain, and the fixed term lets the officeholder outlast the suit....

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Paper 4 — The Enforcement Vacuum: Standing, Justiciability, and the Problem of Who May Sue The question prior to meaning The previous two papers established that the stated rule is strong and that its interpretation has been left, for most of the republic's history, to soft law written by the branches the rule restrains....

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Paper 3 — The Word in Constitutional Law: Doctrine, Advisory Opinion, and the Absence of a Holding A constitutional provision without a constitutional law The previous paper read the emoluments clauses at full textual strength and reconstructed the anti-dependence theory they encode....

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Paper 2 — The Constitutional Text: Foreign and Domestic Emoluments and the Anti-Dependence Architecture The text as the prohibition's strongest ground If the emoluments regime is anywhere at its most formidable, it is on the page....

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Paper 1 — Prolegomenon: What an Emolument Is and Why the Question Resists Resolution The shape of the inquiry This series concerns a particular kind of failure: a prohibition written in categorical terms that nevertheless governs almost nothing....

[nathanalbright151]

A Kingdom of Priests and a Holy Nation Introduction: The Debate Over the Priesthood of Believers Few phrases in the history of Christian thought have been repeated as often, or understood as differently, as "the priesthood of believers." The words sound familiar and even comfortable, but the moment we ask what they actually mean, we discover that earnest people have meant very different things by them, and that the differences matter a great deal for how we understand our calling before God....

[nathanalbright151]

The Retainer Reflex: Why Freelance Artists Treat One-Time Commissions as Standing Contracts, and How Client-Reputation Networks Govern the Commission Economy Abstract. A writer who purchases a single illustration sometimes finds that the artist afterward behaves as though a continuing obligation had been created: expecting renewal, treating non-renewal as a breach, occasionally raising the prospect of legal action, and conveying a sense of claim over the buyer's future work....

[nathanalbright151]

When the Fear Is Warranted: The Victorious General as Usurper, with the Chaco War as Its Case 1. Why the suite needs this appendix The thirteen papers of this suite have argued that the destruction of a national deliverer by the regime he saved is, in case after case, an injustice rooted in a fear that was groundless in fact....

[nathanalbright151]

The Logic of Devouring the Savior: On the Nature of the Phenomenon 1. The task of the synthesis The eleven case studies have established, across a span of nearly three thousand years and through the histories of ancient Israel, classical Greece, Republican and late Imperial Rome, Byzantium, China, medieval France, Vietnam, Korea, and the Soviet Union, that the destruction of a national deliverer by the regime he saved is a recurring and structured phenomenon rather than a series of unrelated misfortunes....

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The Marshal and the Bloodstained Confession: Tukhachevsky and the Modern Purge 1. Why the phenomenon's survival into the modern age matters The cases examined to this point belong to the ancient, medieval, and early modern worlds, to monarchies, city-states, and dynastic empires whose institutions and assumptions are remote from those of the modern age....

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Tortured by the Court He Saved: Yi Sun-sin and the Imjin War 1. Why this case is the suite's most acute instance of the central cruelty The phenomenon, in most of its instances, completes its work after the deliverance is accomplished, the regime turning on the savior once the danger has passed and the deliverer's capability is no longer needed....

[nathanalbright151]

The Mat of Lychee Garden: Nguyễn Trãi and Extermination to the Third Degree 1. Why this case extends the phenomenon into collective punishment The cases examined to this point have concerned the destruction of the deliverer as an individual, the spear aimed at one man, the potsherds cast against one citizen, the tribunal convened for one general, the fire kindled for one woman....

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The King She Crowned: Joan of Arc and the Abandonment of a Deliverer 1. Why the abandonment variant belongs in the suite The cases examined to this point share a common structure in which the regime that destroys the deliverer is also the regime that wields the instrument of destruction, the spear, the potsherd, the prosecution, the tablet of gold, the executioner's sword....

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Twelve Tablets of Gold: Yue Fei and the Judicial Murder of a Deliverer 1. Why this case is the suite's archetype of judicial murder The phenomenon expresses itself through many instruments....

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The Reconqueror Disgraced: Belisarius and the Suspicion of Justinian 1. Why this case requires the historian to separate fact from legend Every case in the suite obliges the historian to distinguish the true motive of a destruction from the charge that disguised it....

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Two Hands of a Dying Empire: Stilicho and Aetius in the Late Roman West 1. Why this case is the suite's clearest demonstration of self-defeat Every case in the suite illustrates the phenomenon's self-defeating character to some degree, for the destruction of a deliverer always removes a capability the regime may later need....

[nathanalbright151]

When the Hares Are Dead the Hounds Are Cooked: Han Xin, Bai Qi, and the Chinese Founding Pattern 1. Why the Chinese cases are the suite's analytical center The cases examined so far have required the historian to name the phenomenon's logic from outside, drawing it out of the events because the sources, however clear about the facts, did not themselves articulate the principle at work....