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Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal
The Volokh Conspiracy
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Short Circuit: An inexhaustive weekly compendium of rulings from the federal courts of appeal
Rough rides, U.S. attorney vacancies, and the 26th Amendment.
John Ross | 8.21.2026 3:30 PM
Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice.
New on the Short Circuit podcast: Shooting the wrong man (tragedy) and free speech dying in the library (comedy).
Under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, a first assistant U.S. Attorney automatically becomes interim U.S. Attorney if there's a vacancy. So can the AG name someone the first assistant to a vacant U.S. Attorney position and have them automatically elevated? Second Circuit (over a dissent): Joining every other court that has considered the question, no. Man videorecords Waterbury, Conn. police station from public sidewalk, declines to show ID to officers. He's arrested. (Prosecution is dropped over two years later.) Second Circuit: It was dusk and he didn't answer officers' questions, so there's no 4A violation. And while it's now clearly established that recording the police is 1A protected, qualified immunity. Concurrence: He wasn't recording the police! That noise you hear is not gunfire but champagne corks popping down at the 26th Amendment Center. It might be the biggest 26th Amendment news since 1971! There's now a circuit split on whether a state has "denied or abridged" the right to vote "on account of age" if it offers no-excuse absentee ballots to over-65s but not to the rest of us. The Fourth Circuit just said that's unconstitutional in a challenge to South Carolina's law while the Fifth (2020) and the Seventh (2023) said Texas's and Indiana's laws were OK. Dom Pérignon at 1 First Street next year? "Sanctuary!" No, that exclamation is not from the Fourth Circuit's ruling upholding a preliminary injunction against DHS's new policy of allowing immigration enforcement at or near houses of worship, as applied to the plaintiffs (Quaker, Sikh, and Baptist organizations). Instead, it's what Quasimodo cries out after he grabs Esmeralda and swings into the cathedral in Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. After getting 911 call (in 2017) about a Black man yelling at kids as he put them in a vehicle trunk outside an IHOP and........© Reason.com
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