Old Man Yells at Cloud (UPDATED)

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Letters to the Editor

Lawfare

June 18, 2026 

RE: George Croner, Presidential Discretion and the Insurrection Act, Lawfare (June 16, 2026, 10:02 AM), <https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/presidential-discretion-and-the-insurrection-act>.

Croner ends his article with: “In Ex parte Merryman, the Supreme Court ruled ….” That is not correct. Merryman was a decision by Chief Justice Taney at chambers, sitting alone, acting under a special authority granted to all Article III Justices and judges by the 1789 Judiciary Act.

Merryman was not a decision of the United States Supreme Court.

It was not a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit (which had not yet then come into existence).

It was not a decision of the United States Circuit Court for the District of Maryland.

It was not a decision of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland.

It was neither a decision of the Maryland Supreme Court nor of any other Maryland state court.

 

Indeed Merryman was not a decision of any court of record.

 

Today, “chambers” opinions by Justices of the Supreme Court are primarily “dispos[itions] of an application by a party for interim relief, e.g., for a stay of the judgment of the court below, for vacation of a stay, or for a temporary injunction” as part of a wider, prior, imminent, and/or ongoing appeal to the Supreme Court. See <https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/in-chambers.aspx>. In such circumstances, the individual Justice is acting on behalf of the Court as a whole, and as such, a decision of a single Justice is a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. By contrast, Merryman—a decision from a much earlier time—was not such a decision. Not only was Merryman not a decision in the process of being appealed to the United States Supreme Court, it was not even possible, for either of the parties, to appeal Taney’s final order in Merryman to the Supreme Court! See also In re Metzger, 46 United States Reports (5 Howard’s Reports) 176, 191 (1847) (McLean, J.) (“This Court can exercise no power in an appellate form over decisions made at his chambers by a Justice of this Court or a judge of the district court.” (emphasis added)). See generally Seth Barrett Tillman, What Court (if any) Decided Ex parte Merryman?—A Correction for Justice Sotomayor (and others), 13(1) British Journal of American Legal Studies 43 (2024) (peer review), <http://ssrn.com/abstract=4157572>, <https://sciendo.com/article/10.2478/bjals-2023-0007>.

 

Seth Barrett Tillman, Associate Professor

Maynooth University School of Law and Criminology

(academic title & affiliation for identification purposes only)

UPDATED ARTICLE (JUNE 18, 2026)

In Ex parte Merryman, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney wrote that only Congress—not the president—has the authority to suspend the writ. But absent careful and probing judicial review, is there any reason to believe this Congress will countermand this president’s suspension of the Great Writ?

Editor's note: This article has been updated to correct an earlier error regarding Ex Parte Merryman.  

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Old Man Yells at Cloud (UPDATED),’ New Reform Club (June 18, 2026, 3:59 AM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2026/06/old-man-yells-at-cloud.html>; 

Tillman on Migration

Letters Editor

Irish Independent

Re: Peter Flanigan—‘New Irish Far Right’ (4 June 2026)

Peter Flanigan makes the argument that given the size of the Irish diaspora, Irish people in Ireland should support immigration into Ireland. (“In this context, an Irish person being against immigration is like a Brazilian person being against football.”) The two issues—the scope and history of the Irish diaspora and current Irish migration policy—are not meaningfully related. Treaties sometimes create reciprocal migration rights. Intra-European Union migration rights are set by treaty, as well as Irish-UK migration, also set by treaty. But such treaties are the exception, not the rule. As a general matter, when Irish migrants have been welcomed into foreign countries, it is not because those other countries expected or negotiated for a reciprocal welcome of their nationals into Ireland. When Australia, for example, opened its borders to Irish migrants, it did so to benefit Australia and Australians. If and when Ireland were to open itself to Australian migrants, those with or without any particular skills or independent means, is a decision for Ireland, its citizens, and its government.

Irish citizens living at home—who have neither personally benefitted from migration into foreign nations, and who have not personally asked other countries to open their borders—are not morally or legally bound to support any particular policy for migration into Ireland, much less to support large scale migration into this country. And the fact that their cousins and other relatives, living or long dead, have moved abroad, recently or long ago, does not change the moral calculus of what is good for this country and its people today. The number of migrants welcomed into this nation, the rate as which they are admitted, as well the conditions under which they come and remain—all should be primarily decided on the basis of what benefits the citizens of this nation: Ireland. And that question—What benefits the citizens of this nation?—is not meaningfully related to the long history, both good and bad, welcoming and otherwise, of Irish migrants into foreign nations.

Seth Barrett Tillman

A U.S. citizen living and working in Ireland since 2011

Seth Barrett Tillman, ‘Tillman on Migration,’ New Reform Club (June 4, 2026, 12:42 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2026/06/tillman-on-migration.html>;