In which I join Substack
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. -- Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism
Why here? Why now?
Writing online is nothing new for me. For twenty years I was the predominant writer of Overlawyered, the legal blog, which I launched in 1999 and shuttered in 2020. Since 2010 I’ve published regularly at the Cato Institute, and sporadically at many other publications. Some readers will also know me from the four books I’ve published on the American legal system, which include The Litigation Explosion and The Rule of Lawyers.
But I want to reach more readers in more ways, sometimes in formats and at times that may not fit well at my usual outlets. Substack is good for that. And writing of my sort demands a sped-up pace in a period of law and policy upheaval unprecedented in my lifetime. Since January 2025 I’ve been writing more intensely, and feeling more of a need to make a difference, than in a very long time.
A writing project, not a personal journal.
For now, at least, I don’t expect to post a lot of content about me personally. (You can look a lot of it up.) I’m active on Facebook, but it seems to me that site works best for interacting with people to whom I have some sort of real-life connection. So while I post there about travel and food and local activities as well as law and policy, my plan here, for now, is to stay at more of an arms’ length and write as in a publication.
No promises of frequency or volume.
I know what it’s like to turn out blog content every day — I did that for well over a decade — and I’m not going to go back to that. For now, no paid subscriptions and no promises of something new every Wednesday or whatever. On the other hand, I might post four items in one day if I feel like it. This is an experiment, and we’ll see how it works and whether I want to head toward the world of subscriber benefits.
The starting image…
a blue square, is a Delft tile representing a sea monster. No doubt I’ll replace it with something more suitable as time goes on.
