{"id":81944,"date":"2026-09-13T23:25:40","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T03:25:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/?p=81944"},"modified":"2026-09-13T23:25:40","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T03:25:40","slug":"missouri-gerrymander-appeal-81944","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/missouri-gerrymander-appeal-81944\/","title":{"rendered":"Missouri Republicans Send Gerrymander to Supreme Court Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

Missouri Republicans have sent their gerrymander to the Supreme Court again<\/a>. The Court, once more, did what it has done every time: declined to engage, effectively telling them to pound sand. The latest appeal is the newest entry in a redistricting drama that keeps returning to the high court docket, survives every denial, and refuses to reach a satisfying legal conclusion.<\/p>\n

Missouri Republicans and the Supreme Court: A Redistricting Appeal That Keeps Coming Back<\/h2>\n

The pattern is by now familiar. Republican lawmakers in Missouri adopt a map. Challengers sue. The case winds through the courts. Someone on the Republican side asks the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene. The Court says no. Repeat.<\/p>\n

This is the kind of cycle that inspires labels like “Beating a Dead Horse Alert” and “Try, Try Again.” Those are not just snark. They capture the strategic reality of modern redistricting litigation: losing in one forum is no longer the end of the fight. It is simply the cue to find another forum, refine the constitutional argument, and try once more to get a majority of justices to look at the map.<\/p>\n

What is the Missouri Republicans’ latest gerrymander appeal about?<\/h3>\n

The latest appeal is another request by Missouri Republicans for the Supreme Court to review a redistricting decision they do not like. The Court declined to take the case, which means the current map stands and the legal fight continues. In essence, the appeal asks the Court to decide how much partisan advantage a state legislature can build into a map without crossing a constitutional line. So far, the Court has declined to draw that line.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court’s refusal is not a ruling on the merits. It is a decision not to hear the case at all. For the Court, the underlying dispute looks less like a clean legal question and more like the kind of political controversy the federal judiciary has grown increasingly reluctant to police. That reluctance has been visible for years: the justices have repeatedly signaled that claims of partisan gerrymandering belong in state courts, state legislature, or Congress, not in the federal docket.<\/p>\n

Missouri Republicans, however, are not easily discouraged. Each denial resets the clock. Each appeal buys time, keeps the map alive, and frames the issue for the next round of litigation. The result is a strange kind of legal equilibrium: everyone expects the case to return, and the Court keeps proving them right.<\/p>\n

At Berkeley Law, 51 of 1,128 Students Are Black \u2014 and the Federal Government Says the School Illegally Favors Black Students<\/h2>\n

In a separate corner of the legal world, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education have made a striking claim: Berkeley Law’s admissions process illegally favors Black students. The numbers make the allegation even more awkward. At the school in question, only 51 of 1,128 students are Black.<\/p>\n

The headline practically writes itself \u2014 call it the fifty-one shades of “rigged” problem. The Justice Department and Education Department are not merely suggesting that Berkeley Law could do more to increase racial diversity. The formal position is more aggressive. They say the school gives Black applicants an unlawful advantage in the admissions process, in violation of federal civil rights law.<\/p>\n

Critics of race-conscious admissions will see this as overdue enforcement. They will point to the Supreme Court’s recent trajectory on affirmative action and argue that the law is heading in a clear direction: any use of race in admissions, no matter how modest, is presumed suspect. Supporters of Berkeley Law will see a different problem. They will note that 51 Black students out of 1,128 is hardly a picture of racial preference run wild. If anything, the number suggests that Black students are dramatically underrepresented, not overrepresented, in a law school that is being accused of favoring them.<\/p>\n

The deeper issue is whether the federal government’s claim depends on a theory of unequal treatment that ignores the actual outcome. When a school has a Black enrollment rate below five percent, an allegation of illegal favoritism toward Black applicants sounds less like a description of reality and more like a warning to every other institution that considers race at any stage of the admissions process.<\/p>\n

Berkeley Law has not conceded the point. The case will now move through the familiar machinery of civil rights enforcement, litigation, and appeals. The practical consequence, however, may already be in place: schools across the country will read the allegation, look at the numbers, and recalculate their risk tolerance for affirmative action.<\/p>\n

Weil Loses Its Corporate Chair and Six M&A Partners to Cravath \u2014 and Calls It “a Smaller Platform”<\/h2>\n

In the competitive world of elite law firms, lateral partner departures are usually described in careful, diplomatic language. Weil took that convention to a new level. The firm announced the loss of its corporate chair and a half-dozen M&A partners to Cravath by explaining that the partners had left for “a smaller platform.”<\/p>\n

The phrase is technically true and tactically brilliant. Cravath, Swaine & Moore is one of the most storied names in American law, but it is smaller than Weil in at least one meaningful sense: overall headcount, particularly in the corporate practices where Weil had built a formidable presence. Calling Cravath a “smaller platform” allows Weil to frame a destabilizing wave of departures as something other than a defeat. It is a way of saying that Weil remains the bigger operation, even if some of its most senior talent has chosen to operate somewhere else.<\/p>\n

The underlying story is more complicated. The loss of a corporate chair is never routine. M&A partners at that level bring not just experience but relationships, deal flow, and the ability to generate millions in revenue. Cravath has been expanding its transactional bench with great ambition in recent years, and adding a group of this size sends a signal that it intends to compete aggressively for the kind of work that used to be dominated by the true Wall Street and Am Law 50 mega-firms.<\/p>\n

For clients, the message is also important. A firm’s platform is not simply about size. It is about capacity, conflicts, staffing, and strategic focus. By describing Cravath as a smaller platform, Weil is reassuring clients that the resources and infrastructure they rely on remain exactly where they were. That may be a smart communications move, but it does not change the fact that the legal market’s talent war just escalated again.<\/p>\n

Kirkland & Ellis Passes Jackson Walker to Become the Largest Firm in Texas: 549 Lawyers and Counting<\/h2>\n

Texas has long been one of the most competitive legal markets in the country, and the latest ranking confirms just how much the industry has changed. Kirkland & Ellis has passed Jackson Walker to become the largest firm in Texas, with 549 lawyers in the state. The milestone arrived twelve years after Kirkland first opened an office there.<\/p>\n

That timeline matters. A decade ago, Kirkland was a Chicago-rooted powerhouse with national ambitions but no natural claim to Texas. Opening an office in the state was an experiment. Now that experiment has produced the largest law office in Texas’s private legal ecosystem, measured by lawyer count.<\/p>\n

The rise of Kirkland in Texas tracks the rise of private equity as the dominant force in American transactional law. Texas has become a magnet for private equity activity, energy deals, infrastructure investment, and technology transactions. Kirkland recognized early that the firms that controlled the private equity space would control the most profitable corporate work. By building a Houston and Dallas presence around that recognition, it overtook a century-old Texas institution like Jackson Walker, a firm deeply embedded in the state’s history and business community.<\/p>\n

Becoming the largest firm in Texas is not simply a vanity metric. It gives Kirkland an institutional advantage in lateral recruiting, conflicts management, and client service. When a company in Texas needs urgent M&A advice, the firm with the deepest bench gets the call. The numbers also create a self-reinforcing dynamic: the more lawyers Kirkland has in Texas, the more types of matters it can handle without internal conflicts, and the more work it can absorb from the world’s biggest investment funds.<\/p>\n

Jackson Walker’s decline from the top spot is not a failure. It is a reminder that the legal market now rewards scale, platform depth, and global connectivity in ways that were less important a generation ago. But for anyone watching the rise of Big Law in Texas, the last twelve years have been unmistakable: Kirkland came, saw, and now leads.<\/p>\n

Liu Shur Kravis, a Five-Month-Old D.C. Litigation Boutique, Matches the Milbank Scale<\/h2>\n

In Washington, D.C., a new litigation boutique has accomplished in five months what many firms spend years attempting. Liu Shur Kravis, founded in April by three former federal prosecutors, has matched the Milbank scale.<\/p>\n

The Milbank scale is shorthand for the associate salary benchmark set by Milbank LLP, the New York firm whose annual compensation announcements effectively establish the market rate for associates across Big Law. Matching the Milbank scale is not merely about being generous. It is a signal that a firm intends to compete for elite talent against much larger institutions with far deeper pockets.<\/p>\n

For a boutique that is only five months old, reaching that benchmark is unusually aggressive. It tells current associates and prospective laterals that the firm is serious about being a long-term player, not a temporary vehicle for a few high-profile cases. It also tells the broader market that the three former prosecutors who founded the firm believe they can generate enough revenue to justify top-of-market compensation from the start.<\/p>\n

The move is a calculated bet. Litigation boutiques thrive when they can offer associates the chance to do high-level work without the bureaucracy of a large firm. But those associates still expect competitive pay. By matching the Milbank scale so quickly, Liu Shur Kravis has indicated that it is willing to spend what it takes to build a durable platform in the hyper-competitive D.C. legal market.<\/p>\n

Elon Law’s Dean Got a “1 & Done” Tattoo After Students Crushed the Bar Exam<\/h2>\n

Every law school dean wants a high bar passage rate. Zak Kramer, dean of Elon Law, wanted it badly enough to put his own body on the line. Kramer promised his students that he would get a tattoo if the class achieved an 85 percent first-time bar passage rate. The students did not merely meet the target; they blew past it. When the results came in, Elon Law posted a 91.96 percent first-time passage rate, and Kramer had “1 & Done” inked on his forearm.<\/p>\n

There is a simple reason this story matters. Bar passage rates are one of the most closely watched metrics in legal education. They affect rankings, accreditation, student confidence, and employer perception. A dean who is willing to make a permanent commitment to that outcome is sending a message that the school’s performance is personal, not bureaucratic.<\/p>\n

The “1 & Done” tattoo also captures something about the modern law school experience. Students are constantly told that their first bar exam attempt is the one that matters. The pressure to pass on the first try is enormous. By turning that pressure into a shared goal with a visible reward, Kramer gave the class something to root for beyond a statistic. The tattoo will last a lifetime, which is exactly how long the students will remember the score.<\/p>\n

Law Professors, AI Panic, and the Old-Fashioned Art of Reading a Submission<\/h2>\n

Somewhere in academic circles, the latest panic is over the possibility that law professors are using artificial intelligence to draft law review articles. The anxiety has reached the level of what can only be called Pangram mania \u2014 an obsessive hunt for AI-generated text, hidden patterns, and proof that scholarly work was not written by human hands.<\/p>\n

Law professors are not the only professionals worried about AI. But their reaction has a uniquely academic flavor. The same people who teach courses on evidence and proof are suddenly treating detection methods as if they were more reliable than reading the actual text. The collective pearl-clutching over AI-generated scholarship says more about institutional insecurity than about the quality of the work being submitted.<\/p>\n

The solution, as one observer suggested, is remarkably simple: read the submissions and see if they are any good. A law review article does not become worthless simply because technology was involved in its drafting, any more than it becomes valuable merely because it contains a well-turned phrase. Editors should be evaluating legal arguments, analytical rigor, originality, and contribution to the field. Those qualities are not hidden behind AI and they are not exposed by a detector.<\/p>\n

None of this means law professors should ignore the possibility that AI will change legal scholarship. It will. But the response should not be a technological arms race. It should be a return to first principles: if a submission is intelligent, well-reasoned, and genuinely useful to the legal community, it deserves publication. If it is not, no detector is needed to explain why.<\/p>\n

The Wonka GC Returns to Handle John Hammond’s Compliance Problems<\/h2>\n

In the lighter corners of the legal universe, the long-suffering Wonka general counsel from Minor Character Theater has resurfaced. This time, he is handling compliance for John Hammond.<\/p>\n

The pairing is almost perfect. Willy Wonka’s legal headaches were legendary enough. Now the same fictional general counsel is being asked to manage the compliance risks of a man whose business plan involved opening a theme park full of genetically engineered dinosaurs. If anything, Hammond’s operation makes the chocolate factory look like a model of corporate governance.<\/p>\n

Compliance and risk management are rarely the most glamorous parts of legal practice<\/a>, but they are where the real danger lives. For the fictional GC in question, the job is impossibly broad: food safety, ingredient sourcing, supply chains, guest safety, intellectual property, and, in this case, the entirely foreseeable consequences of resurrecting extinct predators. “Life, uh, finds a way to sue” may not be the original line, but it captures the message perfectly.<\/p>\n

The legal profession has a habit of generating stories that feel like they belong to entirely different magazines. This week’s collection spans a state-level battle over the most fundamental mechanism of democracy, a federal civil rights case against one of the most selective law schools in the country, a Big Law lateral raid, a Texas expansion story, a new boutique matching the highest salaries in the profession, a dean proving his commitment with permanent ink, and a debate about artificial intelligence in legal scholarship. The common thread is simple: law is not static doctrine. It is a crowded, often contradictory arena where strategy, persistence, and timing all matter.<\/p>\n

The Missouri map<\/a> will probably be back before the Supreme Court. Berkeley’s admissions fight will produce more briefs, more arguments, and more attention. The partners who left Weil will keep advising clients, possibly on deals handled by associates paid according to the Milbank scale. Kirkland will keep growing in Texas. And somewhere, a dean is showing off a tattoo that means more to a law school’s morale than any ranking footnote. That is the thing about legal news: it never really ends. It just finds another way to appeal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Missouri Republicans have sent their gerrymander to the Supreme Court again. The Court, once more, did what it has done every time: declined to engage, effectively telling them to pound sand. The latest appeal is the newest entry in a redistricting drama that keeps returning to the high court docket, survives every denial, and refuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":83310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cards.overcentral.com\/cards\/en\/81944.png","fifu_image_alt":"Missouri Republicans Send Gerrymander to Supreme Court Again","footnotes":""},"categories":[40657],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-legal"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cards.overcentral.com\/cards\/en\/81944.png","fifu_image_alt":"Missouri Republicans Send Gerrymander to Supreme Court Again","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81944\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/overcentral.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}