JoshBlackman.com 1,000th Post Spectacular Extravaganza Top 10 Countdown!

July 21st, 2010

I am very proud to announce that JoshBlackman.com has just hit post #1,000. In honor of this momentous occasion, I figured I would feature a countdown of my top 10 favorite blog posts of all time.

10. Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! JoshBlogs.WordPress.com Is Live! – This was my first blog post on September 29, 2009. For those of you who are long-time fans, originally I blogged at joshblogs.wordpress.com, and only moved to JoshBlackman.com on November 24, 2009. I launched this blog without knowing what the heck I was doing, but looking back, I am very glad I started to blog.

9. Constitutional Places: A New Coffee Table Book from the Harlan Institute for Constitutional Studies. – One of my other initiatives this year was to co-develop an illustrated book titled Constitutional Places, Constitutional faces. This book assembles photographs and narratives of the stories behind famous constitutional law cases. This project has yielded some absolutely amazing photographs, never-before-seen records, and has allowed me to interview some pretty cool people. I can’t wait to see the book in print. Stay tuned.

8. Pic: My JHNGALT License Plate. The Only Way to Go Galt! – I’ll let the picture speak for itself. Needless to say, this license plate makes me laugh every time I see it.

7. I will be a Teaching Fellow at Penn State Law during the 2010-11 Academic School Year – During the spring 2010 semester I was fortunate to search as a teaching assistant for Judge Gibson at the Penn State Law School, and was able to give several lectures to the students. I was even more fortunate to be rewarded with a teaching fellowship by the law school for the 2010-11 school year. I can’t wait!

6. JoshVlog: Interview with Atlas in Rockefeller Center. Who is John Galt? – So I was visiting Rockefeller Center with my parents and saw the Atlas statue. With my flip camera in hand, I figured, why not make an impromptu video! Though the production value is quite poor, I was happy with it.

5. McDonald v. Chicago Instant Analysis – The evening before oral arguments in McDonald, I spent the night sleeping on the sidewalk in order to ensure that I would receive a seat. Within minutes after exiting oral arguments, I blogged “The Court was not at all receptive to arguments on Privileges or Immunities but incorporation on Due Process is a slam dunk.” This was the first reaction to McDonald anywhere on the blogosphere, and you found it here first. This post has one of the most thorough analysis anywhere of oral arguments.

4. FantasySCOTUS.net Predictions of the 10th Justice– Relying on the votes of members of the FantasySCOTUS.net Fantasy League I launched, with the invaluable assistance of Corey Carpenter, I was able to generate predictions for almost all of the Supreme Court cases the Court considered this term with a decent degree of accuracy. Additionally, I called Elena Kagan as the nominee. This was an exciting project that spawned from a simple idea to over 5,000 members, and paved the way for my non-profit, the Harlan Institute.

3. Justice O’Connor’s iCivics and Harlan Institute Announce New Partnership – This past year I co-founded the Harlan Institute.The Harlan Institute’s mission is to bring a stylized law school experience into the high school classroom to ensure that our next generation of leaders has a proper understanding of our most fundamental laws. I spent quite some time working with the fantastic team at Justice O’Connor’s iCivics, and we developed a robust partnership to help teach the next generation about the Constitution and the Supreme Court. I am so proud of this initiative.

2. HLS Flashback from 1900: Student goes insane during Con Law Final, Dies from “Overstudy” – By far, this was my most popular blog post of all time. With links from Volokh, Above The Law, and thousands of facebook and twitter accounts, this post went viral and hit 30,000 unique pageviews in 2 days. Absolutely hilarious too.

1. Question Presented in 2nd Amendment Case Asks About Privileges or Immunities Clause – This is really where it all started. Before this post I had no real involvement in McDonald v. Chicago other than a fleeting interest in guns. After this post, it was full steam ahead. In this post, way back on September 30, I began to discuss my idea for Pandora’s Box. About 3 months later, I turned this initial blog post into a 90 page article with Ilya Shapiro published in the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. If I could locate the exact moment when I knew I had something cool, it was this blog post.

I hope to keep bringing everyone the highest quality legal analysis, humor, and insight. Thanks for visiting.