Fred Jacob
Dad, labor lawyer, GW Law adjunct prof, patriot, pannapictagraphist, he/his. W&M Law/Brandeis alum, first gen college. Opinions are my own and not the views of my employers. www.fredbjacob.com
- What's old is new again: As in 1948, hoping Santa loads your stockings with civil rights, full and fair employment, low-cost housing, lower prices, and fair labor laws. Happy holidays to you all!
- Without commenting on substance, the most surprising thing about attending argument in Trump v. Slaughter in person this morning was how short the bar line was to get in! Doesn’t everyone find admin law as exciting as I do? (Spring photo for algorithm.)
- Thanks @emilysbremer.bsky.social, @beaubaumann.bsky.social, @jedshug.bsky.social, for dropping great papers in the last couple of days about Humphrey's Executor and administrative adjudication that perfectly fill those pesky "ADD CITE HERE" footnotes in my current article draft.
- From 1950 to today, we still strive for jobs we can be thankful for. Happy Thanksgiving to you all, and especially to the public servants who make the promise of a better life real for our country and its people every working day. (Image courtesy of the National Labor Service, AJC Archives).
- That feeling when you're writing an article, have a great idea, then find someone who has reached the same conclusion, and you don't know whether that's good because it reinforces your point or bad because it might look like you're "borrowing" their idea...

- More dissents like this please. Short, punchy, and to the point.
- Lawyer and labor friends: Thursday! Thursday! Thursday! At the Thunderdome! "The Role of Unions and Labor-Management Relations in Promoting American Democracy"! Okay, not at the Thunderdome, but on Zoom! To register, email lerachicagochapter@gmail.com.
- Reposted by Fred JacobThe right-wing backlash against #Superman this week got me thinking: Has this happened before? That led to the discovery of these headline — from April 1940, when the official newspaper of the SS took umbrage at the comic book hero and ridiculed its creators. My how times change ...
- So excited to read this 1968 biography of Senator Robert Wagner, the legislative father of the New Deal. It arrived on my doorstep yesterday thanks to unionized federal postal workers, whose representation wouldn’t have been possible without Senator Wagner’s National Labor Relations Act…
- In 1958, NLRB Chair Boyd Leedom penned an article opposing judicializing administrative process by creating an Article III administrative court. Interesting stuff, given today’s debates. Far cooler, though, is that the NLRB library’s copy of the article is autographed! Leedom v. Kyne nerds unite!
- I don’t know who put these in the break room, but my dentist and I thank you.
- This is how union officials filed an anti-communist affidavit with the NLRB in 1954, in case you were wondering. If they didn’t, their union lost its right to file for NLRB election petitions or unfair labor practice charges.
- (Congress repealed this provision of the NLRA in 1959—perhaps because it was constitutionally questionable or perhaps because it had already done its job of rooting out communists from American labor.)