Welcome Back, Marty Lederman

I awoke this morning to excellent news: Marty Lederman, with this post over at Balkinization and this post at SCOTUSblog, has returned to the blogosphere. Marty, for those Lawfare readers who do not know his work, had to suspend his legal blogging when he went back into public service a few years back. Though I'm sure he served with great distinction, this was--as I have repeatedly told him--a terrible trade for the public. Marty's blogging, in my view at least, represented a foundational moment in the legal academy's relationship with online media. It served as a vivid demonstration that real-time commentary on current events could simultaneously inform other people's commentary with intellectually rigorous legal analysis, mix it up with journalists, occasionally break news, and could do all of this in a fashion that respected the highest academic standards. That is, it demonstrated that one could merge legal scholarship with news commentary in a fashion that added value to both. Marty's example was one of two dominant influences on this blog (Eugene Volokh's has been the other). It is a pleasure to welcome him back.