First Amendment Coronado-ism

We are right now living through one of the most significant rollbacks in First Amendment law since the 1950s. To name a few examples:

• University employees are being fired for speech deemed critical of Charlie Kirk, in circumstances where it is almost impossible to argue that the terminations satisfy the Pickering standard for speech on matters of public concern.
• Legal immigrants are facing deportation for speech that opposes the current foreign policy orthodoxy of the American government; 
• The Attorney General is suggesting, in defiance of decades of well-settled law, that there is a "hate speech" exception to the First Amendment.
• The President is extorting settlements from critical media outlets via utterly frivolous defamation lawsuits, even as more and more conservative judges seek to roll back the landmark defamation decision in New York Times v. Sullivan in order to make such extortions even easier to launch.

There is irony to this. Until very recently, the constitutional law zeitgeist had been to raise alarms over "First Amendment Lochner-ism" -- the use of "First Amendment" claims as a cudgel to block governmental regulations (think 303 Creative or NIFLA v. Becerra). In this telling, our problem is a First Amendment that has spiraled out of control, a hypertrophic commitment to "free speech" that swallows up anything and everything (since what law doesn't, at some level, regulate "expression"?). In a world of First Amendment Lochner-ism, "rollback" was the furthest thing from anyone's minds.

However troublesome or misguided the First Amendment Lochner cases might be, one might think that their saving grace is that their expansiveness offers a bulwark against the sort of First Amendment regression we're seeing today. Yet few -- and I include myself in this -- seem to actually have confidence that these First Amendment principles will in fact serve as a meaningful shield now in the face of these new conservative assaults. It turns out that we don't have a hyperexpansive First Amendment, we have a First Amendment that implacably guards against enforcement of liberal policy objectives while pliable to the point of contortionism in order to accommodate conservative bugaboos.

This, too, reflects the Lochner era. Lochner itself refers to the Supreme Court's finding of a "liberty of contract" implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, which significantly curtailed states' authority to pass economic regulation. But the Lochner era also encompasses a series of rulings that similarly hamstrung federal authority to pass economic regulation -- limits ironically justified by reference to state's rights and respect for federalism. So, for example, in United States v. E.C. Knight, the Supreme Court struck down application of the Sherman Antitrust Act to a sugar refining monopoly, concluding that manufacturing was not "commerce" and so the law impinged on an arena reserved to the states.

Already the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose logic is apparent here: the feds can't pass economic regulations because of states rights, and the states can't pass economic regulations because it violates federal constitutional limits. But the apex of this logic came in a little-known Lochner era case, Coronado Coal Co, v. United Mine Workers, where the Supreme Court considered applying the Sherman Antitrust Act's prohibition on restraints on trade against union activity targeting a coal mine. Again, E.C. Knight had already concluded that the Sherman Act was unconstitutional as applied to employers (and subsequent cases had explicitly held that mining was akin to manufacturing in not being "commerce"). As bitter a pill as that might have been to swallow for the emergent labor movement, at the very least one might think that this logic would equally prevent leveraging the Sherman Act against collective action by employees (via unions). But no -- in Coronado, the Court concluded that the Sherman Antitrust Act, though not constitutionally enforceable against mining companies or manufacturing concerns, could be enforced against labor unions. The hyperexpansive Lochner rules suddenly were quite pliable once a union tried to be their beneficiary.

So I will suggest that today we do not have a regime of First Amendment Lochner-ism. We actually have First Amendment Coronado-ism. If Lochner stands for judges blocking democratic actors via hyperexpansive interpretations of constitutional law; Coronado highlights judges dropping those barriers the instant they pose an obstacle to their own faction's policy objectives. Lochner is bad law; Coronado is simple lawlessness.

And on a professional level, it has to be said that it is nearly impossible to teach Constitutional Law in a such an environment, at least not without collapsing into complete cynicism. I can defend to my students the position that the First Amendment protects even hateful speech; I can't defend the position that the First Amendment protects hateful speech in all circumstances except quoting Charlie Kirk's own words verbatim. I can defend to my students different standards of proof for defamation cases, I can't defend a rule that says it's defamation for a newspaper to criticize a presidential candidate. These developments breed contempt in my students for the entire notion of "free speech" as it's currently operationalized, and frankly I can't blame them for it -- they see it as a sucker's bet, a check they'll never be able to cash. And as someone who does believe in many of the classic free speech shibboleths it breaks my heart to see it.

A few days ago, Justice Barrett defended herself from Justice Jackson's allegation that the Court's only governing principle was "this Administration always wins" by arguing that the Court's rulings are not about this president but all presidents, and "so the decisions that we make about executive power today are the same ones that will still be precedent three or four presidents from now." Even if they were for "all presidents", these decisions would be catastrophic. But there is ample reason to be skeptical that these decisions do in fact augur a general theory of judicial deference to the executive branch, at least when Democrats occupy the office (quoth Scott Lemieux: "don't google 'Biden v. Nebraska'!").

When Justice Barrett pretends that she's enforcing a principle accessible to all, nobody believes her, and nobody should believe her. And just as I predicted the hyperexpansive religious liberty protections would suddenly find their limits when liberal Jews try to access them, so too do I strongly suspect we're going to see a significant rollback of supposed First Amendment Lochner-ism now that it stands in the way of letting conservatives crush speech they do not like.

The Legend No One Knew

At the start of Terence Crawford's history-making bout against Canelo Alvarez, Max Kellerman remarked that he'd never seen a fight with as dramatic stakes for one man's legacy as this match did for Crawford. If Crawford won, he'd cement himself as his generation's greatest fighter. If he lost, he'd be written off as a guy who couldn't quite reach greatness in his biggest fight.

The downside I thought was a bit harsh. But the upside was right, as was the overall tenor: A Crawford victory would rocket him to the top of the all-time greats list; a loss and he'd be viewed as a very good fighter but not one making any major historical mark.

Whatever dispute I and Kellerman might have is moot, of course. Crawford soundly outboxed Canelo, winning a unanimous decision and instantly making his status as one of the greatest to ever lace up gloves inarguable.

It is amazing, when one thinks about it, how Crawford got to this point while essentially -- as far as the wider world is concerned -- being an unknown. Terence Crawford is not a household name. I don't think I've ever seen him in a beer commercial or doing a cameo Hollywood appearance. But he has quietly, decisively, been a dominant force in the sport for over a decade.

This fight against Alvarez reportedly marked the first time Crawford had been a betting underdog since his 2013 match against Breidis Prescott. Though not the most scintillating performance, that fight was a coming out party for Bud. He came in on short notice as, more-or-less. a nobody -- a decent amateur pedigree but not from a boxing hotbed (Omaha, Nebraska) and without much hype behind him. Boxing fans, frankly, are familiar with this archetype -- glossy record but Podunk background equals soft-touch for a bigger name still riding off his Amir Khan upset. Instead, Crawford cruised to an easy victory, soundly outboxing his Columbian opponent -- but not in a way that instantly suggested "a star is born."

Yet from then on out, Crawford was nothing but dominant. He dropped down to lightweight to win a title against Ricky Burns, and from that point forward never left the upper echelons of the sport. If Prescott was the last time that Crawford was a betting underdog, we could also ask when was the last time Crawford seemed to be truly challenged in a fight. For me, that was the very early rounds against Yuriorkis Gamboa -- but Crawford turned that fight around with a vengeance, dropping Gamboa four times from the fifth round forward en route to a ninth round stoppage. And after that, can one remember a point where Crawford genuinely, seriously seemed to be in trouble in the ring? It is no disrespect to Canelo to say it didn't happen last night -- not that Crawford dominated Alvarez, but he always seemed in control, always seemed just a little bit better.

How can one be so dominant, for so long, and have nobody outside the sport's insiders really know you? Part of it was temperament -- as noted, he never seemed interested in making himself into a celebrity. But even in the ring, Crawford's was a deceiving appearances sort of domination. He was never viewed as a knockout artist, even though he had plenty of fighters. He wasn't seen as a search-and-destroy punisher, but he was a ferocious finisher. 

What he had was a preternatural sense of control, coupled with one of the meanest streaks I've ever seen in the ring. Crawford liked to beat people up. And he was very good at it.

Look at the cast of characters whose careers Crawford essentially ended, at least at the upper echelon of the sport. On his way to unifying the junior welterweight division, Crawford demolished both Viktor Postol and Julius Indongo; both were undefeated, both became essential non-entities in boxing going forward. Felix Diaz had one more win after Crawford beat him in 2017; Jeff Horn only won twice. Jose Benavidez was never the same after Crawford was through with him. Amir Khan and Kell Brook were basically sent into a swan song against each other after Crawford violently dispatched both. He sent Shawn Porter into retirement; he may have done the same to Errol Spence. These are very, very good fighters. Crawford didn't just beat them. He wrecked them.

And yet even then, many thought this fight against Canelo was a gimmick. Crawford had unified at 147, and then he did what a lot of folks did in pursuing a vanity title at 154 pounds. This is no disrespect to Crawford; it's a career move we've seen from many of the greats around his size. Floyd Mayweather did it; Oscar de la Hoya did it, Manny Pacquiao did it. And I don't think we're disrespecting Israil Madrimov to point out this his name isn't quite in the same class as Errol Spence or Shawn Porter or Kell Brook. But jumping up another two weight classes on top of that? To face the biggest star in the sport and a man who was still one of the pound-for-pound elites? It seemed absurd. It seemed like a cash grab.

It was neither. It was greatness.

At the end of the fight, Crawford dedicated his win to the nobodies. For so long, despite all of his accomplishments, Terence Crawford was one of those nobodies. Now, through sheer talent and force of will, he has made himself into somebody the sport will never forget.

On Hostility to Religious Views (for Non-Religious Reasons)

The other day, the Second Circuit in Mid Vermont Christian School v. Saunders ruled in favor of a Christian private school in Vermont which had been suspended from state extracurricular competitions after it refuses to allow its girls basketball team to play against a team with a transgender athlete. The school averred that playing such a game would force it to affirm that transgender girls are girls; the relevant Vermont agency decided this was discriminatory and expelled the school. The court, in turn, concluded that Vermont's actions evinced hostility to the school's religious views and thereby violated the First Amendment.

There are some complex factual issues in this case. But there are aspects of the court's opinion that I think have to be wrong, in terms of how it treats the question of "hostility toward the school’s religious beliefs." To put the matter bluntly: people (and the government) are allowed to have hostility towards a school's (or anybody's) "religious beliefs", and such hostility cannot itself be a First Amendment violation. What they cannot do is have hostility to these beliefs because they're religious, or hostility specifically tied to them being held by a particular religious group. But it cannot be the case that hostility to a given belief, where that hostility has nothing to do with religion and extends to any holder of the belief (religious or not), becomes unconstitutional religious hostility just because this particular holder of the belief believes it for religious reasons.

The court recognized that a "neutral" law or policy of "general applicability" does not become unconstitutional because it happens to impinge upon (even a sincere) religious belief. But it said, following Masterpiece Cakeshop, that a neutral law can still fail if it is not applied "in a manner neutral toward and tolerant of . . . religious beliefs." Fine, as far as it goes. But the way the court identifies what it means to be "intolerant" towards religious beliefs at times verges on suggesting that anytime one defends (as a general, neutral principle) a position that is (in the particular case at hand) antagonistic to a proffered religious belief, one is displaying unconstitutional "hostility" -- and if that's true, then it is functionally impossible for there to be a "neutral" law in the first place.

Let's take some examples. Suppose someone asks for a Kosher meal at a school event to substitute for the planned ham and cheese sandwich. The chef is derisive: "I can understand ethical objections to eating meat or other foods, but I'm not going to cook up a new meal just because your fantasy Sky God says so." That's hostility to religious belief -- the same (basic) belief is viewed disdainfully because it emanates from religion.

Compare a situation where someone explains "at our college, we prohibit interracial dating." You respond and say that is racist and discriminatory. They then say, "it's our religious belief." You respond "I don't care -- it's still racist and discriminatory." At one level, you are of course expressing "hostility toward the school's religious belief." At another level, your hostility has nothing to do with it being a religious belief; an it's a hostility you are entirely entitled to hold. The First Amendment simply cannot mean that this sort of "hostility" is constitutionally problematic. If it were, then it would be impossible to defend a neutral and generally applicable rule against racial discrimination in any circumstance where someone wanted to racially discriminate for religious reasons, since the very act of explaining why the rule against racial discrimination is important would be reclassified as anti-religious antagonism.

So in the present case, the critical question ultimately should be whether the state's antagonism towards the anti-trans beliefs of Mid Vermont are due to those beliefs being religious, or whether the state is equally "intolerant" of those beliefs no matter who holds them, with the fact that Mid Vermont happened to be a religious believer being wholly incidental and irrelevant. As alluded to, there is some evidence in this case that points in the former direction (I think it's weak, but Masterpiece Cakeshop made a mountain out of a molehill of weak evidence of religious hostility that other minorities wish they could access). But my main problem with this opinion is that it strongly suggests that the First Amendment problem would be the same even if we were unambiguously in the latter camp.

Consider one of the critical excerpts, from how the Vermont agency explained why it did not find compelling Mid Vermont's complaint that playing with transgender athletes would "endorse" beliefs about gender it wished to reject:

Participating in an athletic contest does not signify a common belief with the opponent. Brigham Young University athletes do not compromise their Mormon faith—or endorse Catholicism—when they play Notre Dame. The act of playing together on a basketball court does not imply any approval of the values or beliefs of the opponent.

The court analyzed that passage thusly:

That statement did not just question Mid Vermont’s religious sincerity. It also attacked the validity of Mid Vermont’s objection. But “[a]n individual claiming violation of free exercise rights need only demonstrate that the beliefs professed are sincerely held and in the individual’s own scheme of things, religious.” That is because “courts should not inquire into the centrality of a litigant’s religious beliefs.” .... Put simply, the VPA may not impose discipline based on its view that Mid Vermont's religious objection was "wrong."

This is, I'm sorry to say, deeply confused analysis. The sincerity/validity divide goes to whether or not Mid Vermont's claim is actually a religious one, and it's absolutely correct that the state has no business telling Mid Vermont that it's claim is a "wrong" understanding of Christianity. But that's not what the state was doing. The state isn't saying that Mid Vermont's logic is wrong as a religious proposition, it's saying it's wrong as a general proposition. In that circumstance, of course the state is entitled to "impose discipline" because it thinks the objection was wrong. Vermont has a policy, Mid Vermont thinks that policy is wrong, Vermont thinks Mid Vermont's objection doesn't hold water and so continues to apply the policy. That's completely anodyne, and it doesn't change because Mid Vermont's objection stems from its sincere religious beliefs. Under the Court's logic, any time any actor raises any sincere religious objection to any policy, they must win automatically because the act of rejecting the objection would suggest the religious objection was "wrong". Again -- I can't stress this enough -- religious objections can be wrong, so long as the reasons the adjudicating body thinks they're wrong are not themselves based on religion or religious hostility.

One last note: there may be circumstances where a policy is genuinely neutral and generally applicable, and not motivated or applied with religious hostility, but should still contain exceptions for religious objectors. I won't comment on whether this case is one of them. I'll only say that such cases are not, for the most part, religious hostility cases, and the problem in those cases is not one of a lack of neutrality. The outcome of Mid Vermont can, I think, be debated, but the logic of it I think is severely misguided (and, it must be said, I think is primarily traceable to courts giving super-protected status to anti-LGBTQ ideologies in a manner they've very consciously rejected in the racial discrimination context).

Who's Talking About Including Political Diversity on Campus?

Many people hate DEI (no news there). Many of those same people also are emphatic that universities must do more to prioritize intellectual and political diversity on campus. And in the overlapping diagram, it is taken for granted that the DEI apparatus is apathetic if not antagonistic to the project of promoting political diversity. It's not even something argued for; it is a presupposition that forms part of the foundation explaining why DEI is unjust.

And yet, in my experience, the academic site where one is most likely to see discussion about and concern over political diversity is ... in the DEI space.

We had our first faculty meeting of the year yesterday, which included the various faculty committees getting our formal charges. I'm chairing the law school's DEI committee (we're still allowed to have one, I guess). One thing last year's committee did was commission a "campus climate" survey, and the questions (on feelings of inclusion, prevalence of harassment, etc.) included ones keyed to political differences. The questions regarding how to facilitate a campus environment that's inclusive political diversity emanated primarily out of the DEI committee.

That's not because the rest of the faculty is apathetic to the issue. Rather, most issues in academia -- including important issues, including issues which predominantly occupy the public's attention when they deign to think about academia -- don't get thought of that much by most professors, most of the time, for the simple reason that we only have so much time and there is a lot to think about. So we delegate and we divide labor, and the result is that many important issues are reliant on being "picked up" by a specified office or committee within an academic space. And in my experience, the space that "picks up" the issue of intellectual diversity in general and potential feelings of alienation experience by political minorities in particular are the DEI offices and officers -- a role that is entirely overlooked given the near-universally believed dogma that DEI officers are implacably opposed to intellectual diversity in general and conservatives in particular. 

We saw a version of this in the fallout of the Kyle Duncan incident at Stanford, where DEI Dean Tirien Steinbach took the fall for how she managed student protests at a Federalist Society event. Almost entirely occluded in the hatefest Steinbach endured as a supposed ideological commissar of DEI wokeness was the fact that the Federalist Society had identify Steinbach as one of its few allies on campus; a figure who stood out precisely because she was invested in ensuring that FedSoc could participate fully and equally in campus life. It is hard to imagine a clear illustration of this paradox -- the assumption that DEI is the enemy of political diversity and inclusivity; the reality that the DEI official was one of the most active proponents of political diversity and inclusivity -- than this.

Now, to be sure, the political form of "inclusion" isn't straightforward -- and in particular, it doesn't map on especially well to how we think about "inclusion" vis-a-vis ascriptive identities like race or religion. Ascriptive identities are not typically thought of as being appropriately subjected to normative criticism. A place where significant members of the population took positions of the form "I think it is illegitimate/immoral/wrong/incorrect to be Black" would be failing to be inclusive of racial difference in an obvious way. I imagine virtually all would think the same regarding religion ("It's wrong to be Jewish"); I'd say the same thing about sexual and gender identity (though here of course many conservatives would disagree, and very much want to defend the legitimacy of those who assert "it is wrong to be gay or trans").

By contrast, ideological orientations are defined by content that by definition is properly the subject of ongoing normative contestation. To be conservative (or liberal, or Marxist, or MAGA) is to endorse a cluster of normative positions which others will inevitably judge as right or wrong, correct or incorrect, or legitimate or illegitimate. A university could not function at the most basic level if members are not allowed to make those judgments (what would it even mean to say that the law school's mission is thwarted when its members make normative appraisals of ideological positions?). Unlike "I think it is wrong to be Jewish", statements of the form "I think it is wrong to oppose gay marriage" or "I think it is wrong to abolish qualified immunity" cannot be viewed as inherently problematic in a university space -- those are exactly the sorts of statements we expect to see, and there is no intrinsic foul just because one's peers think you've taken the wrong side of an ideological controversy.

This doesn't mean there isn't any space to consider how persons who take ideologically dissident positions in a given space can or should be "included". One thing we can (and I think should) say is that healthy respect for intellectual pluralism means we should be tolerant of a wide range of positions on publicly contested issues, even those we disagree with, and generally relate to such positions via the "normal" processes of respectful dialogue, debate, and consideration. Some think we shouldn't abolish qualified immunity, others we should, but even if "abolish qualified immunity" is the consensus position on campus, we should still be willing to think about the issue critically and debate it in a manner that respects the divergent views. Cultivating that sort of respect for ideological plurality seems very healthy, and hopefully can alleviate some feelings of exclusion conservative students might face. But notice that this isn't how I think we envision what "inclusion" looks like for ascriptive identities -- I do not think our goal with respect to antisemitism should be "some people think Jews are okay, and some don't, but the important thing is that we make sure that persons with all range of views on 'are Jews okay' are able to openly debate and discuss the issue." The sorts of interventions that make sense along the axis of ideological orientation are ill-equipped to address racial or religious (or, I think, sex/gender) identity.

So the issue is not straightforward, and the people who act like it is are selling you a bill of goods. The issue of inclusivity towards political diversity on campus is a complex one and one that requires serious thought. But overwhelmingly, the people who are thinking about it in a serious and systematic way -- not as rabble-rousers, not as part of a bad-faith gotcha game trying to sabotage the university -- are found in DEI offices. And I wish they got more credit for the hard work they're putting in.

Reasonable Suspect

In 2016, I published an article titled "Unsuspecting" in the Boston University Law Review that explored how a constitutionally "suspect" classification (like race) might lose that status. In its conclusion, I argued that suspect classification was doing more harm than good for the groups it purportedly protected. It had become only a tool to strike down legislation that sought to achieve racial equality.

I termed this dynamic "partial racial politics". Far from representing a near per se rule against de jure wielding of race, the actual doctrine is that "government can legislate on race freely, except when it expressly seeks to combat ongoing racial inequality." "Suspect classification doctrine is a vestigial artifact that only comes into play when racial minorities appear to be winning the political game." The government relying on race to cut off Black communities from White neighborhoods, or to decide who to execute? Supposed "strict scrutiny" falls silent. Too many minority students going to college, or voting, or entering into political office? Then strict scrutiny and a commitment to radical colorblindness suddenly comes roaring back. We might as well 

I wrote that article, again, in 2016, and while living in California. I presented it in Louisiana, where one bit of pushback was basically to argue that the risks of giving up suspect classification for race look different in California versus Louisiana. Just how confident was I, really, that suspect classification doctrine was no longer deterring any sort of racist legislation? Who knows what sorts of White supremacist malice would be unleashed if the "democratic" branches were unshackled once more?

Today, in a typical unreasoned shadow docket opinion, the Supreme Court (by a likely 6-3 vote) cleared the Trump administration to use racial profiling as part of its immigration enforcement raids. Racial background can validly be part of the basis for forming reasonable suspicion that a person is in the United States without legal documentation. The only Justice to write substantively in defense of this atrocity was Justice Kavanaugh, who suggested that undocumented immigrants have no legally protected interest in "evading questioning" and documented immigrants and U.S. citizens suffer no material injury because "the questioning in those circumstances is typically brief, and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States." What's a little race-based "stop and show me your papers" in the land of the free?

I look at today's decision, and I can't decide whether the conclusion to my 2016 paper was correct. On the one hand, the Court since then has grown only more aggressive in declaring an implacable commitment to colorblindness in the aforementioned circumstances of too many Black and brown people going to school or voting. The juxtaposition of those commitments, chest-thumpingly backed by an ironclad commitment to "colorblindness", against the willingness to sanction "color-consciousness" when it is deployed as a tool to terrorize immigrants (or those suspected of being immigrants, or those the government simply wants to terrorize under the guise of regulating immigration), seems to be a crystalline manifestation of the "partial racial politics" dynamic I identified in my article.

And yet, my Louisiana interlocutor's critique also feels more salient than ever before. In a 2025 where the government is not even nominally constrained from race-based policymaking, what horrors lie just beneath the surface, waiting to emerge? It somehow seems to simultaneously be true that the Supreme Court is doing nothing to stop (indeed, is the handmaiden of) the tidal wave of White supremacist fury crashing over the polity, and also that if we explicitly told the federal judiciary to butt out things could only get worse -- and worse in ways so terrifying I struggle to name them.

I don't have a resolution to this dilemma. We live in impossible times, where nakedly White Supremacist Senators align with a White Supremacist presidency and a White Supremacist Supreme Court to wage war on American constitutional liberty. Against this onslaught, what doctrine could ever hope to save us?

A Question About Extradition

Hypothetical question:

Suppose a U.S. citizen kills the citizen of another country on the high seas. Suppose further that the American judicial system refuses to impose legal liability on the citizen (e.g., because they conclude his actions weren't a crime, or they find some immunity doctrine bars the prosecution). The victim's country, by contrast, does want to prosecute.

Can the United States extradite the citizen to the other nation as a way of getting around the functional immunity provided by our own courts? (Does the "high seas" part of the hypothetical matter? What if the foreign national was killed or injured on U.S. soil?).

Purely a hypothetical question, of course.

Nathaniel Updates

What's new in the world? Boooo!

What's new with my adorable baby? Yaaaay!

Here are some of the latest developments on the Nathaniel front (for the record, he's 7.5 months):

Sleeping: He remains an absolutely incredible sleeper. Down at 7 PM, always sleeps through the night. I give him a bottle at around midnight, but he dreamfeeds it. We've even mostly reached the point where we don't have to rock him to sleep -- just plop him in his crib and he'll handle himself. If I die in the next few months, know it's likely that a jealous parent assassinated me.

Rolling over: He did this several months ago and then kind of just, stopped. Well, he's started again in earnest, especially in his crib. This does have one unfortunate consequence though -- he doesn't always seem to realize he can roll back over (from stomach to back). The rare times he wakes up crying, it's usually because he got on his stomach and is mad about it.

Bouncing: We got one of those bounce slings for him to sit in while we are in the kitchen and it is his favorite thing in the world. Hugs from mom and dad? Eh, take it or leave it. Time in the bounce sling? Forever, please!

Quiet: I took Nathaniel out to visit some art galleries the other day, and the gallerist remarked that he was the quietest baby she'd ever met. Which checks out -- when we're out of the house, he is the mellowest guy you'll ever meet. He's alert, and interested in what's happening around him -- but he scarcely makes a peep (or a smile).

(Interest in) crawling: He's not crawling yet, but he's definitely interested. We're seeing more knee shimmies and butt waggles when he's on his stomach, especially if there's a toy in front of him he wants to reach. To be honest though, I'm of two minds of how much of a mover he's going to be. On the one hand, he loves to move (see "bouncing"). On the other hand, he's often happy to sit quietly without moving for long stretches (see "quiet"). So I can imagine him zooming around the room at the first opportunity, and I can also imagine him just hanging out because, like, why is over there any better than over here?