MORE ON BOGREN VS. HAWLEY: Ed Whelan at NRO:

With all respect for Senator Hawley, I am less enamored than others are of his criticism of Bogren.

For starters, from my review of the exchange, Bogren was making exactly the point of principle that I have made: To argue that a principle that applies to A also applies to B is not to “compare” A and B or to assert that they are equivalent.

Further, Bogren made it clear that he was advancing legal arguments on behalf of his client, not expressing his personal views. (Hawley seems to have understood the exchange otherwise.) Bogren’s arguments strike me as exactly what you’d expect from someone representing his client.

Do conservatives really want to embrace the general proposition that arguments that a lawyer makes on behalf of a client should, without more, be held against the lawyer? That’s a proposition that, apart from being unsound, could redound to the detriment of conservative nominees who have defended religious liberty or pro-life legislation in unpopular contexts.

And here’s the link to my Volokh post on Hawley’s demagoguery.