There was a disruption in the Force recently, the size of which has not been seen since the Death Star obliterated Alderaan in the first (or fourth if you are a purist nerd) Star Wars. The cries came mostly from influencers and doom scrollers. Tik Tok was gone.

Internet users young and old were inconsolable. How could an entire portion of their lives, one where they spent so much time, suddenly disappear? Somewhere in the internet void, Myspace users looked over their cups of coffee (Folgers, black)  at their monitors and smiled. “You’ve got mail” pinged in the background.

The law that killed Tik Tok was upheld by the highest court in the land, and that was that. Until it wasn’t, of course. Unlike Alderaan, Tik Tok came back. The sigh of relief from influencers and the Fecklessness of TikTokkers was palpable. (The group is called a Fecklessness of Tiktokkers because a “living in your parents’ basement playing video games and eating Cheetos all day of Tiktokkers” doesn’t roll off the tongue.)

I don’t recall such a reprieve in my time as a lawyer. Usually a law is repealed only after years of litigation or cultural change, not within hours of the Supreme Court having blessed it. Never before has a law been rolled back by the very politicians who enacted it, in the shadow of their success.

I probably shouldn’t be surprised. Everything now moves faster, except old lawyers. That is only partly due to our physical maladies. Lawyers are taught on case law that dates back decades, if not centuries. We are trained to respect precedent, and that changes to the law are incremental.  Are we coming to a place where laws are obsolete before the ink dries on the advance sheets? I asked an artificial intelligence app what to expect in the law next, but gave up on an answer when the little “thinking” circle kept spinning.

Some say the law and even our Constitution are an afterthought to politicians. The intention of the Founding Fathers is a trope to bring out when it suits certain folks.  Too bad I can’t get back all the hours I spent studying constitutional law in law school. In fairness, there weren’t that many hours if my grade was any indication, and it was.  I was a slacker ahead of my time, before smart phones and apps made it so easy. Social media to the Founding Fathers was limited to handbills and stump speeches, or a lute player singing in the public. Even the stumps are now gone. I could be wrong about the lutes.

If there is one thing that all lawyers dread equally, besides billable hour audits, it is uncertainty. It is impossible to prepare a case, let alone advise a client, without some understanding of the state of the law and a reasonable expectation of what it will be. We are used to changes when the legislature meets of course, but this feels different. The outcry from lawyers is significantly smaller than was that of the Tiktokkers.

I would fret about this, but it is more important to watch videos of cats riding robot vacuum cleaners and dogs climbing trees. I’m downloading my favorites to floppy disks while I still can.

©2025 With All Due Respect. Spencer Farris is the founding partner of The S.E. Farris Law Firm in St Louis, Missouri. Comments or criticisms about this column may be sent c/o this publication or directly to him via email at farris@farrislaw.net. He will respond once he gets his TRS80 back online.