Rule of Law

A Coming Mobocracy?

Various commentators, mostly from the conservative side but also a few sober-minded liberals, are expressing concern that a mob mentality—coming especially from the political left—is taking hold in America. They point to the disturbing evidence: clashes between groups in Charlottesville and Portland, Antifa commandeering busy streets in Portland and attacking motorists while police look the … Read more

Why California Can’t Be a Sanctuary State

It is paradoxical that super-progressive California would have recourse to a concept of medieval law to support its revolt against federal immigration law enforcement. It is even more bizarre that the super-secular Golden State would consider itself a kind of Church with authority higher than that of the government and declare itself a holy and … Read more

The Many Assaults on the Rule of Law

A central principle of the American Founding—in fact, one that great thinkers have held as central for any democratic republic—is the rule of law. We often hear the phrase that we are a nation in which “the rule of law and not of men” prevails. This is another way of saying that law—applicable equally to … Read more

The Collapse of the Rule of Law

Another day, and more mayhem, with no end in sight. Five police officers assassinated, others wounded, by snipers at a Black Lives Matter protest, after two black men were killed recently in dubious circumstances by (white) police officers. And, of course, dozens have been killed by bombings in the Middle East, Sunni versus Shiite, and … Read more

The Left Replaces Rule of Law with Rule of Politics

A review in Washington Lawyer magazine of U.S. Supreme Court justice Stephen Breyer’s recent book, The Court and the World: American Law and the New Global Realities declared that he “makes a ringing defense of the rule of law.” That was a curious conclusion, in light of how Breyer—one of the most preeminent leftists in … Read more

On the Arbitrary Enforcement of Civil Rights Laws

A recent national news story told of the sentencing to prison of a former University of Mississippi student who, after excessive drinking and with a couple of fraternity brothers, during the night put a noose and Confederate battle emblem on the campus statue of racial justice hero James Meredith. Graeme Phillip Harris received six months … Read more

Governors Who Properly Use or Misuse Executive Power

I have written in this column about how in these times when our traditional liberties and even such natural rights as religious freedom are under siege, we need to look to executive power—exercised in the right way—to help us. In recent months we have seen striking examples of how noted state governors in varying ways … Read more

On Our Dysfunctional Criminal Justice System

Criminal law and criminal justice in the United States may reasonably be said to be in a state of crisis in many different aspects: the increasing amount of criminal law, the kinds of things it tries to address, its enforcement, the level of criminal activity, and punishment. The sub-title of a book published by the … Read more

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