May 21, 2013
by James Hitchcock
The most astonishing fact about contemporary American politics—that there is not a single Protestant on the Supreme Court, while there are six Catholics—goes largely unremarked, even though on the surface it seems to fulfill the most dire predictions made at the time of John F. Kennedy’s ascendancy in 1960. On the other side, the fact [...]
April 12, 2013
by Austin Ruse
In these dirty dishonest days you expect your political enemies deliberately to misstate your positions. How positively Medieval to restate your opponent’s position better than he can before demolishing it. Now is the day of the straw man, and the flimsier the better. While you expect this from your enemies, it’s disheartening to see 80% [...]
April 10, 2013
by Kenneth D. Whitehead
Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the two cases concerning so-called same-sex “marriage,” the California Proposition 8 case and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) case, on which the high court recently heard two days of testimony. However, some of the comments made by several justices in the course of the [...]
April 4, 2013
by Sean Fitzpatrick
Listening to arguments by Theodore Olson, the lawyer challenging Proposition 8, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said this: “You’re asking for us to go into uncharted waters, and you can play with that metaphor. There’s a wonderful destination or there’s a cliff.” Last month the United States Supreme Court heard two cases challenging the oldest [...]
March 29, 2013
by Austin Ruse
Many years ago I sat with Justice Scalia at a Catholic prayer breakfast in New York City. As we ate, a waiter approached, leaned into Scalia and handed him a FedEx package. This was suspicious since FedEx does not deliver on Sunday. Scalia said, “Must be a bomb” and tossed it unopened into the middle [...]
March 28, 2013
by George Neumayr
Liberal activists respect neither natural law nor positive law. What God and the people have joined together, they feel perfectly free to put asunder. Marriage, by their lights, is a purely human institution that they can make and remake at will. This unholy cause has been on display during Holy Week at the Supreme Court, [...]
March 19, 2013
by Robert R. Reilly
Next week, the Supreme Court will begin its consideration of two cases, one concerning the Defense of Marriage Act and the other California’s Proposition 8 Amendment, which may settle in the near-term the questions concerning the constitutionality of same-sex marriage. Both the Marriage Act and Proposition 8 define marriage as being between a man and [...]
February 18, 2013
by Austin Ruse
During his confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court, Judge Robert Bork said one of his attractions to the court was that it would be an “intellectual feast.” There is certainly a feast going over the impending Supreme Court consideration of same-sex marriage. A mountain of friend-of-the-court briefs has landed in the hands of the Supreme [...]
July 18, 2012
by George Weigel
The Supreme Court’s minor mistakes have few systemic consequences. But when the Supremes make a big mistake, the error tends to seep throughout the entire political process, poisoning everything in its path. That was what happened with the Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision, which intensified the passions and accelerated the dynamics that led to the [...]
April 17, 2012
by John A. Sparks
President Obama recently complained about the possibility of the Supreme Court striking down Obamacare. He used the term “unprecedented” and was critical of “judicial activism” engaged in by “unelected” judges. In so doing, he showed his monumental misunderstanding of American government, which should be of concern to every American who values constitutional government. Let’s take [...]
January 25, 2012
by Judge Andrew Napolitano
Last week marked the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted abortions. Prior to that case, abortion was regulated by each state, and most of them prohibited it unless two physicians could certify that the baby growing in the mother's womb would likely result in the death of [...]
January 25, 2012
by Steve Chapman
Barack Obama, the law professor who railed against the Bush administration's disdain for privacy, has been to civil liberties what the Hindenburg was to air travel: an unexpected debacle. Time after time, he has chosen to uphold government power at the expense of individual protections. Warrantless wiretapping in national security cases? For it. Detaining [...]
January 18, 2012
by Jacob Sullum
Winning Our Future, a "super PAC" that supports Newt Gingrich's bid for the Republican presidential nomination, is spending more than $1.2 million on ads in South Carolina, which holds its primary on Saturday. That fact requires some explanation. First, why would anyone want Newt Gingrich to be president? Second, what is a super PAC? [...]
January 13, 2012
by L. Brent Bozell III
It was symbolically perfect that on the same day Hollywood went to the Supreme Court to make the case for broadcast profanity, Entertainment Weekly reported that the next showing of the ABC smutcom Modern Family would feature a two-year-old girl dropping the F-bomb. The episode's title will be “Little Bo Bleep.” Shameless. There's no [...]
December 28, 2011
by Walter E. Williams
National Transportation Safety Board Chairwoman Deborah Hersman has called for states to mandate a total ban on cellphone usage while driving. She has also encouraged electronics manufacturers — via recommendations to the CTIA-The Wireless Association and the Consumer Electronics Association — to develop features that "disable the functions of portable electronic devices within reach [...]
December 11, 2011
by Steve Chapman
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has a new TV spot accusing President Obama of waging "war on religion." It's a reckless, overstated spot that exploits prejudice against gays while deliberately distorting major issues. But here's the surprise: Perry has a point. The First Amendment forbids any law "prohibiting the free exercise" of religion. It's a [...]
November 16, 2011
by Jacob Sullum
A couple of months ago, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Beth Brinkmann was standing before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, defending the federal law requiring Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, when Judge Laurence Silberman asked her about broccoli. Specifically, he wanted to know whether a law requiring Americans to buy [...]
October 11, 2011
by Patrick J. Reilly
Only a week after Catholics nationwide completed a campaign protesting the Obama administration’s violation of the religious liberty of Catholic institutions, the Supreme Court let stand a key federal ruling that upholds the rights of religious employers. The national protest, encouraged by parish bulletin inserts from the U.S. bishops' conference and appeals from at least [...]
September 26, 2011
by Steve Chapman
The abortion debate has raged since 1973, when the Supreme Court gave abortion constitutional protection, but the basic law of the land has proved immutable. Abortion is legal, and it's going to remain legal for a long time. Laws often alter attitudes, inducing people to accept things -- such as racial integration -- they once [...]
June 29, 2011
by Linda Chavez
The Supreme Court handed down a big win for American consumers this week, though the case had nothing to do with consumer protection. The court's decision involved the rules for determining what constitutes a proper class of plaintiffs, representing not just those individuals who have come forward to allege illegal behavior but others who have been [...]