“A tremendous victory for property rights”—that’s how the Castle Coalition described voter approval of Initiative 31, which placed limitations on the power of eminent domain in Mississippi. The November 8, 2011, results made Mississippi the 44th state to modify the power of eminent domain in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Kelo v....
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Not Your Brain
Let’s give credit where it’s due. Linda Greenhouse, retired Supreme Court correspondent for the New York Times, is a brilliantly qualified journalist: hard-working, creative, dedicated to the needs of her profession as she understands them. Which seems really to be the problem here; a problem large and grave, requiring critical analysis. Greenhouse’s very personal sense...
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Bringing to Light Eminent Domain
The Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court decision has brought the abuse of eminent domain to the forefront of the public’s awareness. In Florida, private-sector developers and their allies in municipal-planning and economic-development departments are moving ahead on a number of projects that will force hundreds of retired mobile-home dwellers, and residents in...
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Reviewing Judicial Review: A Government of Justices
In the most famous defense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s power to declare acts of the federal and state legislatures unconstitutional, Alexander Hamilton argued that it was the Court’s job only to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution. If the Court went beyond that—interpreting the document to include things that...
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The Decline and Splendor of Nationalism
No political phenomenon can be so creative and so destructive as nationalism. Nationalism can be a metaphor for the supreme truth but also an allegory for the nostalgia of death. No exotic country, no gold, no woman can trigger such an outpouring of passion as the sacred homeland, and contrary to all Freudians more people...
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Nixon, LBJ & the First Shots in the Judges’ War
The Democrats’ drive to defeat Neil Gorsuch is the latest battle in a 50-year war for control of the Supreme Court—a war that began with a conspiracy against Richard Nixon by Chief Justice Earl Warren, Justice Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson. By June 1968, Nixon, having swept his primaries, was cruising to the nomination and...
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Hard Cases and Bad Law
During the next four years, the Clinton administration will appoint dozens of federal judges, in addition to (perhaps) two or three Supreme Court Justices. In the confirmation procedures for these individuals, issues of gender politics are likely to predominate. Abortion will obviously be one such question, as may sexual harassment, but we should also hear...
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Roberts Helps Congress Evade the Constitution
Chief Justice John Roberts left U.S. Supreme Court watchers dumbfounded. Before the release of the opinion in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, pundits expected the healthcare case to turn on the Commerce Clause and for Justice Anthony Kennedy to be the usual swing vote. If Kennedy sided with the conservatives (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas,...
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Pedestaled Power
Post-Christian beliefs permeate the culture. A stroll across the majority of university campuses, five minutes of channel surfing, the U.S. Supreme Court’s First Amendment case law, popular behavior and that of the American elite—these are proof positive that Christianity in the 21st century bears little resemblance to the Christianity of America’s not too distant past. ...
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Unclassical Tragedy
Wired: The Short Times & Fast Life of John Belushi by Bob Woodward; Simon and Schuster; New York. Bob Woodward is an aggressive journalist who has helped reveal the secrets of Supreme Court Justices and a president. Like his previous efforts, Wired is a best-seller full of gossip and intrigue. Excerpts have appeared in the Washington Post, New York...
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The Decline of Christian America
“This is a Christian nation,” said the Supreme Court in 1892. “America was born a Christian nation,” echoed Woodrow Wilson. Harry Truman affirmed it: “This is a Christian nation.” But in 2009, Barack Hussein Obama begged to differ: “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation.” Comes now a Pew Research Center survey that reveals...
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Sheldon Whitehouse’s Sauronian Return
The senator attempts to revisit and relitigate the heinous and thoroughly discredited allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and me.
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On Judicial Tyranny
“First Things Last” (March 1997) evinces the sharp analysis and pungent criticism we have come to expect from Samuel Francis. However, I disagree with him on one point. Francis contends that the controversial “laws” made by the Supreme Court are merely “permissive” in nature. Thus, unlike Sir Thomas More, who was commanded to sign an...
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Reading Antonin Scalia in New York
The highlight of my time in law school – three years of varying degrees of dreariness and constant irritation was the visit of US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The great jurist came to my nominally Catholic second-tier alma mater – I cannot help, but shudder at the latter word, so inappropriately used to describe...
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Hell-Bent: Why Gay Marriage Was Inevitable
Like it or not, gay marriage is here to stay. The Supreme Court ruling matters little. That was the case well before oral arguments were heard, and not for legal reasons. Yes, the fact that some states had already recognized it played a part, but the real reason gay marriage is now a permanent part...
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New COVID-19 Shutdowns May Force SCOTUS Showdown
Those suffering from endless COVID shutdowns may find a spark of hope in the words of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito. While the governors of Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and other states were preparing new restrictions during the pandemic, Alito gave a speech to The Federalist Society, calling such lockdowns “previously unimaginable restrictions on individual liberty.” I’m now going to say...
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Putting the Law in Lawrence
Though America’s academics tend to the dyspeptic and hypercritical, on one day this past year, the campus mood was extraordinarily sunny. This past June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, declaring unconstitutional a law prohibiting homosexual conduct. In the eyes of most academics, Lawrence represented an act...
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Missing the Mark
The Supreme Court missed the mark last year in unanimously shooting down a St. Paul, Minnesota, statute imposing criminal liability on those engaged in “hate speech.” The problem with the Court’s decision in R.A.V. v. St. Paul is that it dwelled on legal niceties rather than recognizing the time-tested, historically proven method for dealing with...
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Power and Passports
In June, the Supreme Court greatly augmented executive power by holding that the president has the exclusive right to grant formal recognition to a foreign sovereign. This decision further pushes presidential power in the direction of royal prerogative through which monarchs enjoy the exclusive care over foreign affairs to the detriment of the people’s representatives....
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Promoting Agendas
William J. Brennan, Jr., has retired from the Supreme Court. In three decades on the nation’s highest court Brennan did more, perhaps, than any other American politician except for Lyndon Johnson to promote the agenda of the liberal left: the antiwhite racism of the “Jim Snow” system, radical feminism, the reduction of the authority of...
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A Pro-Abortion Government
As Pro-Lifers now face a monolithically pro-abortion federal government, it might be useful for them to look at last year’s Supreme Court decision about Guam. Despite robust opposition from Justice Anthony Scalia, the Court refused to hear Guam’s abortion case, which means the ruling of a California court striking down all of Guam’s restrictions on...
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Alone Among Strangers
At the moment the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states to enact parental consultation abortion statutes, the abortion-advocacy organizations went into high gear. The Hodgson v. Minnesota and Ohio v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health decisions “endangered teens,” they claimed, and NOW President Molly Yard charged that the Court had “thrown down the...
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Our Cultural Disorder
Our cultural disorders weren’t caused by the Supreme Court’s prayer decisions—I’ll admit it. The implication that school prayer, by fortifying Young America, might have forestalled the rampage at Columbine High School, and those rampages preceding it—well, I wouldn’t push the matter too far, that’s all. Still, it’s nice to see the American Civil Liberties Union,...
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Seven Simple Proposals to Fix Our Broken Elections
Joe Biden may have declared victory, but whether he or Donald Trump officially wins the presidency may remain undetermined for weeks, even months, and even then we may see the election brought before the Supreme Court. Who knows? What we do know is that this election has delivered a mess not seen since 2000, when...
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And Injustice for All
The elevation of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court formalizes state-sponsored injustice in the very institution charged with upholding justice.
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Miss Affirmative Action, 2009
Having lost the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008, Republicans are looking to redefine themselves for a nation that still leans conservative but is less Republican that it has been in decades. The nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court presents just such an opportunity. For, even if the...
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The Pilate Option?
British statesman Enoch Powell began his most famous speech with this observation: “The supreme function of statesmanship is to provide against preventable evils.” I thought of Powell’s cogent dictum often over the last week or so, as Rod Dreher (and others) have been loudly insisting that Trump’s moral failings prevent Christians from voting for him,...
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A Southern Tradition
A southern tradition ended on August 19, when Beth Anne Hogan, a 17-year-old ponytailed blonde from Junction City, Oregon, signed the Virginia Military Institute’s matriculation book. With help from Janet Reno’s Justice Department and the U.S. Supreme Court, Miss Hogan and some 30 other young women have done to VMI what the corpulent Shannon Faulkner...
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Once Again in the News
Gay marriage is once again in the news. This time, the rumblings come not from the Sandwich Islands, but the Green Mountains of Vermont. In a riding handed down right before Christmas, the state’s governing body, the Vermont Supreme Court, instructed the legislature to extend the benefits and protections of marriage to homosexual couples. The...
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A Crazy Dance of Technicalities
Dressed in a dark business suit, wearing a tie and a brand-new trenchcoat, Troy Canty was led manacled in front of New York State Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Crane. His head clean-shaven, Canty looked sullenly at TV cameras, out in force to register the latest twist in the Bernhard H. Goetz case. On December...
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On Honest Abe
I am an unabashed lover—not a worshipper (I reserve that for Someone Else)—of Abraham Lincoln, forever grateful for what he was and what he did for our country. While I don’t question the patriotism of Chronicles’ editors, I believe it is supremely ironic that you publish your magazine from the “Land of Lincoln,” since you...
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Lessons from Montgomery
At 11:30 A.M. (CST) on Thursday, November 13, 2003, Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was removed from office, and the will of the people of the sovereign state of Alabama was thwarted by a unanimous vote of the nine-member panel of the Court of Judicial Ethics. In deciding Glassroth v. Moore,...
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Another Thurgood Marshall?
When Clarence Thomas, our newest Supreme Court Justice, asked to be sworn in a week before the official ceremony, so he could go on the payroll early, it summed up the whole affair for me. Why are conservatives cheering his ascent to the judicial oligarchy? Yes, it’s fun to beat liberal senators, but not with...
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Immigration: Deferred Courage
The Supreme Court, tacitly acknowledging that the great Justice Antonin Scalia is still dead, refused on October 3 to reconsider United States v. Texas. The tie remained at 4-4, same as it was in June when the Court first polled itself, but a petulant Obama Department of Justice asked for the case to be reconsidered. ...
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How a Court Can Derail a Culture
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others have written volumes about how the Great Society destroyed the American family. But the pivotal role played by Republican appointees on the U.S. Supreme Court, in nullifying laws intended to encourage the formation of two-parent families, has gone largely unremarked. The lightning rod for change was a Connecticut statute which...
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Reviewing Judicial Review
In the most famous defense of the U.S. Supreme Court’s power to declare acts of the federal and state legislatures unconstitutional, Alexander Hamilton argued that it was the Court’s job only to implement the will of the people as expressed in the Constitution. If the Court went beyond that—interpreting the document to include things that...
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Trump’s Road Still Open
At stake in 2016 is the White House, the Supreme Court, the Senate and, possibly, control of the House of Representatives. Hence, Republicans have a decision to make. Will they set aside political and personal feuds and come together to win in November, after which they can fight over the future of the party, and...
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Lady Hale Means Farewell to British Liberty
If anything can save Britain, it is the national gift for mockery. The country was startled last week to discover that it was run by Lady Hale, president of the Supreme Court, who told the Prime Minister that his prorogation of Parliament was “unlawful.” He had “misled” the Queen with his advice to her. The...
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Who’s Afraid of Being Homophobic?
Who’s afraid of being labeled homophobic? A great many people, that’s who, importuned incessantly by the liberal media and other keepers of the woke flame of proper public behavior. That behavior trends ever more left-wing, collectivist, and anti-Western—following Barack Obama’s “arc of the moral universe.” The Supreme Court’s recent decision to enshrine anti-discrimination protections for...
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Roberts Left a Loophole in the Affirmative Action Decision
Chief Justice John Roberts' rejection of the racial discrimination of affirmative action is one of his greatest Supreme Court rulings. But unfortunately he left in a giant loophole that will allow colleges to continue to privilege blacks and Hispanics over Asians and whites.
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Travel Ban, and Beyond
The Supreme Court decided on June 26 to allow key parts of the Trump administration’s “travel ban” to go into effect temporarily. This was an unexpected victory for the President—and for common sense. Until the Court hears the full case in October, the administration will be able to bar travelers from six majority-Muslim countries who...
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Keeping History
Ever since Hugo Black succeeded in incorporating his anti-religious prejudices and Thomas Jefferson’s “Wall of Separation” into Supreme Court jurisprudence, Americans have known how a story like this is supposed to end: A parent who comes into a community objects to expressions of that community’s religious traditions in its schools. There is no indication that...
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Why Are They Gunning for Gorsuch?
An uncomplimentary picture takes shape in the mind: the Senate’s Democratic minority (save for a higher-minded handful) standing in a row, thumbs affixed to noses, fingers waving provocatively in the air, mouths emitting a rude sound commonly known as “the raspberry.” Think we’re going to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court?! Think we’re going...
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On ‘Clarence Thomas’
I sure wouldn’t want to cross Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. In his semihysterical, mean-spirited diatribe (Cultural Revolutions, January 1992), he manages to charge Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas with perjury, perversion, and racial opportunism. And that’s just for openers. Although I probably lost count, there are some twenty-five negative references to Thomas’s character, ideology, or...
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The Future of the Christian Right
Like a cold front, you could feel the defeat coming; and you did not need Dan Rather or George Gallup to prepare you. You knew it in your bones as you listened to the sound bites on the evening news: Clinton saying nothing and saying it well; Dole saying nothing and saying it poorly. It...
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From One Assault on the Constitution to Another
The U.S. Constitution has few friends on the right or the left. During the first eight years of the 21st century, the Republicans mercilessly assaulted civil liberties. The brownshirt Bush regime ignored the protections provided by habeas corpus. They spied on American citizens without warrants. They violated the First Amendment. They elevated decisions of the...
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Living the Jacobin Dream
In 1793, the Jacobins, surfing the wave of Parisian mob violence, intimidated their less resolute colleagues into eliminating both the principle of monarchy and the existence of its politically superfluous incarnation, Louis XVI. Not content with killing a living king and pronouncing a death sentence in absentia on all the princes of the blood who...
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Sustained Magnificence
Sixty-five years after the last guns ceased firing on the last Pacific atoll, Britons of all political persuasions are still wallowing in tepid World War II nostalgia. For Atlanticists, neoconservatives, and classical liberals, the war was a great Anglosphere achievement, a landmark en route to social mobility plus mercantilism. For nationalists and romantics, there is...
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Call Me Simple . . .
But I don’t understand: Why the government spends billions on welfare but people keep saying hunger is a big problem. Why the government spends billions on education and the population gets dumber and dumber. Why the government spends billions on “intelligence” and defense but could not prevent September 11. Why pointless filthy language ...
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The Unbanable Book
A recent full-page advertisement in the Chicago Tribune, which no longer calls itself “The World’s Greatest Newspaper,” listed four documents that supposedly are foundational: the Magna Carta, the Treaty of Versailles, the Declaration of Independence, and the Infiniti Retailer Pledge. These four, according to the advertiser, Infiniti, are totally trustworthy, because: “A promise is a...