“As everyone knows, I made it clear that my first choice for the Supreme Court will make history as the first African American woman justice.” So Joe Biden promised. Since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, however, Biden has refused to produce a list of Black female judges and scholars whom he would consider...
June was a depressing month for genuine conservatives. Apart from the Supremes putting their stamp of approval on ObamaCare, the horrifying murders of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, unleashed a jihad against the Confederate Battle Flag (Beltway “conservatives” piled on in support of the jihadists), while a majority of the robed Politburo found...
“The law is good, if a man use it lawfully.” —1 Timothy 1:8 Richard Posner is one of the greatest judges never to have sat on the Supreme Court of the United States. A distinguished professor at the University of Chicago, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit for 25...
Judge Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, is in big trouble again. Judge Moore’s first 15 minutes of fame happened when, as a lower-court judge, he refused to remove a plaque containing the Ten Commandments from the wall of his courtroom. The plaque, it was said, amounted to an impermissible establishment of...
After a 50-year siege, the great strategic fortress of liberalism has fallen. With the elevation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court seems secure for constitutionalism—perhaps for decades. The shrieks from the gallery of the Senate chamber as the vote came in on Saturday, and the sight of that bawling mob clawing at the doors...
Everyone knows that Andrew Jackson wanted American Indians annihilated, defied the Supreme Court in a famous challenge to Chief Justice John Marshall, and forcibly removed the Five Civilized Tribes of the Southeast to lands west of the Mississippi River. What everyone knows is not true. Once a venerated American hero, Andrew Jackson has been attacked...
I told you it was coming. Back in May, on my show, “Sovereign Nation,” I chronicled significant signs of pro-life progress that were driving death-lobby Democrats mad—and I warned of a wave of intolerant tantrums to come as we hurtle into autumn. It’s here. In a 5-4 ruling last week, the U.S. Supreme Court refused...
At 11:30 a.m. on October 10, the Connecticut State Supreme Court legalized “gay marriage,” making Connecticut the third state, behind Massachusetts and California, to sanction the practice. In a 4-3 ruling that cannot be appealed, because it is based on an interpretation of the state constitution, Justice Richard N. Palmer opined for the narrow majority...
The Oklahoma Supreme Court, in a 7-2 decision, has ordered a monument of the Ten Commandments removed from the Capitol. Calling the Commandments “religious in nature and an integral part of the Jewish and Christian faiths,” the court said the monument must go. Gov. Mary Fallin has refused. And Oklahoma lawmakers instead have filed legislation...
Constitutional lawyers like to tell the story (probably apocryphal, since it’s too good to be true) that, sometime in the 1960’s, when the Warren Court was engaged in its effort to rewrite the Constitution, one crusty old Harvard Law professor, upon reading the latest product from the Supremes, stormed into his constitutional law class, roared...
By the time you read this, nine Americans may well have declared the United States a nonentity. In April, the U.S. Supreme Court was supposed to decide on the constitutionality of Arizona’s SB 1070, the now-famous law that sought to stem the tide of illegal immigration into the state. The Obama administration struck quickly after...
Sixty years ago the Supreme Court struck down school prayer. This hastened the process of overturning the Western tradition in which Christianity played an integral role in the life of nations.
Today’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church has encouraged many decent conservatives to think that the United States will not so quickly go down the garden path of political correctness as Canada and the EU. I think this view is seriously mistaken. As everyone knows, the Westboro Baptist “Church” is a...
If the U.S. Senate rejects race-based justice, Sonia Sotomayor will never sit on the Supreme Court. Because that is what Sonia is all about. As the New York Times reported Saturday, the salient cause of her career has been advancing persons of color, over whites, based on race and national origin. “Judge Sotomayor, whose parents...
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES on writ of certiorari to the court of appeals June 26, 2013 (Justice Kennedy delivered the opinion of the Court.) The jurisprudence of liberty is a bright and shining star. Its twinkling arc across the sky of our constitutional polity signals the nation’s fundamental commitment to the...
Who is to decide? This question animated Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who died of natural causes in mid-February. He was the longest-serving member of the current Supreme Court. Nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1986, Scalia was known for his acerbic wit and fidelity to the text of the Constitution, as understood by those who ratified...
The U.S. Supreme Court, many had hoped, would use this term to clarify constitutional law and move jurisprudence somewhat closer to the original understanding of the Constitution. The Court has yet to issue important opinions regarding school vouchers, partial-birth abortion, the Violence Against Women Act, and prayer at high school football games, but the latest...
I see by my mild defense of Roberts, I’ve made myself a friendly target and in bringing up the inevitable Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage, I’ve distracted from the implications of the Obamacare ruling. That was not my intent, but here we are. To Mr. Kirkwood: I think your characterization of Roberts...
Judge John Roberts of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, whom President George W. Bush has nominated to take the place of retiring Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, is what we used to call a “lawyer’s lawyer.” He comes from Harvard College, Harvard Law School, the Harvard Law Review, a...
Emerald Robinson recently wrote a witty piece for The American Spectator puncturing the pomposity of the Never Trump wing of the conservative movement. At least one member of that wing, the thin-skinned Jonah Goldberg, now the holder of the “Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute,” was not amused, and he let...
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions … are the...
This is the first of a series of first-person reports from American citizens who have run afoul of the bureaucracy. While we have made reasonable efforts to verify the accounts, the stories are personal statements of the authors. Almost 30 years ago, just a few weeks before I got married, I found a strange book...
Is the composition of the Supreme Court the be-all and end-all of important societal conflicts? Are there effective ways that conservatives can address these conflicts—manifest in political battles over such things as affirmative action—apart from the Court? The Supreme Court’s decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, handed down on June 23, means affirmative action...
As the high lunacy of the 1990 budget negotiations showed, America’s federal arrangement has been replaced by a confederation of special interests that have less in common than the former colonies—or even, perhaps, than the states that comprise the United Nations. America resembles more a League of Interests than it does a nation. The solution...
The recent Supreme Court decision striking down a Silent Prayer Law in Alabama came as a shock to many people. What harm could be done by a moment of silence that the students were free to dedicate—or not dedicate—to a Supreme Being? Religion, it now seems, is to be treated like the daughter who disgraces...
“[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are ...
Abortion is not something to discuss in polite company. Unlike a good, clean murder committed from natural motives such as revenge, envy, and greed, abortion is something slimy, more like a sex crime. Many parents must be tempted, from time to time, to commit mayhem upon their offspring. Such feelings are natural; but women who...
Federal judges in California have been busy. In August, Judge Vaughn Walker held that it is irrational to limit marriage to one man and one woman. Following in Judge Walker’s footsteps, Judge Virginia A. Phillips struck down the congressional prohibition against homosexuals in the military as violating the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause...
For most of American history, federal law enforcement consisted only of U.S. marshals serving in the territories of the West. Their legacy is decidedly mixed. Many were appointed purely for their political connections, and graft and corruption were not unusual. The first U.S. marshal for Colorado Territory was accused of embezzling federal funds. The third...
Did I read aright the piece on “Gay Marriage” by Prof. William J. Quirk (“What’s Next for the Imperial Judiciary?” News, January)? When he puts forth his solution, it turns out to be the passage of a bill that will give the “last word” to “[e]ach state’s high court.” But as he himself points out...
I went into the 2000 presidential campaign an enthusiastic supporter of Pat Buchanan’s bid for the White House as a third-party candidate. I emerged more convinced than ever that Buchanan would have made an outstanding president but skeptical that a serious right-wing party will be able to emerge, at least in the short run. I...
David Beito’s account of American concentration camps, wartime censorship, mass surveillance, and misuse of executive agencies for partisan political purposes further impugns the claim that FDR was a man of virtue.
Public figures talk about globalization as if it were the Rapture. We are told that, unlike Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, we live in an era of international trade; so these days, we must worry more about what the world thinks and does. As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor told the Southern Center for International Studies,...
On October 15, 1905, Burton K. Wheeler stepped off a train at the Northern Pacific depot in Butte, Montana, thinking that he had seen more of the West than Lewis and Clark but wondering if his luck had run out. After looking up every lawyer in town (Wheeler had graduated from the University of Michigan...
One man, one vote. It seems such an obvious, such a simple principle. What can possibly hinder its implementation in South Africa, where blacks are barred from the exercise of citizenship rights, or Israel, where West Bank Palestinian children take to the streets demanding self-government and civil rights, or New York City, where the Board...
Amid the disasters happening in America today, there’s some excellent news. Homeschooling has won a solid place among roughly 1.5 million children and is mostly protected by law. It has become a refuge for families sick of their local public schools and the many copycat private and parochial schools. Even where decent private and parochial...
President Donald Trump’s predecessors have circumvented Congress before on issues the legislative branch had tried to stop. They have redirected resources appropriated by lawmakers. They have resorted to the same National Emergencies Act that Trump is invoking in order to build the Wall along the country’s southern border. None of their actions triggered a reaction...
In 1994, the Republicans, for the first time in 40 years, took control of both Houses of Congress. In 2000, after some controversy, the GOP secured the presidency. Now, they have lost both houses and look to be well on their way to losing the presidency in 2008. Parties lose when they don’t give their...
In his December essay, “The Mark of the Beast,” Larry Pratt implies that those who oppose unconstitutional searches and seizures by the government should be in favor of the exclusionary rule. But such a rule, whereby probative (i.e., valid) evidence may not be introduced in court if it was obtained in violation of the Fourth...
In the United States, the federal system of government is undergoing profound changes that compel students of American politics to rethink traditional ideas about national identity. Questions such as: “What does it mean to be a citizen of the United States?” and “What are the duties and privileges of U.S. citizenship?” and “In what manner...
The Supreme Court’s ruling allowing affirmative action at the University of Michigan but striking down the school’s system of racial quotas led Linda Chavez, in a syndicated column entitled “Supreme Mischief and Racism” (June 26), to warn against desecrating a sacred vision. Forty years ago this August, “the Rev. Martin Luther King gave a speech...
Trump's rise in the 2024 election polls after his indictment plays into Democrat hands, potentially saddling Republicans with a candidate who cannot win in 2024 because he cannot acknowledge his past mistakes.
Politics, they say, makes strange bedfellows, but that’s nothing compared to constitutional amendment. A few weeks ago, I found myself testifying before the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, and on the panel with me, testifying in favor of the Flag Protection Amendment, were a former Miss America, a holocaust survivor, an African-American bishop,...
Presidential immunity, judicial immunity, and legislative immunity are essential to a system that allocates power through a democratic process.
Today brings the sad news that Robert Bork has passed away. The sadder news for America, though, came in 1987, when the Senate unjustly rejected his nomination to the Supreme Court. There is no doubt that, had Bork been confirmed, Roe v Wade would have been overturned in 1992 when the Supreme Court decided Planned Parenthood v...
In this age when the foundational idea of American federalism has become all but defunct and the concept of states’ rights still has the whiff of Jim Crow about it, it is difficult to see how either individual states or regions can have any significant influence on the federal government—even if they had legislatures interested,...
Last Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Constitutional Court in Cairo that Egypt’s parliament was elected unconstitutionally and should be disbanded is a direct challenge to the Islamists who dominate the legislature. The scene is set for a new political crisis in the Arab world’s most populous nation. It is obvious that the Supreme Council...
Conscience and its Enemies is a collection of Robert George’s recent writings for a general audience. In addition to the title topic, it includes chapters on the defense of natural marriage, the protection of life from conception to natural death, the nature of moral reasoning, and the need for limited government. Overall, the pieces in...
Did anybody notice when Catholic Christianity ceased to be a religion in the United States? Not when it stopped being a popular or even a permissible religion, but when it became simply a nonreligion? I ask this because a recent court decision in California threatens to launch a legal revolution, in a way that would...