One of the most important Supreme Court cases in recent years will come before the court tomorrow as the 2nd Amendment is put on trial. This is one of the few shadowy corners of our Constitution, having received very little High Court interpretation. As such, the justices will have to determine the meaning of the [...]

The historical legacy of Dick Cheney and this administration will be a permanently weaker executive branch, constrained by shackles applied by the judiciary and the legislature, precipitated precisely by and in reaction to the overreach of Dick Cheney in pursuit of a stronger executive branch.

It was bound to happen. All you have to do is decide whether or not to suspend the student for the message shown. I unfairly suspended one student and let one slide that I could have suspended. How’d you do?

I posted about Giuliani’s liberal judge problem here on March 1st, and now the LA Times picks up the meme. From the west comes this about the easterner… One judge approved by Giuliani, Rosalyn Richter, had been executive director of a gay rights organization, Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, before being named to the [...]

I think they should. The justices don’t. Who will win? “Televising our proceedings would change our collegial dynamic,” Kennedy said, asking the Senate Judiciary Committee not to introduce “the insidious temptation to think that one of my colleagues would be trying to get a sound bite for TV.” Kennedy was making a rare public appearance [...]

I certainly don’t use the term “junky” lightly, but we’re talking about more than a decade long, hardcore addiction to incredibly strong painkillers. It certainly makes mild drug use by former and current Presidents (and any hopefuls) seemingly irrelevant. From Law.com… The FBI’s 1986 report on Rehnquist’s drug dependence was not released at the time [...]

As expected, there has been a barrage of polls in the last few days. While it is impossible to determine what the final outcome will be on Tuesday night, I think it warrants a look at the polls to see if anything can be gleaned. The following is a list of those polls, the dates [...]

The Bush administration, amid rebukes from Congress and the courts, is now trying to get legislation passed to authorize or indemnify themselves for much of what they’ve done in the past few years. It’s a bit like getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar, and then seeking to have stealing cookies declared retroactively [...]

Sen. Specter Readies Bill to Sue Bush A powerful Republican committee chairman who has led the fight against President Bush’s signing statements said Monday he would have a bill ready by the end of the week allowing Congress to sue him in federal court. “We will submit legislation to the United States Senate which will…authorize [...]

In today’s Washington Post, Arlen Specter defends his flawed deal with the White House over its warrantless surveillance program. His main point: Critics complain that the bill acknowledges the president’s inherent Article II power and does not insist on FISA’s being the exclusive procedure for the authorization of wiretapping. They are wrong. The president’s constitutional [...]

So I posted yesterday about the SCOTUS’ decision to gut “knock and announce”, and reasoned that it was a bad idea because it’ll end up getting more cops shot. While this is still a grave prediction, it seems that NRA-backed bills (based on the Castle Doctrine) have been passing in some states and they basically [...]

Yes people, the cops don’t have to knock and announce anymore when they have a warrant. And to the best of my knowledge, the exclusionary rule has been part of the fourth amendment for about 100 years now. Knock and announce has been part of that for about as long. I’m sorry, what does the [...]

…. is to re-argue case law that has been settled for more than 100 years. Well, actually, it’s not so much re-arguing as simply ignoring precedents that one doesn’t like. In a debate with powerful echoes of the turbulent civil rights era, four Republicans running for Alabama’s Supreme Court are making an argument legal scholars [...]

Is today’s rejection of an appeal from Jose Padilla a case of SCOTUS playing dodgeball? A divided Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Jose Padilla, held as an enemy combatant without traditional legal rights for more than three years, sidestepping a challenge to Bush administration wartime detention powers. Padilla, a former Chicago gang [...]

Well, Scalia didn’t recuse himself from this case, and I think he’s right given the fine reporting of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross on Scalia’s previous views on similar cases. Still, it doesn’t seem like many on the highest bench agree with Antonin. From SCOTUSblog: With Justice Antonin Scalia taking part — and, in fact, providing the only [...]

Can states use newspapers and magazines to discipline prisoners? And we’re not talking about a smack across the nose with a rolled-up “Boston Evening Transcript.” The Supreme Court struggled Monday with whether states can keep troublesome inmates from reading secular newspapers and magazines. Pennsylvania prison officials urged the high court to allow them to use [...]

Weekly Standard writer Daveed Gartenstein-Ross emailed me via The Moderate Voice about my recent Scalia post. He seems to think that Scalia’s recent speeches are perfectly within reason. And after reading his article, I think Daveed has a valid point: BY ALL ACCOUNTS, Scalia’s Freiburg speech did not go beyond the views he already expressed [...]

That should be the headline we see in the next few days. Newsweek has more: The Supreme Court this week will hear arguments in a big case: whether to allow the Bush administration to try Guantánamo detainees in special military tribunals with limited rights for the accused. But Justice Antonin Scalia has already spoken his [...]

Yes, the Senate in SD voted for eliminating abortion rights, and by nearly a 2-1 margin: PIERRE, S.D. (AP) â€â€? South Dakota moved closer to imposing some of the strictest limits on abortion in the nation as the state Senate approved legislation that would ban the procedure except when the woman’s life is in danger. [...]

At the time I decried, and I still think it’s rightfully so. But this perspective sheds some light on the why the court ruled why they did: Contrary to what many continue to believe, the Court in Kelo did not blaze any new trails. It was well-settled law dating back to Berman v. Parker in [...]