Free Republic

Former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer criticized his colleagues on the high court over their interpretation of the Constitution. The former justice, who retired in 2022, is set to release a book titled Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism, Not Textualism, laying out an argument critiquing the methods used by many Republican-appointed justices to interpret the Constitution. “Recently, major cases have come before the court while several new justices have spent only two or three years at the court,” Breyer said in the book, according to the New York Times. “Major changes take time, and there are many years...

The highest court in Brazil, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF), sentenced two of the first defendants implicated in the January 8 Brasilia riot to 17 years in prison on Thursday on a variety of charges including “attempted coup d’etat” and “attempted abolition of the democratic rule of law.” Aécio Lúcio Costa Pereira, 51, was identified as part of a crowd of thousands of supporters of conservative former President Jair Bolsonaro who stormed the Brazilian Congress, STF headquarters, and office of the presidency in January in large part due to videos Pereira himself published on social media in which he documented...

Sen. Mitt Romney (R.-Utah), who was the losing Republican presidential nominee in 2012, voted on Wednesday to move forward to a final vote in the Senate on the “Respect for Marriage Act,” which would recognize same-sex marriages in federal law. “While I believe in traditional marriage, Obergefell is and has been the law of the land upon which LGBTQ individuals have relied,” said Romney. “This legislation provides certainty to many LGBTQ Americans, and it signals that Congress—and I—esteem and love all of our fellow Americans equally.” “This legislation provides important protections for religious liberty—measures which are particularly important to protect...

Gov. Ron DeSantis says his administration will appeal a Florida judge’s ruling striking down a pro-life law to save babies from abortions. Less than one week after the Supreme Court upheld a 15-week abortion ban in the state of Mississippi, a Florida judge has issued a temporary restraining order blocking enforcement of a 15-week abortion ban Governor DeSantis signed to save babies from abortions. The law is estimated to save as many as 5,000 babies from abortions. “We’re here today to protect life,” Governor DeSantis said at a large ceremony to sign the bill back in April. “We’re here today...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A Florida judge said Thursday that he will temporarily block a 15-week ban on abortions in his state, but his bench ruling won’t take effect before the ban becomes law Friday — an issue that could cause confusion for patients as well as abortion providers. Meanwhile, a Kentucky judge temporarily blocked that state’s near-total ban on abortions, allowing the procedures to resume after they were abruptly stopped when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week. The cases in Florida and Kentucky reflect battles being waged in courts across the country after the Supreme...

Once Associate Justice Stephen Breyer was successfully hounded into announcing his retirement (and we all wonder if the full story of that announcement will ever be told), Joe Biden announced that he would only be considering black females for the appointment. Mr. Biden chose a tumultuous week to announce that name – a week in which Russia invaded Ukraine, energy prices hit new records, the stock market tumbled, and the news was finally starting to circulate that indictments were finally coming on the Obama-Clinton era “Russian collusion” hoax against President Trump. When the Biden-Harris regime most needed a distraction from...

A federal judge invalidated the results of an oil and gas lease sale in the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday saying the Biden administration failed to properly account for the auction's climate change impact. The decision has cast uncertainty over the future of the U.S. federal offshore drilling program, which has been a big source of public revenue for decades but also drawn the ire of activists concerned about its impact on the environment and contribution to global warming. The Gulf of Mexico accounts for 15% of existing U.S. oil production and 5% of dry natural gas output, according to...

Judge Beth Bloom, appointed by former President Obama, permanently enjoined the law signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis that banned Florida cities and counties from protecting criminal illegal aliens from federal immigration law carried out by the ICE agency. “Defendants are permanently enjoined from enforcing Fla. Stat. § 908.103 and Fla. Stat. § 908.104 because these statutory provisions are unconstitutional,” Bloom wrote. As part of her ruling, Bloom accuses DeSantis and Florida Republican Party Chairman State Sen. Joe Gruters (R) of having “discriminatory motives” in their efforts to pass the sanctuary city ban: Here, prior to SB 168’s enactment, there was...

I have no idea who said it, it’s been attributed to a lot of people, but I love the saying, “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” It’s funny because it’s true. It’s important for the same reason. Throughout my career in policy and politics I have been lucky to work and become friends with some really smart people (make no mistake, there were a lot of dumb ones too). As they have moved on to other jobs, they still write some brilliant columns that do what all good columns do: make you think.One...

A former Osama bin Laden henchman convicted in two deadly 1998 bombings is free and living in the UK this week after being released early — thanks to a Manhattan federal judge who agreed the terrorist was way too obese to survive the coronavirus behind bars.Adel Abdel Bary, 60, had spent 21 years in a New Jersey prison for his role in the 1998 al Qaeda bombings of two US embassies in Africa that killed 224 people, including 12 Americans.“Defendant’s obesity and somewhat advanced age make COVID-19 significantly more risky to him than to the average person,” US District Judge...

As a former staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee for Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH), I am offended by the actions of some Democrats in the Senate to threaten the independence of the federal judiciary. I have never been a fan of legislators filing amicus curiae, friend of the court, briefs, because Congress writes the laws. I am even less of a fan of Senators weighing in on cases that don’t involve any federal statute. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito gave a keynote speech to the Federalist Society on November 12, 2020 where he addressed an interesting case of Senators filing...

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered Twitter to reveal who was behind the account that allegedly spread the conspiracy about the death of slain Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu in Oakland, Calif., ordered that Twitter must turn over information about the account @whyspertech. That account allegedly forged FBI documents falsely linking Rich’s killing to the Wikileaks hack of Democratic emails and provided them to Fox News. NPR first reported on the order. Twitter has sought to keep the identity of the user secret, arguing that disclosing that information would violate the First Amendment....

If Ken Starr, in The Wall Street Journal, praises his late friend Ruth Bader Ginsburg as humane, conscientious and just plain nice, that's good enough for me. We can talk later about who's going to take her Supreme Court seat and when. I am minded, in the meantime, to remember her less as a constitutional bulldozer and more as a jurist cognizant of considerations --tact and caution, chiefly -- that bolster a democratic republic's survival chances. Down to cases. Roe v. Wade, the 7-2 decision whereby the court turned abortion into a pregnant woman's personal right. A right Ginsburg supported...

An Ohio judge has temporarily blocked the Republican secretary of state’s order limiting counties in the critical presidential battleground to one ballot drop box, and the state and Republicans have appealed. A judge in Franklin County, home to the state capital, blocked the directive Wednesday after Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who oversees Ohio elections, failed to voluntarily respond to his declaration that the order was arbitrary and unreasonable. The state immediately appealed, and the Ohio Republican Party followed suit late Thursday. The faceoff makes unclear how many drop boxes will be available to Ohio voters just 2½ weeks...

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump unveiled his much-anticipated new Supreme Court nominee "list." A whopping 20 names long, Wednesday's list includes figures from all walks of legal/political life: federal appellate court judges, federal district court judges, sitting U.S. senators, current and former Trump administration figures, current state officers and a former U.S. solicitor general. With the 24 viable names remaining from the three previous "lists" -- the first two of which were released during the 2016 presidential campaign and were crucial to ensuring religious conservative voter turnout for Trump -- there are now 44 candidates being publicly floated for the...

John Roberts is a politician — a politician who consistently makes laws, inconsistently applies the Constitution, and can't be voted out of office. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Unelected leftist politicians in robes with lifetime tenure. Turns out, the Supreme Court is a joke, and the punchline is Chief Justice John Roberts.Two high court decisions this week brought that reality into focus, when the George W. Bush-appointed chief sided with leftist justices to say sexual orientation is “sex,” and that the current commander in chief can’t undo unlawful executive action from a past president because of his reasons.Roberts has quite the...

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that existing federal law forbids job discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, a major victory for advocates of gay rights — and a surprising one from an increasingly conservative court. The decision said Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which makes it illegal for employers to discriminate because of a person's sex, among other factors, also covers sexual orientation. It upheld rulings from lower courts that said sexual orientation discrimination was a form of sex discrimination. Across the nation, 21 states have their own laws prohibiting job discrimination based on...

Washington — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Monday that it is illegal for an employer to fire someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, delivering a major victory in the fight for civil rights for LGBT people. The court's 6-3 ruling extends the scope of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of sex, race, color, national origin and religion, to include LGBT people. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, who authored the majority's opinion, joined the liberal wing of the bench in ruling that "an employer who fires an...

Former Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker reacted on “Sunday Morning Futures” to a federal appeals court directing the judge hearing the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn to respond to a petition by Flynn for the charges against him to be thrown out. “There is no discretion of Judge [Emmet] Sullivan to not dismiss the case once the Department of Justice has decided to no longer pursue those charges,” Whitaker said in an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “I think ultimately it’s going to be a strange proceeding when the appeals court gets their filing from the...

High-school athletes Selina Soule and Alanna Smith (Photo courtesy Alliance Defending Freedom)Attorneys representing three female high school track athletes in their effort to bar biological males from competing against them filed a motion on Saturday calling for the presiding judge to recuse himself after he forbid the attorneys from referring to the transgender athletes at issue as “males.” The ADF filed suit in February against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) on behalf of three girls — Selina Soule, Alana Smith, and Chelsea Mitchell. The suit challenges the CIAC policy allowing students to compete in the division that accords with...