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(Apr. 8, 2024) — by Joseph DeMaio The writer first presents text from Paul Clement and Neal Katyal’s 2015 subject essay followed by his own commentary in bold, indented text. Page breaks in the original C&K text are indicated in brackets.] Deep Dive Part 3 “While the field of candidates for the next presidential election is still taking shape, at least one potential candidate, Senator Ted Cruz, was born in a Canadian hospital to a U.S. citizen mother.15 Despite the happenstance of a birth across the border, there is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth...

Two lawyers who successfully argued the landmark Supreme Court case affirming a constitutional right to be armed outside the home have been forced out of their Washington, D.C., law firm. Amid pressure from clients and other attorneys at the firm, Kirkland & Ellis LLP, no longer will handle Second Amendment cases, Politico reported. Former Solicitor General Paul Clement and Erin Murphy, who argued successfully before the Supreme Court in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, said they had to resign. "We were given a stark choice: either withdraw from ongoing representations or withdraw from the firm,"...

President Donald Trump is said to be down to his final three potential picks to replace pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Much of the pro-life focus has been on Judge Amy Barrett and leading pro-life advocates strongly support her as a potential nominee. But there is another potential nominee who is a reported finalist for the position who has very strong pro-life Bona fides and who one leading pro-life attorney says would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court. That potential nominee is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who sits on the DC Circuit Court. That is the main federal...

The only thing funnier than Donald Trump’s birther claims about Ted Cruz is the media’s demand that Cruz take them seriously.Trump’s suggestion that Cruz’s birth potentially presents a “precarious” situation for the GOP should Cruz become the nominee is silly. And a silly attack deserves a silly response, which Cruz delivered in the form of a tweet of the Fonz from “Happy Days” jumping the shark.However, Trump has every reason to have the word “precarious” on the brain “Precarious” means “dangerously likely to fall or collapse.” That doesn’t describe the circumstances of Cruz’s birth; it describes Trump’s inflated position that...

There was a clear difference of opinion between male and female justices at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. The issue was whether for-profit corporations, citing religious objections, may refuse to include contraception coverage in the basic health plan now mandated under the Affordable Care Act. The female justices were clearly supportive of the contraception mandate, while a majority of the male justices were more skeptical. The lead challenger in the case is the Hobby Lobby corporation, a chain of 500 arts and crafts stores that has 13,000 employees. The owners object to two forms of contraception, IUDs and morning-after...

The Washington Blade's Chris Johnson reports: House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) attorneys on Friday formally appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court an appeals court decision determining the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional, according to a Democratic aide. Drew Hammill, spokesperson for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), told the Washington Blade on Friday afternoon that House Republicans had notified Democratic leadership counsel filed an appeal to the Supreme Court.

Clement’s career is cresting just as the momentous legal crusades of a radicalized Republican Party are reaching the appellate level. His ability to strip the politics out of a contentious argument, the goodwill he engenders from Democrats, and his chumminess with the justices�these are all qualities that would appear to be anachronistic in contemporary, hyperpartisan Washington. But the case of Paul Clement suggests that, at least in one corner of the capital, they are very much in demand. Clement disputes this political interpretation. �Look, I get it, I hang out in this town, I understand how people are looking at...

Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general under President George W. Bush and is now a lawyer in private practice, is the favorite of many conservatives. Clement argued last month for the Supreme Court to strike down Obama's 2010 healthcare law, and he is defending laws that ban same-sex marriage and that target illegal immigrants. Clement, 45, would be "at the top of any short list right now," said Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group that advocates for conservative nominees. Asked about Clement, Mary Ann Glendon, a co-chairwoman of Romney's Justice Advisory Committee, voiced...

Paul Clement has been receiving rave reviews for his performance during the second day of oral arguments over health-care reform before the Supreme Court. (“[T]he best argument I’ve ever heard,” SCOTUSblog Tom Goldstein raved on Twitter). But Clement’s finest moment may have come when he was completely silent. A little more than two minutes into Solicitor General Donald Verilli’s turn at the bar, Justice Anthony Kennedy interrupted him: “Can you create commerce in order to regulate it?” Kennedy’s query was an almost verbatim recital of Clement’s own talking point, part of the fundamental argument he has made against the individual...

A top Obama administration lawyer defending last year's healthcare law ran into skeptical questions Wednesday from three federal judges here, who suggested they may be ready to declare all or part of the law unconstitutional. And in an ominous sign for the administration, the judges opened the arguments by saying they knew of no case in American history where the courts had upheld the government's power to force someone to buy a product. "I can't find any case like this," said Chief Judge Joel Dubina of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. "If we uphold this, are there any limits"...

In adherence to the old newsroom adage that opinions are free and facts precious, in three-and-a-half decades as a journalist I have declared my own view on a public policy issue precisely once. Having covered, before age 30, four cases of men charged with capital murder who were innocent, I concluded that the death penalty was wrong, and explained my reasoning a decade ago in a conservative magazine under the theory that this was the constituency that most needed convincing. --snip-- But does that mean that the other side shouldn't be allowed to have its say in court? Does it...

The modern-day John Adams brigade down at King & Spalding has finally found a client too unpopular to merit representation: the American people. That is exactly the same conclusion drawn by Eric Holder’s Justice Department. Like the DOJ, the Atlanta-based white-shoe law firm asks “How high?” when left-wing agitators tell it to jump. In this instance, the agitators were gay-rights activists. They were in a snit because K&S — in particular, K&S partner Paul Clement, the former Bush-administration solicitor general — agreed to represent the American people in litigation involving challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). DOMA denies...

Attorneys at King & Spalding probably thought that ditching the federal marriage case would save the firm a lot of trouble. Boy, did that strategy backfire! In the end, its decision to bail on a client is causing much more controversy than it ended. Less than a week into its contract with the U.S. House, King & Spalding decided that they didn't have the stomach to tangle with the homosexual community. In the face of a little pressure, attorneys dropped the suit faster than you can say "political correctness." Instead of sparing King from criticism, the choice heaped on more....

...Paul Clement, the former U.S. solicitor general, made his resignation letter public—a decision that telegraphs the size of rift between Clement and his former employer, the well-known Atlanta-based firm King and Spalding. He immediately joined a Washington-based firm, Bancroft, in order to continue representing the GOP. House Speaker John Boehner had signed up Clement and his firm to argue for the constitutionality in federal court of the Defense of Marriage Act after the Justice Department had determined that it would no longer defend the law’s legality, calling it a violation of equal protection principles. Clement and King and Spalding were...

House Dem leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco raised transparency and ethics questions about how the House GOP hired white-shoe lawyer Paul Clement of King and Spaulding at $520 an hour to defend DOMA in another, more threatening, letter to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. Pelosi said the use of the special "Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group" to pursue the litigation "in no way diminished the need for normal oversight of the terms of any contract" that puts taxpayers on the hook for at least $500,000. Pelosi said she and Dem whip Steny Hoyer, outvoted 2-3 on the so-called BLAG, as...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   U.S. Supreme Court Grants NRA Motion For Divided Argument In McDonald v. City of Chicago   Friday, January 29, 2010   On Monday, January 25, the U.S. Supreme Court granted NRA’s motion to allow it to participate in the upcoming oral argument in McDonald v. City of Chicago.“We are pleased with the Court’s decision to grant our motion,” said NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris W. Cox.  “NRA’s solitary goal in McDonald is to ensure that our fundamental, individual right to keep and bear arms applies to every law-abiding American in every state.  We are...

Gun Case Argument Schedule is Set Tony Mauro 02-25-2008 In a brief order on today's order list the Supreme Court dashed the hopes of gun rights advocates who hoped to have two lawyers and additional time arguing their cause before the Supreme Court when it hears arguments in the historic case D.C. v. Heller on March 18. Without explanation, the Court denied the motion of Texas Solicitor General R. Ted Cruz for argument time on the side of Alan Gura of Gura & Possessky, who has argued the pro-Second Amendment position from the start of the case. But the Court...

Leave it to the Bush Administration to put forward the argument that the Constitution permits "reasonable" infringement of the right to keep and bear arms. The Solicitor General, Paul Clement, of the United States is the lawyer for the Justice Department. On January 11, Clement dropped a bomb designed to destroy the Second Amendment. The bomb was a friend of the court brief that is a marvelous work of Newspeak as described by George Orwell in his novel of a horrifying future where words mean the opposite of their original definitions. On the one hand, the brief argues that the...

Last week, the Bush administration put troubling distance between itself and principled Second Amendment defenders. We refer to the amicus brief that Solicitor General Paul Clement filed Friday in support of the plaintiffs in District of Columbia v. Heller — the D.C. gun-ban challenge, widely expected to be the court's most significant gun-rights case in 60 years when a decision is reached. The brief sides with the D.C. plaintiffs seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights, but it then expends much effort worrying that an end to gun bans like the District's would mean an end to most types of...

The Second Amendment's right to bear arms has rarely been considered by the Supreme Court, but this year the Court is hearing a case that could become a Constitutional landmark. So it is nothing short of astonishing, and dispiriting, that the Bush Justice Department has now weighed in with an amicus brief that is far too clever by half. The case concerns a D.C. Circuit decision that overturned a Washington, D.C., law denying a handgun permit to plaintiff Dick Heller. Judge Laurence Silberman wrote for the majority that when the Second Amendment says "the right of the people to keep...