Free Republic

More than 2,000 conservatives in tuxedos and gowns recently filled Union Station's main hall for steak dinner and the chance to cheer the man who saved the Supreme Court from liberal control. Justice Neil Gorsuch didn't disappoint them, just as he hasn't in his first seven months on the Supreme Court. "Tonight I can report that a person can be both a publicly committed originalist and textualist and be confirmed to the Supreme Court," Gorsuch said to sustained applause from members of the Federalist Society, using terms by which conservatives often seek to distinguish themselves from more liberal judges. The...

The Little Sisters of the Poor are heading back to court to defend themselves against the Obama administration’s Health and Human Services mandate to provide contraception, yet again. In an unusual political move, Pennsylvania and California sued the Little Sisters, demanding the same group who won at the Supreme Court in Zubik v. Burwell provide contraceptives in their state. In early October, HHS issued a new rule that protects religious non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor from providing anything like contraception that would violate their religious beliefs. In a press release, Mark Rienzi, senior counsel at Becket and lead attorney...

More than 2,000 conservatives in tuxedos and gowns recently filled Union Station’s main hall for a steak dinner and the chance to cheer the man who saved the Supreme Court from liberal control. Justice Neil Gorsuch didn’t disappoint them, just as he hasn’t in his first seven months on the Supreme Court. “Tonight I can report that a person can be both a publicly committed originalist and textualist and be confirmed to the Supreme Court,” Gorsuch said to sustained applause from members of the Federalist Society, using terms by which conservatives often seek to distinguish themselves from more liberal judges....

Most of you will be surprised to learn that this spring, while we were all fretting about what the Legislature or Jared Kushner’s father-in-law will do next, Texas got itself a new interstate highway: Interstate 14. Yup. Fourteen. Odd number for an interstate, given that most of them end in a zero or a five. The story behind that number, which I’ll get to shortly, is even odder. But, yes, in April, a couple of congressmen and other dignitaries gathered in Bell County to celebrate the opening of I-14 from Belton through Killeen and on to Fort Hood. Well, more...

“I think the goal is to end the progressive state as we know it,” said Baher Azmy, Legal Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a progressive-leaning legal advocacy group.

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 21, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — While the U.S. Senate continues to lag behind in confirming judicial nominations, President Donald Trump keeps his campaign promises by offering candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court that pro-lifers say are outstanding. On Friday, the Trump administration announced five new candidates for the Supreme Court, considered the “short list” of 25 possible high court justices. “These five judges are exceptionally qualified and any one of them would make an outstanding Supreme Court justice,” Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “President Trump set a high standard with Justice Neil Gorsuch and...

Justice Neil Gorsuch gave the most significant public address of his tenure on the nation’s highest court Thursday when he addressed the Federalist Society’s annual dinner, recently named in honor of the last man to hold his seat: Antonin Scalia. The newest Supreme Court justice took square aim at one of this year’s Federalist Society Convention’s main themes: the “administrative state,” the unelected mass of executive agency staff that actually creates most of the rules and regulations by which Americans live. Resistance of the administrative state’s growth and overreach is a driving force in the emergence of populist-nationalism and the...

The White House on Friday announced the addition of five new names to President Trump’s list of potential Supreme Court nominees. ... Two of the latest candidates, Judge Amy Coney Barrett and Judge Kevin C. Newsom, were both nominated to their current positions by Trump in May, according to the White House. Barret serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and Newsom serves on U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, the statement said. The White House announced both nominations in May. Also on the list are Justice Britt C. Grant of the Supreme Court...

President Donald J. Trump Announces Five Additions to Supreme Court List One year ago, President Donald J. Trump was elected to restore the rule of law and to Make the Judiciary Great Again. Following the successful confirmation of Justice Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court of the United States and the nomination of more than seventy Federal judges—including five individuals from his Supreme Court list—President Trump today announced that he is refreshing his Supreme Court list with five additional judges. President Trump will choose a nominee for a future Supreme Court vacancy, should one arise, from this updated list...

The Supreme Court is facing two First Amendment issues, and we are at risk of having two different answers – ones that can only further confuse an already confusing selection of legal precedents. One is Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, which hinges on a privately owned business's ability to pick and choose its customers based on religious beliefs. The other case is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Xavier Becerra, which focuses on the rights of private, non-profit crisis pregnancy centers established by pro-life organizations and individuals to operate without being forced to advocate for abortion....

On Monday, a fifth woman came forward with allegations that Roy Moore sexually assaulted her when she was 16 years old and he was a prosecutor in Etowah County, Ala. The accusations to date are both plausible and disgusting. When Moore was in his early thirties, he allegedly sought out and sexually assaulted numerous teenage girls, including a 14-year-old. Moore has denied it, sort of, although his weird interview with Sean Hannity on Friday left the strong impression that the charges are most likely true. Yet it’s hard to understand why voters in Alabama are only just now realizing that...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether a California law requiring private facilities that counsel pregnant women against abortion to post signs telling clients how to get state-funded abortions and contraceptives violates free speech rights. The justices will hear an appeal brought by Christian-based non-profit facilities sometimes called “crisis pregnancy centers” of a lower court ruling that upheld the Democratic-backed 2015 California law. The challengers argue that the law, by forcing them to post the information, violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantee of free speech. The California challengers included the National Institute of Family...

Some of President Trump’s judicial nominees have faced questioning from Democrat senators that seems more like a religious inquisition than discussion of judicial philosophy and temperament. Notre Dame law professor Amy Barrett was confirmed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last week, but not before having a notable exchange with Sen. Dianne Feinstein who challenged her on a number of Catholic teachings and concluded: “Dogma and law are two different things. And I think whatever a religion is, it has its own dogma. … The dogma lives loudly within you and, that is concerning.”Sen. Dick Durbin probed another fine...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Elena Kagan has stepped aside from the Supreme Court’s consideration of a case involving the rights of immigrants who are detained while the government considers deporting them. Court clerk Scott Harris says in a letter Friday that Kagan belatedly discovered that she authorized a court filing at an earlier stage of the case when she was serving in the Justice Department. Justices typically take themselves out of cases if they’ve played even a minor role at any point.

America’s newest Supreme Court Justice – Neil Gorsuch – has made news in the liberal media – not necessarily for his opinions though. The media has portrayed the Trump-appointee as pedantic, boorish and juvenile and annoying. This is hard to square with the praise Gorsuch received from colleagues and former law clerks during his confirmation hearing, writes Elizabeth Slattery in a (commentary) on Heritage.org. In a recent episode of the Supreme Court podcast “First Mondays,” NPR’s legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg took aim at Gorsuch. First in her crosshairs was his habit of frequently citing the Constitution. She objected to...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday overturned a lower court ruling that an Alabama man convicted of killing a police officer in 1985 was no longer legally eligible to be executed because strokes wiped out his memory of committing the murder. The nine justices ruled unanimously that Alabama can execute 67-year-old Vernon Madison, who has spent decades on death row. They said Supreme Court precedent had not established "that a prisoner is incompetent to be executed because of a failure to remember his commission of the crime."

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed the second and final challenge to President Donald Trump’s executive order on refugees and migrants Tuesday, concluding that the expiration of a 120-day ban on refugee resettlement ended the controversy. Snip The order is a victory for the administration, that asked the justices to dismiss the cases in September. The orders also wipe out adverse lower court rulings limiting the president’s authority.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday dismissed its remaining case against President Trump's travel ban, leaving the court's calendar devoid of travel ban cases until any challenges related to Mr. Trump's third and latest travel ban make their way up to the highest court. The Supreme Court dropped the case, first filed in Hawaii over the second version of the travel ban, because the Trump administration's 120-day restrictions on travelers from some Muslim-majority nations and on refugees expired on Tuesday. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented from the order. The order did not address the merits of the case.

Bill O'Reilly expressed hope Thursday the Supreme Court will ultimately decide a 40-foot "Peace Cross" honoring World War I soldiers on public land in Maryland can stand, telling Newsmax TV "there's no doubt in my mind that it would." "What makes it really disturbing is that everybody acknowledges that the World War I memorial is basically directing people, Americans and others who are visiting, to honor those who lost their lives in that conflict," O'Reilly told "Newsmax Now" host John Bachman in an interview. "That's all."

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan said Monday the high court has adopted much of the late Justice Antonin Scalia's textualist judicial reasoning. Kagan was speaking to an audience at the Chicago-Kent College of Law when she said that Scalia's judicial reasoning has come to dominate the court, the Washington Examiner reported. Scalia, who sat on the Supreme Court for 30 years before his death in 2016, was a proponent of textualism, a theory in which the interpretation of law is based on the meaning of legal text as it would be commonly understood at the time of its passage, and...