Free Republic

We hope the Supreme Court has the sense to assert its authority over military activities that can cause environmental harm far from any battlefield. Some of the justices’ comments this week sounded as though they were feeling far too deferential to the military. The court is considering whether to reverse lower-court decisions that the Navy must restrict its use of sonar in training exercises to protect whales and other marine mammals. Two lower courts have ruled that the Navy could conduct exercises off the California coast provided it employs mitigation measures, such as suspending or reducing sonar emissions when sound-sensitive...

PHOENIX—An anti-abortion group has won a long legal fight to force Arizona to issue "choose life" license plates, and the proposed new plates could be available to the group's members within several months. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday left in place a January ruling by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in favor of the Arizona Life Coalition. With the case resolved, the state license plate commission "will have to meet" to reconsider the application, said Motor Vehicle Division spokeswoman Cydney DeModica. She said she did not immediately know when that would happen. "Special organization plates" such as...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-The U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes next week for a term that will be conducted under the backdrop of November's presidential election. Among cases to be heard by the high court is whether pharmaceutical companies may be sued for patient injuries, if the Federal Communications Commission may restrict foul language on broadcast television, if the Navy can be barred from using sonar off the California coast and whether local officials can be sued for violations that took place on their watch.

"I repeat so as not to be misunderstood that this Court does have power, which it should exercise, to hold laws unconstitutional where they are forbidden by the Federal Constitution. My point is that there is no provision of the Constitution which either expressly or impliedly vests power in this Court to sit as a supervisory agency over acts of duly constituted legislative bodies and set aside their laws because of the Court's belief that the legislative policies adopted are unreasonable, unwise, arbitrary, capricious or irrational. The adoption of such a loose, flexible, uncontrolled standard for holding laws unconstitutional, if...

BILL and Hillary Clinton are doing their bare minimum to help elect Barack Obama president because the Democratic nominee refused to guarantee Hillary a US Supreme Court judgeship should he win the White House, sources say. A rep for Sen. Clinton e-mailed Page Six yesterday: "Absurd. Nonsense. Rubbish. Hogwash. Malarkey." But the word in Democratic circles is that Hillary - after being rejected by Obama as his running mate, the position given to Sen. Joe Biden - made it clear to Obama's camp that she wanted to be appointed to the Supreme Court. One insider said, "Hillary wants an assurance...

Great, to the point political video... why isn't the McCain camp putting together ads like this one!!!!

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-The U.S. Supreme Court reconvenes this week for a term that will be conducted under the backdrop of November's presidential election. Among cases to be heard by the high court is whether pharmaceutical companies may be sued for patient injuries, if the Federal Communications Commission may restrict foul language on broadcast television, if the Navy can be barred from using sonar off the California coast and whether local officials can be sued for violations that took place on their watch. Today, the court's nine justices will meet to consider a bevy of petitions for review that were submitted...

While many more people read NRO than visit our Queendom (alas and to their detriment), not all of NRO’s readers visit the “Bench Memos” Blog. Check out this article, referenced and linked, on a possible case to come before The Holy Nine in the upcoming judicial season. Perhaps we won’t get a reversal on Roe’s decree that a fetus is not a person, but we may get a ruling that from the moment of conception, what lives in a woman is unique, separate and human: Truth to Tell [Matthew J. Franck] With the wealth of stuff that appears on NRO...

“The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things - bread and circuses.” - Juvenal, Satire X Of all the Supreme Court decisions of recent months, the one I find most interesting is Boumediene v. Bush, the case in which, by 5-4 decision, the court extended habeas corpus rights to prisoners being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, included in his argument a fascinating summary of English constitutional history, covering everything from Magna Carta to the adoption of...

Rush Limbaugh, in today's show, referred to Clarence Thomas' book "My Grandfather's Son" to reveal Biden's slippery approach during Thomas' Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Here is what Claremce Thomas wrote about it in pages 235 and 236 of that book. Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist...

In this year of historic firsts, it should surprise no one that political prognosticators predict Election Day turnout to exceed 60 percent of the voting age population for the first time in 40 years.  Americans have “change” on their minds.  But they’re getting decidedly different visions of it from two presidential candidates who stand diametrically opposed on almost every issue.  Despite the stakes, there remain some conservatives who see little reason to exercise that which Samuel Adams called one of the most solemn trusts in human society -- the right to vote.  So, with voter registration deadlines looming, let me...

District of Columbia v. Heller was historic, the first Supreme Court decision to clearly hold that the Second Amendment right to arms was an individual one not linked to militia service. But it was historic for another reason: the sheer number of mistakes made in the dissenters' opinions. Given that all four dissenters co-signed the Stevens and Breyer dissenting opinions, this means that the mistakes must have escaped, not only four members of the highest court in the land, but their sixteen research clerks! Case in point: Justice Stevens' dissent claims that he holds true to the Court's earlier, 1939,...

Excerpt - JACKSON – Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court. It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case. In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record. Diaz's document also wasn’t made available to the public, as every other order and dissent are. ~ snip ~

At the recent Forum on the Presidency, Pastor Rick Warren asked Barack Obama which Supreme Court justice he would not have nominated. Obama replied, “I would not have nominated Clarence Thomas. I don't think that he, I don't think that he was a strong enough jurist or legal thinker at the time for that elevation. Setting aside the fact that I profoundly disagree with his interpretation of a lot of the Constitution.” He then added that he also wouldn’t appoint Justice Scalia, but that there is no argument over his “legal brilliance.” In other words, the black guy is dumb....

Many Americans watched Pastor Rick Warren question Senators John McCain and Barack Obama at the Saddleback Civil Forum late last week. Frankly, I was amazed Obama would agree to be questioned by a fundamentalist minister. It's no secret Obama is one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal, politicians on the national scene today. And it is testimony to the hubris of the junior Senator from Illinois if he thought the interview would benefit his campaign. It is clear, since Obama became the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, he has been tacking towards the political center. Obama has...

A former law clerk for Clarence Thomas is leading the pack of critics saying Barack Obama’s comments about the Supreme Court justice reveal the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee’s ignorance and misunderstanding of the Constitution. The weekend event at the 22,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., was meant to give both candidates a chance to address questions of importance to the large evangelical community. Church Pastor Rick Warren, known for his bestselling book “The Purpose-Driven Life,” posed the series of questions to each candidate, which were aimed at getting to their personalities, foibles and leadership styles. During the symposium, Obama...

And we know what horrible outcomes can arise when people without experience are placed in positions of great power. InstaGlenn accuses him of actually saying it but that’s not true: Watch him catch himself mid-sentence, the first fateful syllable of the word “experience” already out of his mouth, before he stops short and switches gears by basically calling Thomas a moron instead (at least, “at the time”) — an aspersion reinforced a moment later by the implicit contrast he draws in praising Scalia’s brilliance. A golden gaffe, narrowly avoided. Stay classy, Barry. Video at link:

With his request for access to historical bar exam data from the California State Bar repeatedly rejected, a law professor has turned to the state Supreme Court. UCLA School of Law professor Richard Sander, along with former State Bar governor Joe Hicks and the California First Amendment Coalition, filed a writ petition Thursday asking the court to direct the State Bar to hand over those records with redactions to protect test takers' privacy. CFAC Executive Director Peter Scheer said that the wrestling match had become a matter of access to public records and freedom of information. "I believe very strongly...

In O’Reilly’s Culture Warrior he notes that he must leave all judgment about sin to the deity. (pg. 179) No problem with that but then he indicates that he sees no problem with gay couples raising children. As with all others he offers a chance for the Catholic Church to explain their reasons for the negative positions they hold about children in such unions. It still might be easier to get the Pope to come on the “Factor” than Barack Obama but I doubt he is going to accept the offer if one is made.

The Heller decision on the second amendment has affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. This has come as a great relief to many conservatives, and has caused great gnashing of teeth among many liberals. Among the liberals dismayed by the decision are the D.C. City Council, who are defying the United States Supreme Court, at least in spirit, by promising to re-write the original law governing the possession of firearms so that it just falls within the legal definitions required by Heller, while still ensuring as a practical matter that people will not be...

WASHINGTON -- Injecting last-minute uncertainty into a case that has garnered international attention, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a late-hour appeal by Texas death row inmate Jose Ernesto Medellin on Tuesday night, disrupting the timetable for his scheduled execution in the 1993 rape and murder of two Houston teenagers.

It is fair to say that one or two cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court stand out each term. I think it is evident that this term’s most salient case is District of Columbia v. Heller. In that 5-4 decision, the Court struck down the District of Columbia’s ban on the possession of privately owned handguns within District limits. In so doing, the Court clarified the meaning of the Second Amendment for the first time in almost 70 years by endorsing an individual right to keep and bear arms. Aside from its significance in partially resolving the meaning of...

There are four justices over seventy years of age: Stevens 88, Ginsberg 75, Scalia 72, and Kennedy 71. Of these, only Scalia is conservative. With McCain, the GOP can own the Court for decades with conservative replacements. But will he campaign on this issue?

The District of Columbia is being sued again over its gun control laws, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the city must allow its citizens to arm themselves for self-defense. The Supreme Court ruled late last month that Washington, DC's, handgun ban and its trigger lock requirement were unconstitutional violations of the Second Amendment. Stephen Halbrook is the attorney for Security Officer Dick Heller, who first sued DC over its gun control laws. Halbrook says Heller -- who works as a private security guard in a federal courts building -- is taking the District to court again. "They're trying...

In open defiance of the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the Washington D.C. gun control law, the City Council passed an “emergency” law that keeps in place almost all of the law that was ruled unconstitutional. For example, though the Court ruled specifically that the city’s ban on handguns violated the Second Amendment, most handguns still cannot be registered because D.C. bureaucrats classify semi-automatic pistols as “machine guns.” Even Dick Heller, who brought the case against Washington’s gun ban, was rejected when he tried to register his handgun because any “bottom loading” firearm is a “machine gun” according to the...

H.R. 6615: To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to... Bill Status Introduced: Jul 24, 2008 Sponsor: Rep. Louis Gohmert [R-TX] Status: Introduced Go to Bill Status Page You are viewing the following version of this bill: Introduced in House: This is the original text of the bill as it was written by its sponsor and submitted to the House for consideration. Text of Legislation HR 6615 IH 110th CONGRESS 2d Session H. R. 6615 To provide for the transport of the enemy combatants detained in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to Washington, DC, where...

Following Boumediene’s Rules by: Ben Giles, July 29, 2008 Attorney General Michael Mukasey suggests that national security must remain a prominent concern as legislation is created to adhere to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in the case of Boumediene vs. Bush. “It is worth stressing that the Boumediene decision is about the process afforded to those we detain in our conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated groups,” said Mukasey, “not about whether we can detain them at all.” In an address given July 21 at the American Enterprise Institute, Mukasey discussed the need to back the Court’s ruling, which...

The conservative-leaning Committee for Justice is trying to rile supporters with a “Top 10” list of things to expect from the Supreme Court should Barack Obama be elected president and appoint his desired justices. CJ Executive Director Curt Levey wrote supporters an email Monday with the words “Obama court is a conservative nightmare” in the subject line. “That very real possibility should frighten conservatives all the more when they consider that 1) by the end of an 8-year Obama presidency, Justices Scalia and Kennedy would be 80 years old, an age most men never reach, and 2) given the damage...

The Supreme Court ended its term this year by making a mistake in one of its most controversial cases--the case in which it held unconstitutional a Louisiana law authorizing capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12 years of age.

Gitmo Merry-Go-Round by: Emily Miller, July 25, 2008 The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission) held a congressional hearing last week to revisit Guantanamo policies in the wake of Boumediene v. Bush, a recent Supreme Court decision that extends habeas corpus rights to detainees in Guantanamo Bay. Co-Chairman Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD) says that in light of Boumediene the U.S. should “reopen entirely the question of how we handle terrorism suspects.” Calling Guantanamo a “lightning rod for international human rights criticism of the United States,” he encourages the U.S. to look abroad to see how...

<p>Could 2008 Be a McCain Landslide? American Thinker, WA - Jul 12, 2008 Ah yes, dear readers, this title has nailed me. I'm an unconventional thinker, a woman who is wont to go madly against the grain, in nearly all matters. I'm usually in the unpopular camp, the one who disdains conventional wisdom and consensus science. I'm just too darned independent-minded for my own good sometimes.</p>

... The United States is the only country to take the position that some police misconduct must automatically result in the suppression of physical evidence. The rule applies whether the misconduct is slight or serious, and without regard to the gravity of the crime or the power of the evidence. “Foreign countries have flatly rejected our approach,” said Craig M. Bradley, an expert in comparative criminal law at Indiana University. “In every other country, it’s up to the trial judge to decide whether police misconduct has risen to the level of requiring the exclusion of evidence.” But there are signs...

Here is the piece I was telling you about. It is a little tough to read because the webmaster, for reasons I still do not understand even though he explained it, occasionally omits spacing between paragraphs. http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19857067&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8 I will also include the link in the first reply.

There is a great issue in America, a burning one, which speaks to the very soul of our government. It concerns the role of the judiciary and the possibility that it is usurping too much power. An excellent case could be made that it is. Link: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=19854121&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

It’s one of the most compelling storylines of the current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court – the notion that a 5-4 conservative majority could end up blocking the left-leaning agenda of a unified Democratic power structure in Washington. It may also be the next battleground in America’s emerging presidential slugfest, as supporters of Barack Obama are already sounding the alarm that their candidate’s so-called progressive agenda could be stymied by “judges appointed during the right’s ascendancy.” Columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr. lent voice to this so-called populist rage last month, bemoaning the “danger” inherent in the Court’s recent “spate of...

Studying the Supremes Emily Miller, July 14, 2008 The media is quick to paint Chief Justice John Roberts’ Supreme Court into an ideological corner, tagging it conservative or liberal, minimalist or imperialist, unified or deeply fractured. But these overarching broad analyses reported by the press are often inaccurate, says Dahlia Lithwick, scrutinizing the Supreme Court’s 2007-8 term in a panel discussion hosted by the Heritage Foundation. Anyone who attempts to make broad conclusions about the Court’s political leaning, or predicts which way the justices will vote, does so in the way of an “optical illusion.” Lithwick explains that it involves...

Opponents of a massive new energy tax and federal bureaucracy breathed a small sigh of relief last month when the Lieberman-Warner climate tax bill went down in flames on the Senate floor, with even 10 Democrats breaking from the party line and saying, in writing, that they would have opposed the bill on final passage. Unfortunately, power-mad bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency are undaunted. Empowered by an activist Supreme Court in the 5-4 Massachusetts v. EPA decision, the EPA is expected today to release a staggering document blueprinting a dizzying array of greenhouse gas regulatory programs under dozens of...

Whatever side of the Second Amendment controversy you may be on, the clear winner in District of Columbia v. Heller (striking down a Washington, D.C., ban on hand guns) was intentionalism, the thesis that a text means what its author or authors intend. The text in dispute is 27 words long, and it is cited in the opening pages of each of the three opinions: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” None of the words in this sentence is...

The Supreme Court openly violated its separated powers under the Constitution by defying Congress' Article I, Section 9 authority to suspend habeas corpus "when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Congressional Democrats cheer the decision because it provides them with political cover for what they could not accomplish legislatively - their preference to execute a battle as you might an indictment and prosecute a war as you might a trial. This once co-equal branch has morphed into a tyrannical tree and President Bush has foolishly said that he'll "abide by their decision." Question: How...

Howard Kaloogian is a lawyer and a former member of the California State Assembly. GITMO AND GUNS are getting all the press. But energy mavens are talking about another recent far-reaching — but little noted — U.S. Supreme Court decision on the California energy crisis: It took them seven years but they finally figured it out. The revisionist part of the story is well known: Big bad oil traders like Enron gamed the market and drove up energy costs fifteen-fold. The blackouts, insolvent utilities and economic chaos are remembered as the worst energy crisis in American history. But the Supreme...

The Supreme Court of the United States has developed a bit of an identity crisis of late. As a judicial body, they can’t seem to decide if they are part of the legislative branch of government or part of the judicial branch. On the legislative side, they have handed down decisions that have done nothing less than to create new laws, citing foreign laws or public consensus as the justification for their decision. On the judicial side, they adhere to the original interpretation of the Constitution and decide cases based solely on the constitutionality of a law or case. To...

When our rulers on the Supreme Court invalidated the State of Louisiana's death penalty for child rapists — in the case appropriately titled Kennedy v. Louisiana, decided June 25 — Justice Kennedy and the Court's liberal bloc insisted that the Eighth Amendment does not mean what it meant when it was adopted. Rather, the question of what is "cruel and unusual" punishment is answered by "the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society." Such gobbledygook is the mark of Left-liberal hauteur. In an arrested-development society, getting older is not necessarily maturing, and chronological maturation is...

There has been a lot of talk about the need for change in this country. That is Senator Obama's mantra, of course. And all of the commentators say, "It is a change election." Well, I can understand why the call for change is so powerful considering the pitiful condition that our country is in. We simply have the most prosperous, freest and strongest country in the history of the world. So we can understand why liberal politicians and their supporters see the need for great change. On a more serious note, we have long recognized the role change plays in...

Scalia's selective historyBy Jack RakoveAppeals to the evidence of history figured prominently in last week's Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia vs. Heller, striking down a sweeping ban on handguns and affirming that the 2nd Amendment protects a fundamentally individual right "to keep and bear arms." Yet read the two main opinions by Justices Antonin Scalia (for the conservative majority) and John Paul Stevens (in dissent), and you will see that different ways of defining and reading what counts as historical evidence expose a fault line between them.One would have to be terribly naive to think that how these...

If the Supreme Court Rules Two Plus Two Equals Five, Is the President Required to Enforce It? In recent years, it has become clear that the idea of an accurate, truthful, constitutional ruling from America’s judicial system is an oxymoron, an incongruous, absurd phrase that contradicts itself and is therefore false. Two court rulings in the last two months have reinforced this conclusion – the California Supreme Court’s ruling that two men and two women can “marry” and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that Osama Bin-Laden, the brutal Saudi Arabian terrorist leader behind 9/11 and countless murders of innocent men,...

ANOTHER GROSS FACTUAL ERROR AT THE SUPREME COURT. Following up on similar huge errors from Justice Stevens in Heller. Plus, another Stevens Heller error here. What gives?

WASHINGTON — When the Supreme Court ruled last week that the death penalty for raping a child was unconstitutional, the majority noted that a child rapist could face the ultimate penalty in only six states — not in any of the 30 other states that have the death penalty, and not under the jurisdiction of the federal government either. This inventory of jurisdictions was a central part of the court’s analysis, the foundation for Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s conclusion in his majority opinion that capital punishment for child rape was contrary to the “evolving standards of decency” by which the...

The Supreme Court, in a decision that attempts to honor the sanctity of life and to reserve the death penalty for situations where a murder has occurred, has just given one who rapes a child and the child both a free pass on life. The rapist gets to spend the rest of their life in prison supported by tax payers, escaping the hangman's noose, while the child gets to spend the rest of their life supported by themselves and trying to avoid tying the noose to end their suffering . The Court got it wrong completely for the following reasons...

WHY did the Founders bother toiling in the summer heat of Philadelphia in 1787 writing a Constitution when they could have relied on the consciences of Supreme Court justices like Anthony Kennedy instead? Kennedy is the court's most important swing vote and its worst justice. Whatever else you think of them, a Justice Antonin Scalia or Ruth Bader Ginsburg has a consistent judicial philosophy - while Kennedy expects the nation to bend to his moral whimsy. With apologies to Louis XIV, Kennedy might as well declare la constitution, c'est moi!

WASHINGTON -- If the long conservative era that began with Ronald Reagan's election is over, will the judges appointed during the right's ascendancy be able to block, frustrate and undermine the efforts of a new progressive majority? Consider this analysis from two influential journalists describing Supreme Court justices as "the last hope of the conservative interests in the United States." Imagine, they write, that a new liberal approach to the country's problems "had been overwhelmingly approved both in Congress and at the polling booths," so "conservative interests resorted to the courts, starting literally thousands of actions to stay the government's...