Free Republic

For the Family Research Council, Ken Blackwell and Ken Klukowski warned in a Washington Times op ed that a case on gun rights that will soon come before the Supreme Court could "trigger the unhinging of American culture." Not only do I think the pair went too far in their claim, I also think they missed several key reasons why their worst fear of the end of state's rights and federalism is misplaced, even as their warning is well taken. What Blackwell and Klukowski are worried about is that the upcoming McDonald v City of Chicago case could open a...

When Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 89, retires—and he's expected to in the next year or so—there will be no Protestant left on the highest court in the land. Will President Obama be pressured to appoint one? Popular opinion once held that even one Catholic was too many on the court. Today there are six. But would anyone even notice if Obama appointed a seventh to replace Stevens? Once upon a time, there was an outright religious litmus test for Supreme Court appointees. Today religion is almost irrelevant in appointing new justices. All of which raises a question: Are...

Yesterday, Michael Dreeben, the attorney representing the U.S. government, tried to defend the controversial “honest services” statute from a constitutional challenge in front of the Supreme Court. When Dreeben informed the Court that the feds have essentially criminalized any ethical lapse in the workplace, Justice Breyer exclaimed, [T]here are 150 million workers in the United States. I think possibly 140 [million] of them flunk your test. There it is. Some of us have been trying to draw more attention to the dangerous trend of overcriminalization. Judge Alex Kozinski co-authored an article in my book entitled “You’re (Probably) a Federal Criminal.”...

Are you a “Tenther?” No, that’s not someone who lives in a tent to remain off the grid -- although that may be something we Tenthers will soon consider. No, “the Tenthers are the ones who keep citing the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution every time there is a proposed bill they don’t like, claiming the Constitution prohibits it,” as liberal commentator Alan Colmes explains on his Web site. Well, get ready, because if the health insurance reform legislation now under consideration in the Senate passes, the Tenth Amendment could be all that stands between Americans and the road to...

Glendale, AZ --(AmmoLand.com)- The Arizona Citizens Defense League has joined with other pro-rights individuals, groups and several district attorneys in the filing of an “amicus (friend of the court) brief” with the United State Supreme Court in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, the most critical Second Amendment case since the Heller decision upheld our individual right to keep and bear arms. In April 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in Nordyke v. King that the Second Amendment is “incorporated” through the Fourteenth Amendment and applicable to all state and local governments. However in McDonald...

Wal Mart does it again. The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in favor of the chain store. In 2005, the store in Jonquiree, Quebec was closed because of the recent union certification of the stores employees. This, of course, led to various court runs by the displaced employees of the store. At the end of 2005, the Quebec Labor Board ordered Wal Mart to compensate the former employees. (http://wakeupwalmart.com/facts/) Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada has seen fit to rule 4-3 in favor of the company. As usual

BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 16 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Second Amendment Foundation today filed its much-anticipated brief to the United States Supreme Court in the case of McDonald v. Chicago, which challenges the constitutionality of that city's ban on handguns. SAF is joined in the lawsuit by the Illinois State Rifle Association (ISRA) and four individual plaintiffs. They are represented by attorney Alan Gura, who successfully argued the landmark Heller case before the high court in 2008, leading to a ruling that the Second Amendment affirms and protects an individual right to keep and bear arms beyond the scope of serving in...

Recent Supreme Court activity could pave the way for the death sentence given to Mumia Abu-Jamal to be carried out after 28 years.

The private homes New London, Conn., took through eminent domain from Suzette Kelo and others, are torn down now, but Pfizer has just announced that it closing up shop at the research facility that led to the condemnation. Leading drugmakers Pfizer and Wyeth have merged, and as a result, are trimming some jobs. That includes axing the 1,400 jobs at their sparkling new research & development facility in New London, and moving some across the river to Groton. To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to...

Lawyers for two Florida men who were sentenced to life without parole as juveniles will argue to the U.S. Supreme Court Monday that the penalty is cruel and unusual. Death is different. With those words, a deeply divided U.S. Supreme Court in 2005 declared that the execution of adolescents was cruel and unusual punishment, and, hence, a violation of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling halted capital punishment for juveniles in 25 states. On Monday, the lawyers for two Florida men who, as juveniles, were sentenced to life without parole for nonhomicides will ask the nation's highest court to declare the...

HARRISBURG - Joan Orie Melvin, a Republican judge from Western Pennsylvania, prevailed in the Philadelphia suburbs yesterday to claim a decisive win in the hard-fought battle for a vacancy on the state Supreme Court. Melvin's victory shifts the political balance on the state's most powerful bench to Republican, and could portend a re-energized conservative base in the 2010 gubernatorial and congressional elections. With 91 percent of ballots counted, Melvin had won every suburban county around Philadelphia except Montgomery, where Democrat Jack Panella of Easton led by only a few hundred votes. "It's clear to me she won because of the...

Joan Orie Melvin is maintaining a 6% lead over Jack Panella for the lone vacancy on the Commonwealth Supreme Court. This contest is considered critical due to a 3-3 party split in the current court makeup. Panella had been heavilly favored to win, but in the waning days of the campaign, his lead dwindled and he begin running attack ads on Orie Melvin as a right wing extremist.

A New Jersy appeals court has concludedthat Americans have no Second Amendment right to buy a handgun

Earlier today, Liberal news makers and bloggers such as the Huffington Post rushed to their keyboards to make another attack on Conservatism. They were responding to a rumor going around that Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia had claimed he would have been against the decision of the landmark case of Brown v. Board of Education. ...

Once upon a time a newly elected President, supported by an adoring media, claimed powers beyond the Constitution, and the Supreme Court acted. Does that Court still sit? Some of us are asking ourselves that question these days. A week doesn't pass when some new federal infringement on the rights of a free society is enacted or promoted. Just recently, Obama's Pay Czar, Kenneth Feinberg, cut the salaries of twenty-five senior Wall Street executives. By what Constitutional authority does he do that? we ask. While the Democratic Party seems hell bent on socializing as many parts of the free market...

C-SPAN gives viewers a rare look into the U.S. Supreme Court with interviews with the nine sitting Justices and retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Recent programs: Chief Justice John Roberts (55 min. 17 sec.) Justice Samuel Alito (29 min. 52 sec.) Justice Stephen Breyer (51 min. 39 sec.) Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (36 min. 46 sec.) Justice Anthony Kennedy (37 min. 52 sec.) Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor (33 min. 18 sec.) Justice Antonin Scalia (32 min.) Justice John Paul Stevens (35 min. 16 sec.) Justice Sonia Sotomayor (38 min. 24 sec.) Justice Clarence Thomas (48 min. 19 sec.)

Introduction In this essay I will attempt to show that the powers granted to the Federal Judiciary were excessive, that the creation of an all-powerful, unaccountable Supreme Court was a grave error that made the expansion of Federal power inevitable, and virtually limitless. I will then provide a brief investigation into the original meaning of the Commerce Clause. Last, I will argue that the harm created through Commerce Clause jurisprudence appears irreversible, having been upheld and applied by Justice Scalia and the liberal wing of the Court as recently as 2005. If Justice Scalia not only unwilling to overturn past...

WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will take up former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling's appeal of his convictions for his role in the collapse of the energy giant, accepting another high-profile challenge to a favorite tool of prosecutors in white-collar and public corruption cases. Skilling's appeal stems from his convictions in 2006 on 19 counts of conspiracy, securities fraud, insider trading and lying to auditors involving the 2001 collapse of Enron. The justices already are entertaining similar claims from former newspaper magnate Conrad Black and a former Alaska lawmaker ensnared in a public corruption scandal. At issue in...

“Desperate” Impact? by: Brittany Fortier, October 13, 2009 As the Supreme Court begins a new session, the Cato Institute held its 8th annual Constitution Day Conference and Supreme Court Review on September 17, 2009. This day also marked the 222nd anniversary of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, and panelists discussed whether the Supreme Court decisions of the previous year were faithful to the intentions of our Founding Fathers. Roger Clegg, President and General Counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, called the “disparate impact” approach to civil rights law used by the Court in cases such as Ricci v....

Supreme Court Means by: Sarah Carlsruh, October 08, 2009 In honor of the Supreme Court opening its October 2009 term, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) hosted a panel of law experts on October 2nd to discuss the court’s key, upcoming business cases. “It’s shaping up to be a good term for business cases,” declared John Elwood, a partner at the Washington, D.C. office of Vinson & Elkins. Elwood specializes in appellate and Supreme Court practice. Elwood claimed that Free Enterprise Fund (FEF) v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) hinges on an issue of separation of powers and government regulation....

Conflict of Interest Resolved by: Brittany Fortier, October 07, 2009 Would you know bias when you see it? A majority of Supreme Court justices don’t seem to, particularly when it concerns their own judicial profession. Brad Smith, Professor of Law at Capital University Law School and former Chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), discussed the case of Caperton v. Massey Coal at the Cato Institute’s Supreme Court Review on September 17, 2009. The case involved Massey Coal’s decision not to purchase Caperton’s mine located in Buchanan County, VA, after an extended period of negotiations. Caperton, alleging fraud and...

Highlights of some high-profile cases that the Supreme Court will take up in its term that begins Monday (10/5/09): _Guns: The Second Amendment's right to keep and bear arms has never been held to apply to state and local laws restricting guns. The court is taking up a challenge to a handgun ban in Chicago to decide whether this right, like many others in the Bill of Rights, acts to restrict state and local laws or only federal statutes. If the court sides with gun rights supporters, lawsuits to overturn all manner of gun control laws are likely. _Animal cruelty...

The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear an appeal in Choose Life Illinois v. White, upholding a Seventh Circuit ruling that the Illinois system for approving specialty plates was not discriminatory. The case was filed in 2004 after citizens had collected more than the requisite number of signatures, but were denied a “Choose Life” license plate. “Ever-increasing numbers of pro-life Americans want to proudly display the ‘Choose Life’ message on their vehicles—as evidenced by the fact that 22 states now offer such plates,” says Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life. “Illinois is unfairly censoring...

With three new members in the past four years and the prospect of more change ahead, the Supreme Court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. commences this week what could be a transformative term. New Justice Sonia Sotomayor will receive the most attention, as President Obama's historic choice begins to reveal the judicial philosophy that remained largely cloaked during her confirmation hearings. And speculation will build about whether a retirement by one of the aging liberal justices will give Obama another opportunity to make his mark.

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

Besides for the fact that liberal justices always make the wrong decision, are usually against the foundations of the United States Constitution, do not believe in the Constitution as our Founders wrote it, believe in putting race above the law, and believe in skipping the Constitutional authority of legislation belonging to the United States Congress, there is one more reason to oppose liberal justices. Montana! Montana?

NORMAN, Okla. -- The authors of the U.S. Constitution intentionally made it open to interpretation so that it could be adapted to meet changing societal issues, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said Thursday in Norman. "I think (they) sensed that they were on the edge of world history, but they were cautious and they knew it was difficult to rise above injustices and inequalities of their own time," said Kennedy, who is often viewed as the swing vote on the Supreme Court. Kennedy addressed about 1,500 University of Oklahoma College of Law alumni and students at the centennial celebration for...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court could ignite a vigorous new fight over state and local gun controls across the nation when it rules on a challenge to Chicago's handgun ban. The court said Wednesday it will consider a challenge to Chicago's ban, and even gun control supporters believe a victory is likely for gun-rights proponents.

Following the Heller decision, folks in municipalities all over the country began to challenge local restrictions on gun rights. One of the most prominent bans in the country is right here in Chicago. That is about to get a full hearing in front of the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court agreed Wednesday to decide whether strict local and state gun control laws violate the Second Amendment, ensuring another high-profile battle over the rights of gun owners. The court said it will review a lower court ruling that upheld a handgun ban in Chicago. Gun rights supporters challenged gun laws in...

Even as you are reading this, the Second Amendment offers you no protection whatsoever from state gun laws! But today, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of McDonald v. Chicago and we may soon finally see the Second Amendment take its rightful place as a protection for ALL Americans!

Here is raw video of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices posing for a group photo today. The newest justice - Sonia Sotomayor - had her first group photo taken with her colleagues. . . . (VIDEO)

Next week, the Supreme Court will begin its 2009 term, secure in the knowledge that it remains almost completely misunderstood by the American public. A Gallup poll conducted this month showed the court's current approval rating to be higher than it's been in a decade: As of now, 61 percent of Americans approve of the high court's performance. Last year, that number was slumping at 50 percent. Fifty percent of Americans currently believe the court is neither too liberal nor too conservative; that's up from 43 percent last year. And the number of Americans who believe the court is too...

In 1937, faced with a Supreme Court that he saw as mulishly blocking his effort to rescue the country from the Great Depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war on the justices — and on the whole notion of deferring to their interpretation of the Constitution. Nowhere in that document is it written that the court is the final arbiter of the Constitution’s meaning through judicial review. The court took for itself the power “to say what the law is” in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison. A century and more later, Roosevelt protested. He told a colleague that when...

Justice Anthony Scalia made a prediction in 2003 when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on the McCain-Feingold law in 2003: "if history teaches us anything, [it] is that when you plug one means of expression, the money will go to whatever means of expression are left." The case the Supreme Court heard on Wednesday, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, shows that Justice Scalia was right. The case focused on a movie released during the 2008 presidential campaign, "Hillary: The Movie." It doesn't explicitly advocate that Hillary Clinton be defeated in her bid for the presidency, but no one...

The Supreme Court will weigh First Amendment rights against campaign finance law when it holds a rare September argument Wednesday to review a case that started as a dispute over an anti-Hillary Clinton movie a conservative group wanted to air during the 2008 presidential primaries. The politically hot case will also be the first Supreme Court case for new Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The court will, as is customary, convene its next term on the first Monday in October, but this case originates from arguments it first heard in March. Instead of issuing a decision, the justices announced they wanted additional...

The Supreme Court appears poised to wipe away limits on campaign spending by corporations and labor unions in time for next year's congressional elections in a case that began as a dispute over a movie about Hillary Rodham Clinton. The justices return to the bench Wednesday , nearly a month early , to consider whether to overrule two earlier decisions that restrict how and when corporations and unions can take part in federal campaigns. Laws that impose similar limits in 24 states also are threatened. The court first heard arguments in March in the case of whether "Hillary: The Movie,"...

SAN FRANCISCO --- California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a federal court's order that the state reduce its prison population by 40,000 inmates, a spokesman said on Tuesday. The appeal will be a dramatic escalation in the long-running legal battle over the state of California's overcrowded prisons and their often criticized medical care for inmates. Schwarzenegger spokesman Aaron McLear said the appeal will be filed later this week, adding that cutting the state's inmate population of about 170,000 must be done methodically and by state officials. "We don't believe it's right," McLear said, referring to...

Reporting from Washington - Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 early next year, has given a hint that this Supreme Court term will be his last, potentially clearing the way for a second appointee from President Obama next summer.

With President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court of the United States, many speculated whether or not she would survive the vetting process and how her confirmation could affect the makeup of the court. Everyone nominated to serve on the Supreme Court should be carefully vetted because, like it or not, Supreme Court decisions have the potential to affect a large segment of the population even though the legislature is the branch of government charged to enact legislation and is therefore held accountable to the public for policy decisions.

John Paul Stevens has the longest tenure on the Supreme Court and is not coincidentally its oldest member at 89. Speculation arises every year about his potential retirement, but until now, Stevens has seemed indefatigable — or perhaps concerned about retiring with a more conservative President in place to nominate his replacement. However, Stevens no longer has that worry, and the small number of clerks he has hired this summer for the next session indicates that retirement will come soon: Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the...

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has hired fewer law clerks than usual, generating speculation that the leader of the court's liberals will retire next year. If Stevens does step down, he would give President Barack Obama his second high court opening in two years. Obama chose Justice Sonia Sotomayor for the court when Justice David Souter announced his retirement in May. Souter's failure to hire clerks was the first signal that he was contemplating leaving the court. Stevens, 89, joined the court in 1975 and is the second-oldest justice in the court's history, after Oliver Wendell Holmes....

The Supreme Court, in District of Columbia v. Heller, declared that Washington’s 32-year ban on all functional firearms violated the Second Amendment. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion, however, applied only to possession of guns in the home. The court did not address, and was not asked to address, firearms carried outside the home. That’s the issue posed in a new lawsuit against the District by Tom Palmer (disclosure: my colleague at the Cato Institute) and four other plaintiffs — represented by Alan Gura, the lawyer who successfully argued Heller before the court. After Heller, the District relaxed its ban on...

WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline)-The family of an Illinois boy who was fatally shot by his friend have petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a federal law that protects gun companies from most civil lawsuits. The family of Joshua Adames want the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 overturned, a move that would allow them to sue a gun manufacturer over the 13-year-old boy's accidental death.

A few weeks ago the Weekly Standard had a ridiculously hopeful editorial about how President Obama couldn't possibly go any further to the left with his next SCOTUS pick because of the ideological basis upon which they sold Justice Sotomayor. For the Standard, Terry Eastland was sure that the logic by which Sotomayor was sold to the country would preclude a shift leftward for the next court pick. Unfortunately, Eastland proved once again that too many conservatives simply do not understand that liberalism does not rely on logic or consistency , it simply barrels forward with no heed to reason....

Justice Sotomayor’s first vote on the Supreme Court yesterday was to stay the execution of an unquestionably guilty hitman that even Ohio’s Democratic governor wanted to go forward. (It did; she and the liberal activist bloc lost the vote.) Who's surprised? Sotomayor boosters tried to paint her as a tough-on-crime former prosecutor to counteract her radical-left, anti-death-penalty activism during her days with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. Remember Joe Biden assuring law enforcement she "has your back"? Remember the White House continually highlighting her work for New York City DA Robert Morgenthau? Remember her supporters touting that...

Newly seated Justice Sonia Sotomayor has cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court, joining a dissent by three liberal justices to stop a pending execution in Ohio. The full court turned down the last-minute appeal from lawyers for Jason Getsy late Monday evening by a 5-4 vote. Getsy, 33 and a convicted hit man, is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 8 a.m. Pacific time today.

(English-language translation) Yesterday's media headlines in Puerto Rico and the United States leave no room for doubt over the historical impact the confirmation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor as the 111th justice to join the United States Supreme Court has. The fact that the judge, the daughter of Puerto Rican parents, is the third woman to reach the highest court in the U.S. is in itself historic. In addition, however, she is the first member of the Hispanic community to join this body which interprets the application of the American Constitution. This factor is a transcendental step in making the Supreme...

Make no mistake about it Sonia Sotomayor’s presences on the Supreme Court is primary about Race and Sex politics but secondarily its about changing America in ways that you’ve never thought of (more on that later). Just read the headlines mostly every last one report that she is the Courts first Hispanic justice and that she is female. Most of the reporting to date has been about her Latina life story while hardly any of the reporting has been analysis on what makes Sotomayor the best choice out of all of the possible picks that a president could have selected...

WASHINGTON -- Sonia Sotomayor, her family and friends are gathering at the Supreme Court for her swearing-in as the court's first Hispanic, third woman and 111th justice. Chief Justice John Roberts is to preside Saturday at two ceremonies that will officially make Sotomayor a high court justice. Sotomayor, 55, has been a federal judge for 17 years. President Barack Obama nominated her in May to take the place of Justice David Souter, who has retired. The Senate confirmed Sotomayor's nomination Thursday by a 68-31 vote. Before she can begin her new job, though, she has to take two oaths. In...