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The life of a Supreme Court justice would be “a little bit too monastic” for President Obama, according to an interview he gave the New Yorker about his legal legacy. Obama also praised the Supreme Court’s recent decision not to review lower-court rulings that struck down state prohibitions on same-sex marriage, saying he believes that the Constitution provides gays the right to marry. And he said that 81-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “gets to decide, not anybody else, when she chooses to go” into retirement. Obama made the remarks to the magazine’s legal correspondent, Jeffrey Toobin. Toobin noted that the...

There is a point where decision on contentious, difficult issues is unavoidable. With respect to homosexual conduct, the American Evangelical church has reached that point. There is no ignoring the determination of the gay and lesbian activists to insist upon complete social and legal normalization of homosexual conduct; from the adoption of children by same-sex couples to the judicial recognition of same-sex unions as marriages every bit as complete as those enjoyed by heterosexual couples. Thus, Christians cannot avoid the need to decide which side they are on. The Supreme Court's decision earlier this month to allow current judicial rulings...

President Obama does not want to be a Supreme Court justice. He calls it "too monastic" for his own personality. Besides, in an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama acknowledges that he needs to get out of the "bubble" after what will be eight years as president of the United States. “I love the law, intellectually,” the president tell the New Yorker, which says he sounds "tempted" at the idea of being on the Court. “I love nutting out these problems, wrestling with these arguments. I love teaching. I miss the classroom and engaging with students. But I think...

The Supreme Court on Saturday allowed Texas to use its strict voter identification law in the November election. The court’s order, issued just after 5 a.m., was unsigned and contained no reasoning.

The US government announced Friday it would recognize same-sex marriages in seven additional states, after the Supreme Court declined to take up the debate. A total of 26 of the 50 US states, and the capital Washington, now legally recognize gay and lesbian marriages, giving them the same legal rights and federal benefits as married heterosexual couples. "We will not delay in fulfilling our responsibility to afford every eligible couple, whether same-sex or opposite-sex, the full rights and responsibilities to which they are entitled," US Attorney General Eric Holder said in a video message. "With their long-awaited unions, we are...

The Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked key parts of a 2013 law in Texas that had closed all but eight facilities providing abortions in America's second most-populous state. In an unsigned order, the justices sided with abortion rights advocates and health care providers in suspending an Oct. 2 ruling by a panel of the New Orleans-based U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that Texas could immediately apply a rule making abortion clinics statewide spend millions of dollars on hospital-level upgrades.

A number of black Christian pastors and church leaders slammed the United States Supreme Court justices for turning down a case that would once and for all settle the dispute and divisiveness created by the issue of same-sex marriage. The National Coalition of Black Pastors and Christian Leaders characterized the court's decision -- "not to hear the case" and send it back to the lower courts -- as cowardice on the part of the nine members of the nation's highest court. On Monday, Oct. 6, 2014, the U.S. Supreme Court simply stated that it would not review cases which overturned...

While it may seem unfair to pay income taxes twice, Maryland residents have been doing so for years. That’s because unlike most other states, Maryland’s tax code does not provide a full tax credit for taxes paid to other states. This means anyone in Maryland who earns money in another state will pay that state’s income taxes, only to have Maryland levee county-level income taxes, without credit or deduction, on the same income. The result is that Maryland residents are unfairly double-taxed on income they earn out-of-state. Fortunately, one couple in Maryland has had enough. The Wynnes, part owners of...

The Constitution remains supreme above the office of President and, in great measure, we can thank the work of Chief Justice John Marshall I am not a lawyer, but I have read the Constitution and I cannot find any indication that the Founding Fathers intended the guarantee of “equal protection of the laws” in the 14th Amendment to include same-sex marriage. The idea would have been regarded as an abomination to the men who created the Constitution. To many who regard the institution of marriage a sacred bond between a man and a woman, the decisions of lower courts that...

<p>The Supreme Court on Friday night allowed same-sex marriages to begin in Idaho, ending a dramatic week in which the right of gay couples to marry expanded dramatically across the nation.</p> <p>In a one-sentence order, the justices denied a request from Idaho Gov. C.L. Butch Otter (R) to delay the unions so the state could continue its appeals. The court gave no reason for the action nor were there recorded dissents.</p>

Gay blades, weary of the indulgent life of easy gratification, want the courts to guarantee their right to marry. Stuffy straights demand that politicians legislate their partner's sexual intentions. The times, they are indeed a-changin'. The Supreme Court delays making gay marriage legal in every state, and its passive-aggressive approach enables a man to marry a man, and a woman to marry a woman in 30 states, and rising. Gays have succeeded in getting the state out of their bedrooms and into the maze of matrimony. Liaisons between men and women are more complicated. In California, which in the past...

Do the states have the right to outlaw same-sex marriage? Not long ago the question would have been seen as absurd. For every state regarded homosexual acts as crimes. Moreover, the laws prohibiting same-sex marriage had all been enacted democratically, by statewide referenda, like Proposition 8 in California, or by Congress or elected state legislatures. But today rogue judges and justices, appointed for life, answerable to no one, instruct a once-democratic republic on what laws we may and may not enact. Last week, the Supreme Court refused to stop federal judges from overturning laws banning same-sex marriage. We are now...

Three points need to be made about Monday's decision by the Supreme Court not to decide whether the equal protection clause of the Constitution grants people of the same sex the right to marry. Point 1: While the court's liberal wing probably wanted to accept cases banning same-sex marriage in five states that have been overturned by three different federal appeals courts in recent months, the conservative majority, along with swing Justice Anthony Kennedy, apparently wished to see states resolve the issue. Perhaps they sought to avoid another Roe vs. Wade in which a previous court overturned all state abortion...

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says its doctrine on marriage will remain unchanged despite Monday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized gay marriage in five states, including Utah, and opened the door for legalization in six more. “As far as the civil law is concerned, the courts have spoken,” the church said in a statement reacting to the Supreme Court’s decision. “Church leaders will continue to encourage our people to be persons of good will toward all, rejecting persecution of any kind based on race, ethnicity, religious belief or nonbelief, and differences in sexual orientation.” In...

“Putting the paddles on the chest of a divisive issue with absolutely no hope of the outcome he promises is a hallmark of Ted Cruz,” says GOP consultant Rick Wilson acidly, the memory of last year’s doomed “defund” effort firmly in mind. Okay, but the fine print on what Cruz wants to do is interesting. Typically when social conservatives start talking up amendments aimed at gay marriage, they’re thinking of a substantive change — namely, a new law of the land that says marriage involves one man and one woman and no other combination. Once that’s in the Constitution,...

WASHINGTON, DC -- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, today issued the following statement regarding the Supreme Court’s decision to reject requests from five States to review state laws that prohibit same-sex marriage. “The Supreme Court’s decision to let rulings by lower court judges stand that redefine marriage is both tragic and indefensible,” said Sen. Cruz. “By refusing to rule if the States can define marriage, the Supreme Court is abdicating its duty to uphold the Constitution. The fact that the Supreme Court Justices, without providing any explanation whatsoever, have permitted lower courts to strike down so many state marriage laws...

The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Monday for legal same-sex marriages in five more states. The court refused to hear cases from the states -- Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin and Indiana -- seeking to keep their same-sex marriage bans in place. Couples in some of those states began applying for marriage licenses just hours after the Supreme Court's decision. CNN affiliate WVEC in Norfolk, Virginia, captured a same-sex couple who rushed to fill out their marriage license documents. Officials in Virginia began issuing same-sex marriage licenses at 1 p.m. Monday. Tony London and Tim Bostic, two plaintiffs in Norfolk,...

Add 11 more states to the list where same-sex marriage is legal. Gay marriage supporters have had a lot to cheer over the past two years thanks to a series of landmark rulings that have paved the way for marriage equality in an ever-increasing number of states. But on Monday morning (October 6), it was something the Supreme court didn’t do that will make same-sex marriage the law in the majority of the country. At the start of the new Supreme Court term, the justices announced that they had rejected appeals from five states that were seeking to prohibit same-sex...

he Supreme Court has turned away appeals from five states seeking to prohibit same-sex marriages, paving the way for an immediate expansion of gay and lesbian unions. The justices on Monday did not comment in rejecting appeals from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. The court's order immediately ends delays on marriage in those states. Couples in six other states should be able to get married in short order. That would make same-sex marriage legal in 30 states and the District of Columbia. But the justices have left unresolved for now the question of same-sex marriage nationwide.

Joshua Matz didn’t bother waiting to write about the Supreme Court until he went to work there. He teamed with a renowned Harvard law professor to finish a book about the court before he started his year as a law clerk to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Unlike Matz, Christopher Michel is not listed as an author of the book he worked on years before his clerkship with Chief Justice John Roberts. But former President George W. Bush offered warm praise for onetime presidential speechwriter Michel as his collaborator on his memoir, "Decision Points." Bush said in the book’s acknowledgements that Michel’s...