Free Republic

This week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri. This case focuses on whether govt collusion with social media platforms to censor online speech violates the First Amendment. Justice Samuel Alito questioned "whether it is legal for the US government and big tech to collude to censor speech they don't agree with. I think saying that Facebook and the Federal government should be partners contradicts the words and intent of the First Amendment." Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson disagreed. "My biggest concern is that the First Amendment hamstrings the government in significant ways at the most important times....

The Supreme Court nominee's critics say she clearly did, but several federal appeals courts disagreeDiscussing Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court nomination today, Sen. Charles Grassley (R–Iowa) brought up her resentencing of a heroin dealer named Keith Young—a case that Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) grilled her about during her confirmation hearing last month. Grassley, like Cotton, suggested that Jackson had flouted federal law by retroactively applying a sentencing reform that Congress had chosen not to make retroactive. But the issue is not so straightforward, since federal appeals courts have disagreed about the legality of Jackson's rationale for shortening Young's sentence. In...

As the Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson picked up steam, Republican senators zeroed in on a particular case from 2013 in which she allegedly gave light sentencing to a teenager who pleaded guilty to child porn charges. Sen Josh Hawley grilled Jackson on Tuesday about her past leniency on sex offenders. The Arkansas Republican brought up the 2013 case of Wesley Keith Hawkins, 27, who was 18 when his laptop was found to contain graphic and disturbing videos of young victims who allegedly lived in the same house as him. Jackson, who presided over...

Senator Josh Hawley’s assessment of Judge Jackson’s record is squarely in the lane of jurisprudential analysis and the Judiciary Committee should take note. Senate Democrats have signaled their intent to begin confirmation hearings for Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court, as early as next week. Thus far, the only information uncovered about Judge Jackson by the intrepid corporate press is that she will be the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court.But research released this week by Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calls into question Judge Jackson’s...

Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's membership in a Harvard University student group that once invited a controversial anti-Semitic speaker to campus has surfaced ahead of her confirmation hearings later this month. In 1992, Jackson was a member of the Harvard Black Students Association when they invited Leonard Jeffries, a professor known for making anti-Semitic remarks, to speak at the university, Fox News reports. According to the Anti-Defamation League, Jeffries first gained public attention in 1991, “when the New York Post published an account of a vitriolic anti-Semitic and racist speech he made on July 20 at the Empire...