Free Republic

Chief Justice William Rehnquist is battling thyroid cancer. Three of his colleagues on the Supreme Court are over seventy. There is no doubt, this presidential term, as to whether George W. Bush will have the chance to name justices to the Court. The only questions worth asking now are who, how, and how many. "Moral Values," Filibusters, and the Fate of Roe v. WadeThe most obviously pressing question, given the possible chief justice vacancy, is who President Bush's nominees will be. During the 2000 presidential campaign, in a telling comment, Bush named Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as the Supreme...

The other day, Queens Superior Court Justice, Laura Blackburne, a notoriously anti-police judge, was reassigned to civil court for helping a robbery suspect, Derek Sterling, evade an NYPD detective who was in the courthouse to arrest the convicted felon on a mugging charge. At the time, Blackburne was presiding over Sterling's hearing for a drug offense when she became aware that the police were in the building looking for him. Soon afterward she escorted the suspect out a private exit reserved for herself and other court officials, intentionally aiding in his escape. Two years earlier, Judge Blackburne had ordered that...

The longstanding debate over the court invented legal doctrine of "separation of church and state" has led to the introduction in Congress of one of the most potentially dangerous bills that I have ever read. Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution reads "In all other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." H.R. 3799 and S. 2082, titled "The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004", uses this clause to ban the Supreme Court from reviewing cases that involve...

University of Western Ontario and well-known among lawyers as one of the most prominent legal commentators in Canada. Everyone who still appreciates our national heritage of freedom under law should ponder his latest book, aptly titled, The Most Dangerous Branch: How the Supreme Court of Canada Has Undermined Our Law and Our Democracy. With this title, Martin ironically alludes to the assurance by Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers on June 14, 1778, that the people had nothing to fear from the powers conferred on the judiciary by the proposed Constitution of the United States. He wrote: "The judiciary, from...