Free Republic

- A divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that a federal law requiring longer prison sentences for using a gun during a "crime of violence" is unconstitutionally vague. The court voted 5-4 stating the law "provides no reliable way" to determine which offenses qualify as crimes of violence. Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion on behalf of Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. "In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all," Gorsuch wrote. "Only the people's elected representatives in Congress have the power to write new federal criminal laws. And when...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday was inducted in the annual National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was nominated in 2009 by President Barack Obama and made history when she was confirmed as the Court's first Hispanic justice. Sotomayor has consistently sided with the Court's liberal decisions, The Hill reported.Other 2019 National Women's Hall of Fame inductees included:• Actress Jane Fonda• Civil rights activist Angela Davis• Native American lawyer Sarah Deer• Retired Air Force fighter pilot Nicole Malachowski• The late suffragist and cartoonist Rose O’Neill• New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D), who died last year• Composer Laurie Spiegel• AIDS researcher...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is taking the high road regarding Justice Brett Kavanaugh, stating he is already part of the “Supreme Court family,” despite the intense criticism her liberal supporters have lathered upon him. Appearing on CNN with David Axelrod, Sotomayor noted that the court adjusted very quickly to the addition of Kavanaugh to their bench, CNN reported. “When you’re charged with working together for most of the remainder of your life, you have to create a relationship,” Sotomayor told Axelrod during an interview that will air Saturday evening. “The nine of us are now a family, and we’re...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh is already like “family.” Sotomayor recently sat down with David Axelrod, for an episode of CNN’s “Axe Files” that will air Saturday, and spoke about welcoming in the new justice. Kavanaugh was confirmed after a highly publicized Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September. He was accused by Professor Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault in the 1980s when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation and was eventually confirmed with a 50-48 vote in the Senate. Sotomayor said among Supreme Court justices, typically a lifetime appointment,...

We have to rise above partisanship': Two SCOTUS Justices say the reputation of the Court has been 'hurt' by the Brett Kavanaugh vote Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor are concerned for the future of the Supreme Court as senators get ready to vote on the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh Associate Justices spoke at Princeton University Friday on the eve of an important decision about SCOTUS Both women were appointed by Barack Obama respectively in 2009 and 2010 Two Associate Supreme Court Justices are worried for the future of the highest court in the federal judiciary after Justice Anthony Kennedy leaves....

When NeverTrump pundit Erick Erickson suggested that the accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh by Christine Blasey Ford was the result of a PR job, there was both laughter and disdain from the left. There isn’t much mirth or contempt now that it’s been revealed who Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser has retained. According to Politico, Christine Blasey Ford — the 51-year-old California psychologist who says the Supreme Court nominee sexually assaulted her while they were in high school in Maryland — is receiving advice from Democrat activist Ricki Seidman. “Seidman, a senior principal at TSD Communications, in the past worked...

The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a police officer who shot a woman outside of her home in Tucson, Arizona in May 2010. The officer, Andrew Kisela, shot Amy Hughes after she was seen acting "erratically," hacking at a tree with a knife and arguing with her roommate.Kisela and another police officer, Alex Garcia, heard about the report on their patrol car radio and responded. A third police officer, Lindsay Kunz, arrived on the scene on her bicycle.  All three officers drew their guns. At least twice they told Hughes to drop the knife. Viewing the record in...

Whispers are rampant throughout D.C. that a vacancy is imminent on the U.S. Supreme Court - one that is currently taken by one of the most liberal members of the Court. It has the Trump White House giddy over the prospect of potentially and forcefully shifting the balance of power on the Court while Democrats in Congress are said to be warning White House staff of a prolonged and brutal fight should President Trump attempt to replace a liberal Justice with a hardline-conservative nominee. The reason for the Justice's alleged departure is said to be "ongoing illness/physical limitations." The first...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a life-long diabetic, was treated by paramedics for low blood sugar at her home in Washington on Friday morning but was able to go to work afterward, a court spokeswoman said. The 63-year-old Sotomayor, one of the nine-member court’s four liberal justices, was diagnosed as a child with type 1 diabetes and has openly discussed her experience with the chronic illness in the past. She was named to the court in 2009 by Democratic former President Barack Obama. “Justice Sotomayor experienced symptoms of low blood sugar at her home this morning....

The Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to fully enforce a ban on travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries. The justices, with two dissenting votes, said Monday that the policy can take full effect even as legal challenges against it make their way through the courts. The action suggests the high court could uphold the latest version of the ban that Trump announced in September. The ban applies to travelers from Chad, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. Lower courts had said people from those nations with a claim of a “bona fide”...

Trump Is Right to be Suspicious of Judge And sorry, lefties: “La Raza” means “Master Race.” June 9, 2016 Matthew Vadum    Donald Trump has every right to question the impartiality of a “pro-Mexican” judge presiding over the Trump University lawsuit and doing so does not make him a racist or a bigot of any kind. The stampede of weak-kneed Republican office-holders tripping over each other in a frenzied rush to denounce the presumptive GOP nominee for president shows how the Left’s pathological ideas about race continue to dominate the thinking even of so-called conservatives who ought to know better....

Newt Gingrich confirms that he's running for President in 2012 because you know he would never backtrack from a statement like this: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Wednesday he shouldn't have called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist, but said he was still concerned that she would bring bias to her decisions.

Following the Thursday GOP presidential debate, the campaigns are trying to make the most of their gains and minimize their problems coming out of feisty face-offs with their rivals. Donald Trump is continuing to bash Sen. Ted Cruz over his "New York values" slur; Cruz responded with a snarky dig at liberal politicians, which was non-responsive considering his crack was about the values of New York. More forcefully, Trump is keeping the flap going about Cruz's Goldman Sachs and Citibank loans, telling Jake Tapper, "How are you going to be president if you didn't know about a million-dollar loan from...

Even after six years, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor revealed she still doesn’t feel like she belongs on the nation’s most powerful bench. Sotomayor, the first Hispanic ever nominated to serve on SCOTUS, visited Notre Dame University last week for a conversation with NBC correspondent and Notre Dame graduate Anne Thompson. For two hours, in front of a student-packed concert hall, the justice reflected on her experience deliberating on some of the most momentous issues in the nation. Participating in one particular case, Citizens United v. FEC, was “incredibly gratifying,” she said. Yet, though she has made history and played...

Within the space of just 48 hours, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the president is above the law; that straightforward statutory words may be twisted to mean the opposite of what they say; that discrimination — heretofore, the textbook example of a willful act — can be committed unconsciously, thereby supplanting our constitutional foundation of equal opportunity for all with the totalitarian’s dream of guaranteed outcomes for favored factions; and that five politically unaccountable lawyers, by dint of being issued robes, may impose their vision of the good society on 320 million Americans, reimagining our most basic institutions,...

One moment in the Supreme Court's oral arguments over same-sex “marriage” reveals what an embarrassment Sonia Sotomayor is as a justice. John J. Bursch, who argued on behalf of marriage, said that the people, not five unelected justices, should be able to decide whether to redefine a pillar of society that predates the government and written history. “This case isn't about how to define marriage,” he said. “It's about who gets to decide that question. Is it the people acting through the democratic process, or is it the federal courts? And we're asking you to affirm every individual's fundamental liberty...

Although homosexuality in America is today synonymous with the word gay, only anger and hostility result from questions about what actually defines it. Dr. Ben Carson stoked these flames last week while defending his position on traditional marriage. By now, most of us have heard Dr. Carson suggest that homosexuality in prison proves that being a homosexual comes down to choice, not genetics. Throughout history, the tolerance of any sexual practice has hinged on individual cultures. Dr. Carson’s uncomfortably honest assertion about prison certainly relates to this fact. Sex in prison is often coerced or worse, but that reality doesn’t...

Judging from her dissent in the Schuette case last term, the answer is, “only when the concept can be manipulated to support her political agenda.” Here’s an excerpt from my Cato Supreme Court Review article on that case. Perhaps the most notable thing about Sotomayor’s opinion, however, is that, as Walter Olson puts it, she “gerrymanders the word race itself a way convenient to her purposes, using it to include Hispanics (who, as official forms remind us, ‘can be of any race’), while breathing not one word about Asian-Americans.”…. It’s bizarre to treat Hispanics but not Asians as a racial...

Saturday at the Costco in Arlington, VA, right outside of Washington, DC, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a surprise stop to see former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton signing copies of her book, "Hard Choices."

Sonia the Quota, aka Sonia Quotamayor, proved what most people have known for years. Affirmative action means hiring, appointing, or promoting people for the color of their skin rather than the content of their character. Sotomayor is obviously not where she is because of her character or her qualifications. Her own words prove that she is grossly unfit to serve in any responsible judicial capacity in an equal opportunity society. "[W]e ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. It is this view that works harm, by perpetuating the facile...