Free Republic

The president's favorite judge had scornfully denounced as "illegitimate" dozens of the "most significant constitutional decisions of the past three decades," as well as others going back to the 1920s. He had excoriated "the modern, activist, liberal Supreme Court" for rulings that recognized rights to abortion, contraception, and other aspects of the "right to privacy"; struck down governmental discrimination against women; outlawed official endorsement of religious symbols; required "one person, one vote"; banned poll taxes; and protected sexually explicit speech. And as if to erase any doubt about what Judge Robert Bork might like to do if elevated to the...

Like religious fundamentalists seeking to stamp out the teaching of evolution, feminists stomped Harvard University President Lawrence Summers for mentioning at a January 14 academic conference the entirely reasonable theory that innate male-female differences might possibly help explain why so many mathematics, engineering, and hard-science faculties remain so heavily male. Unlike most religious fundamentalists, these feminists were pursuing a careerist, self-serving agenda. This cause can put money in their pockets. Summers's suggestion -- now ignominiously retracted, with groveling, Soviet-show-trial-style apologies -- was that sex discrimination and the reluctance of mothers to work 80 hours a week are not the only...

You don't have to be a fan of corporate fat cats to be concerned that under a Kerry-Edwards administration, tort rules might become even more damaging to our economy. by Stuart Taylor Jr. .... John Kerry's choice of John Edwards as his running mate has produced an outpouring of corporate complaints about the damage that a plaintiffs' personal-injury lawyer could do as vice president. Some of this is unfair to the multitalented Edwards, who won his many millions working hard for horribly injured clients and playing by the rules of the tort litigation game. But you don't have to be...

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the charismatic personal-injury lawyer who would be president -- or, perhaps, vice president -- has done wonders for the image of the lawsuit industry. In more than a decade as his state's most talented trial lawyer, Edwards won an estimated $150 million in jury awards and settlements for powerless people who had been horribly injured by reckless and negligent (and, perhaps, not so negligent) corporations and doctors. He cared passionately for his clients, believed deeply in his cases, and was apparently untainted by the ethical sleaze exhibited by some of the lawyers who have...