US Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson was chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. In his report to the State Department, Justice Jackson wrote: “No political or economic situation can justify” the crime of aggression. He also said: “If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes they are crimes whether the United States does them… Read more »
Most Republicans and many Democrats have hailed Bush’s nomination of White House counsel Alberto Gonzales for attorney general as a brilliant choice. Whereas John Ashcroft ruffled feathers with his coarse warnings that opponents of Bush’s post-9/11 agenda “only aid terrorists,” the soft-spoken Gonzales is much more palatable. And he’s Hispanic to boot, so the Bush… Read more »
After months of intense campaigning about Iraq, terror, taxes and jobs, the future of the Supreme Court has finally entered the public discourse. Chief Justice William Rehnquist is in the intensive care unit, after undergoing a tracheotomy for thyroid cancer. The Court issued a terse statement, saying the Chief would take the bench when the… Read more »
You see that a person is justified by what he does and not by faith alone… Faith without deeds is dead.– James 2:14-26 And when did we see thee sick or in prison and visit thee? And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the… Read more »
Democracy requires consent of the governed. Consent is measured by the results of fair and free elections. The midwives of our democracy were the founders who made the Revolution, and the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement that gave birth to The Voting Rights Act of 1964. As we approach the November presidential election, the… Read more »
In 1988, while trying to convince skeptical conservative activists of his father’s Christian bona fides, George W. Bush reassured them that George I was with them on judicial nominations, as well as abortion and other issues dear to their hearts. Then he punctuated his declarations with the six words that would ensure their support for… Read more »
In a direct repudiation of the Bush administration’s position that the President is answerable to no one, the Supreme Court held the Guantánamo prisoners and U.S. citizen Yaser Hamdi are entitled to contest their detention in federal courts. The Court, however, punted in Jose Padilla’s case, holding that he filed his case against the wrong… Read more »
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent momentous affirmative action decisions, the talking heads have railed against “reverse discrimination,” a term that entered our vernacular 25 years ago with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke opinion. But focusing on equal rights for whites misses the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her separate… Read more »
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent momentous affirmative action decisions, the talking heads have railed against “reverse discrimination,” a term that entered our vernacular 25 years ago with the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke opinion. But focusing on equal rights for whites misses the point. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her separate… Read more »
The use of torture to obtain information from suspects has become an important topic in fighting the war on terror. In December, for example, the Washington Post reported that CIA officials at Bagram air base in Afghanistan used interrogation techniques that could constitute torture. In Chavez v. Martinez, decided May 27, the United States Supreme… Read more »