Just days after stealing Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court seat, Neil Gorsuch is channeling Antonin Scalia. On April 20, the newly minted associate justice cast his first ballot. Gorsuch provided the fifth vote that allowed Arkansas to execute a likely innocent man. Casting the Deciding Vote for Death For 24 years, Ledell Lee maintained his innocence,… Read more »
When Donald Trump’s chief of staff Reince Priebus addressed the Conservative Political Action Committee in February, he identified two priorities of the administration: the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, and deregulation. It turns out that elevating Gorsuch to the Supreme Court and achieving deregulation are inextricably linked.
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch says he’s an “originalist.” The late Justice Antonin Scalia, whom Gorsuch called “a lion of the law,” also championed originalism. Justice Clarence Thomas now stands alone on the high court as a self-proclaimed originalist. Largely discredited by courts and legal scholars, originalism is ultimately a way to reach a right-wing… Read more »
When Donald Trump learned that a federal district court had refused to reinstate his Muslim ban last week, he tweeted in all caps, “SEE YOU IN COURT!” Aside from this strange reaction to a court decision, Trump’s angry outburst raises the question: Is the president allowed to have whatever he wants? To better understand the… Read more »
As promised, President Trump has nominated to the Supreme Court a judge in the mold of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Neil Gorsuch, like Scalia, is an “originalist,” who interprets the Constitution the way he thinks the founders intended and a “textualist,” who favors the plain meaning of statutes and the Constitution. Gorsuch is a… Read more »
As the media focuses on Donald Trump’s sexually predatory behavior and Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street speeches, the future of the Supreme Court has received only an occasional mention. During the final presidential debate, the topic was finally given some attention. When asked about late-term abortion, Clinton said Roe v. Wade “very clearly sets out that there can… Read more »
In his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump declared, “My Dad, Fred Trump, was the smartest and hardest working man I ever knew. . . . It’s because of him that I learned, from my youngest age, to respect the dignity of work and the dignity of working people.” Donald apparently forgot… Read more »
If Justice Antonin Scalia had survived to participate in the remainder of the 2015-2016 Supreme Court term, his vote would have made a significant difference in the resolution of several cases. Moreover, if the Senate had confirmed Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat, some of those cases might well have turned out differently. From unions’… Read more »
The death of Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia raises a number of questions: What will be Scalia’s legacy? What will happen to the cases pending in the Supreme Court? Will President Obama successfully fill Scalia’s seat on the high court? And how will Scalia’s death affect the 2016 presidential election? Scalia’s Record on the… Read more »
Ignorance of the law is no excuse – that is, unless you’re a police officer. For the first time, in December, the Supreme Court upheld a traffic stop even where there was no traffic violation. The court, in Heien v. North Carolina, continued its steady erosion of the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and… Read more »