supreme court 11
Antonin Scalia: A Man for All Seasons
Antonin Scalia’s judicial legacy was ratified on June 24, 2022 as the Supreme Court effectively overturned Roe v. Wade with the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
The Death of a Justice and the Hope of Magnanimous Statesmanship
We do not need reminding of how bitter, partisan, and polarized American politics is today. In order to have a community, people need to hold some things in common. America…
Truth on the Losing Side
Justice Scalia’s dissents in the two same-sex “marriage” cases are worth reading. The first opinion addresses the idea of judicial supremacy within the federal government—what Jefferson called “the despotism of…
Firm Identities and Loose Borders
Hillsdale, Michigan. A drive back from New England to the upper mid-West on Tuesday gave me ample time to hear the journalistic accounts of the Supreme Court's decision on Arizona's…
Interstate Commerce and Arizona Wine
The federal courts' extraordinarily broad interpretation of the Constitution's interstate commerce clause has long posed a problem for localists -- which is to say, for community self-governance. That has never…
Helpless?
With three children raised and fledged, we managed to avoid their seductive pox and the kids are actually grateful for it. All three of them are engaged in creative professions.…
Waking Up, Smelling the Constitutional Coffee
[Cross-posted to In Medias Res] Wichita, KS Dahlia Lithwick and Ezra Klein are a couple of my favorite pundits in the whole blogosphere. Lithwick is snarky, and Klein is wonky,…
Why I Hope Westboro Baptist Church, the ACLU, and Dahlia Lithwick Get Their Butts Kicked By the Supreme Court
Free speech is a good thing. Respecting the value of the whole community is a better one.
Few v. Many: The Topsy-Turvy World of Judicial Demographics
There are many reasons to wonder about the wisdom of confirming Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. What strikes me most about her nomination is the typically phony way Washington…
When Lawyers Catch the French Disease
Devon, PA. No observer of American culture grasped its implicit contents better than did Alexis de Tocqueville, and no one since has better grasped its potencies as they have actually…
Iowa… Place of the Drowsy Ones
OWEN TOWNSHIP, WINNEBAGO COUNTY, ILLINOIS: According to one legend, the word Iowa means "Place of the Drowsy Ones" in some extinct Indian tongue. This came to mind yesterday when the…