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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…
September 19, 2020

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…
June 29, 2012

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…
Jeremy Beer
August 29, 2011

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.…
July 8, 2011

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,…
May 17, 2011

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.
October 7, 2010

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…
April 4, 2009