Legal News

Recently, CFIF Director of Legal and Public Affairs Timothy Lee joined Renee Giachino, CFIF’s Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President, to discuss the SCOTUS October 2008 Term, the interesting cases already announced for consideration, and some cases still pending grant or denial of certiorari…[Read more and listen to the interview here.]

Like clockwork, overeager liberals believe that the answer is “yes.” Following Barack Obama’s closer-than-predicted 53% to 46% victory this week (during a year in which political tides should have created a twenty-point margin), liberals are already making that claim...[more]

Justice David Souter insisted in dissent that there was “no evidence” of voter “fraud” in Indiana, just as there was “a dearth of evidence … in any other part of the country.”...[more]

There was big news on Tuesday, but it didn’t come from either John McCain or Barack Obama in the presidential debate between the two held in Nashville, Tennessee. Rather, it came from a federal courtroom in Washington, D.C...[more]

It’s hard to believe that the Supreme Court’s summer recess is almost over. But when the justices return to begin a new term on the first Monday in October, the real surprise could be that a case decided last June is back on the docket to be reheard...[more]

Only our nation’s leading and largest organization of lawyers could have the audacity to suggest that they should be in charge of selecting just who should, and should not, sit on the federal bench. But that’s just what the American Bar Association did a little more than three weeks ago...[more]

As the nation inches toward the November elections and a possible Obama White House, few groups are salivating quite like the trial lawyers lobby...[more]

It was less than two months ago that a bare majority of the Supreme Court ruled that enemy combatants held at Guantanamo Bay naval base could proceed with lawsuits challenging their detention in our federal courts...[more]

It shouldn’t have come as any surprise that the District of Columbia decided that it can and will continue to all but completely disarm its law-abiding citizens -- not even when it’s less than three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled otherwise...[more]

The landmark decision that resulted reflected just this balance -- announcing “that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms,” while reserving judgment on other firearm restrictions and regulations not at issue in the D.C. case...[more]

We know our prediction may be surprising, and may even be criticized as alarmist. Nevertheless, mark our words, Wednesday was the day when five justices on the highest court in the land made it clear that eventually — and probably sooner rather than later — they will declare capital punishment unconstitutional … and not just for this crime or that one, but across the board...[more]

The Supreme Court this week ruled that the District of Columbia’s ban on most gun ownership is unconstitutional. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that individuals have a right to keep and bear arms for self-defense...[more]

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) today issued a strong warning to the West Virginia Legislature, which, during its special session, is currently working to further restrict speech and association rights guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution...[more]

Last week, a bare majority of the justices on the highest court in the land called what appears to be the final strike on the administration’s policy of arresting suspected terrorists abroad and detaining them at the Guantanamo Bay naval base...[more]

Remember the 2005 Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court decision, in which private property was confiscated by local government for outright redistribution to private developers, despite the Fifth Amendment’s explicit requirement that private property only be confiscated for “public use?”...[more]

In a prime time interview that aired on CBS two Sundays ago, “60 Minutes” correspondent Leslie Stahl reminded Justice Antonin Scalia that he has lamented his role on the highest court in the land. “You’ve apparently had some down times in your tenure on the court,” Stahl said. And then, Stahl read from a note Justice Scalia had written: “I am beginning to repeat myself.”...[more]

Monday was one of those days that the highest court in the land surprised no one on Main Street -- when a majority of the nine most powerful lawyers in the country simply decided what the vast majority of the American people already knew to be true...[more]

There will be a retirement when the Supreme Court of the United States ends its current term this summer. No, we aren’t saying that any one of the nine justices will be vacating a lifetime seat when they adjourn in June. Rather, the face that will change at One First Street will be on the other side of the bench -- in the press gallery...[more]

The American people dodged a bullet -- by retaining their individual right to keep and bear arms -- a week ago Tuesday. At least that was the clear impression left by a solid majority of five Supreme Court Justices during an historic oral argument in the first Second Amendment case to be heard by the highest court in the land in nearly 70 years...[more]

CFIF filed its complaint in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, alleging that several provisions of state law are vague and overbroad, and thus violate the First Amendment...[more]

In a 6-3 decision, the United States Supreme Court this week rejected the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) attempt to order Texas courts to retry death row inmate Jose Medellin, a Mexican national. In so doing, the Court struck a blow for American sovereignty against unrelenting efforts to subsume domestic courts to international authorities...[more]

A little more than two weeks ago, a federal judge sentenced William Lerach to two years in prison for paying kickbacks to investors so they would be on-call plaintiffs for the disgraced and all-but disbarred class action king's securities lawsuits...[more]

Having failed to kill Microsoft in its multiple previous attempts, the European Union went back to the same old well again this week...[more]

In its ongoing efforts to protect rights explicitly granted by the United States Constitution, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) this week filed an Amicus Curiae brief before the United States Supreme Court in the much-anticipated case District of Columbia, et al. v. Heller, commonly referred to as "the D.C. gun ban case."...[more]

This week marks the one year anniversary of the death of former Playboy Playmate Anna Nicole Smith...[more]

By John Yoo: War is a continuation of politics by other means, the German strategist Carl von Clausewitz famously observed in his 19th-century treatise, "On War." Clausewitz surely could never have imagined that politics, pursued through our own courts, would be the continuation of war...[more]

If the Second Amendment challenge to the District of Columbia's handgun ban was the silver bullet designed to target increasingly restrictive gun control laws, then the friend-of-the-court brief filed last Friday by the Solicitor General of the United States could be the bulletproof vest that protects such restrictions from constitutional peril...[more]

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) last week filed a motion with the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking, among other things, to further solidify its First Amendment rights to run issue ads in the state...[more]

Since the previous presidential election, candidate John Edwards has criss-crossed this country talking about "Two Americas," and how Americans will have to decide which America should be represented in and defended by the White House after the next election...[more]

A federal judge this week said U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton's office may have "overreacted" in its prosecution of Border Patrol Agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean...[more]

Coming from the highest court in the land, every decision of the Supreme Court of the United States has consequences — huge foreseen and unforeseen consequences — in the courts throughout America...[more]

There must be something in the New York City water — something that makes Manhattan's media elite think that they can pass off character assassination and personal caricature as informed commentary and reasoned analysis...[more]

This morning the Commonwealth Secretary of the state of Pennsylvania and the State Attorney General (AG) filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction to stop the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) from airing its television ad in Pennsylvania...[more]

On Thursday, November 1, Pedro Cotes, the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, announced that he would seek an injunction in state court to stop the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) from running its television ad in Pennsylvania...[more]

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) today launched a public education effort in Pennsylvania designed to inform the public about important judicial issues in the state...[more]

President George W. Bush, who has so often defended American sovereignty on such critical issues as missile defense and our right to defend strategic interests while the United Nations (UN) navel-gazes, has begun to dangerously reverse course...[more]

On Thursday, October 24, by a vote of 59-38, the Senate confirmed Judge Leslie H. Southwick to a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit...[more]

The United States Supreme Court stands at the precipice of a decision that could unleash a trial lawyers' orgy of frivolous new securities litigation, and nothing short of America's economic competitiveness teeters on that precipice...[more]

All hell broke loose last week when U.S. Senator Bill Nelson and U.S. Congressman Alcee Hastings, both Democrats of Florida, accused the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and party chairman Howard Dean of racial discrimination...[more]

The days are getting shorter, the temperatures are falling, and the leaves are changing color, which can only mean one thing — the Supremes are back...[more]

Disgraced and disbarred former District Attorney Mike Nifong must report to jail today...[more]

Recently, Thomas Kirby, a senior litigation partner with Wiley Rein LLP, joined CFIF’s Renee Giachino to discuss the Supreme Court’s October 2006 Term and some of the cases on the calendar for the October 2007 term. …[Read more and listen to the interview here.]

Just when it has become easier than ever to get all but maybe one or two of the justices to appear for a public speech or sit for a personal interview, the Supreme Court's leading reporter and commentator shunned the cameras at a recent panel discussion about her Pulitzer Prize-winning beat...[more]

Lawsuit Clarifies that Enforcement of State Campaign Finance Law Must be Limited to "Express Advocacy," Enabling CFIF and Other Similarly Situated Speakers to Broadcast Independent Issue Ads Close to Elections...[more]

Summer is supposed to be the off-season for those of us who watch the Supreme Court of the United States like a spectator sport...[more]

Targeting the Supremes

Second Amendment advocates and gun owners may have the District of Columbia to thank if the highest court in the land finally rules next term that the Constitution protects an individual's right "to keep and bear Arms."...[more]

Frustratingly Supreme and Supremely Frustrating

In a Supreme Court term that will likely be remembered for the deep divisions between the justices, frustration was the common theme felt -- even often expressed -- by all but one of them...[more]

Center For Individual Freedom Sues to Strike Down Pennsylvania Speech Restriction

The Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) last week filed a lawsuit to hold unconstitutional a Pennsylvania law that forbids independent issue ads during election periods...[more]

"Enough is enough," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in his principal opinion, making it perfectly clear that "when it comes to drawing difficult lines in the area of pure political speech ... we give the benefit of the doubt to speech, not censorship." ...[more]

The U.S. Supreme Court this week scored a welcome victory in favor of sanity in antitrust policy, but too many absurdities still abound...[more]

Just as the trials and tribulations of Hollywood's celebrity blondes may make for good television drama, they make for even better legal lessons. Such is the case with the ongoing legal dispute between the late Anna Nicole Smith and the estate of her former husband, octogenarian billionaire J. Howard Marshall. ...[Read more and listen to the interview here]

Isn't it funny how history — even recent history — repeats itself in spite of the oft-cited aphorism that it's important to learn from history so we don't repeat it. More realistically, famed lawyer Clarence Darrow once noted, "History repeats itself; that's one of the things wrong with history." And, so it is with the Presidents Bush, father and son...[more]

Don't get us wrong. By all accounts, last week certainly can be tallied in the win column for those of us who understand that "campaign finance reform" is just a euphemism for restricting political speech at the core of the First Amendment...[more]

As the once-anointed Republican presidential nominee for 2008, candidate McCain has suffered as irony after irony have all but eliminated his hopes of occupying the Oval Office...[more]

Like a bad 1970s leisure suit or Carter-era stagflation, the Equal Rights Amendment is attempting a comeback. This month, radical feminists and leading Democrats announced that they're reviving the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) after a twenty-five year dormancy. Despite its benign-sounding title, the ERA is a dangerous idea for two primary reasons...[more]

In the first landmark decision of this term, a bare majority of the Supreme Court of the United States decided two weeks ago that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has the "authority to regulate the emission of [greenhouse] gases from new motor vehicles."...[more]

As tawdry and ridiculous as the tale of Anna Nicole Smith is, her saga has already had important real-world consequences to Americans...[more]

Amicus Curiae Brief Urges High Court to Hear and Ultimately Reverse Lower Court Decisions in Rongstad v. Lassa...[more]

After a jury convicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby on Tuesday of obstructing justice and lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald publicly lamented that "[t]he results" of his CIA leak investigation "are sad." They certainly are, but not for the reasons the Special Prosecutor believes...[more]

Too bad you're not a federal district judge. After all, if you were, you would receive and, in fact, be entitled to every one of those benefits and more -- for the rest of your life ... "during good Behaviour."...[more]

It may be that the trial lawyers are able to extort huge sums of money from deep-pocketed corporations, but that's only because liberal judges make it legal to do so. That was the point driven home once again in a bitterly divided decision issued on Tuesday by a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit...[more]

But a book released a week ago Tuesday, on the same day President Bush delivered the State of the Union Address, reminds conservatives why his most important and lasting legacy may be the federal courts, and specifically, the U.S. Supreme Court...[more]

This week, at their conference, the justices of the highest court in the land will decide whether to hear the case of Wisconsin Right to Life v. Federal Election Commission for a second term in a row...[more]

The Washington Post recently reported that the U.S. Supreme Court is once again on track to take its least number of cases in modern history. A case in which the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) is a named party recently contributed to that statistic...[more]

On December 28, 2006, the North Carolina State Bar filed ethics charges against Durham, North Carolina District Attorney Michael B. Nifong for public statements made related to the so-called Duke University rape case...[more]

On Wednesday, Law Professor Orin Kerr wrote on "The Volokh Conspiracy" weblog that "a lot of people have talked about the Supreme Court's small docket; Judge Harry Pregerson of the Ninth Circuit is actually doing something about it."...[more]

It turns out that your worst suspicions regarding activist judges are true.[more]

The Supreme Court of the United States won't issue its decisions in two cases challenging whether public school districts can use race in assigning students to elementary or high school until next year, possibly as late as the end of the term in June. But if Monday's oral arguments were a preview of how the justices will rule, then it seems the High Court won't give in to the unprincipled protesters outside the courthouse who claimed that race should matter for some but not for others. [more]

Petitioners, which include a Louisiana District Attorney, members of the Louisiana Board of Ethics, and the Supervisory Committee for Campaign Finance, seek Supreme Court review on the grounds, in part, that the Fifth Circuit erred by not referring this case to the Louisiana Supreme Court...[more]

Friend of the Court Brief Implores High Court to Protect the Free Speech and Association Rights of Non-member, Fees-Paying Workers...[more]

While the President of the University Michigan was listening, she didn't care what the voters had to say -- at least not if it wasn't what she wanted to hear...[more]

Supreme Court precedent be damned, according to the Oregon Supreme Court...[more]

Five - that is how many U.S. Supreme Court Justices will reach age 70 or older between this November 7 and the next nationwide election in November 2008...[more]

There is no more fundamental distinction in journalism than the one between fact and opinion. The longstanding general rule is that reporters should limit themselves to the facts and attribute opinion so that the public can decide for itself what the information means, while editorial writers, columnists and commentators may freely offer their opinion so long as it is indicated as such under the banner of the editorial page, viewpoints section, or news analysis heading...[more]

Illegal immigration might not be popular among American voters, especially in the Southwest, but two judges sitting on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit have decided the way to fix that is to let the illegal aliens vote...[more]

By Cary Cardwell: "Jury tampering, collusion and witness intimidation..." A tale of civil injustice in South Texas...[more]

Capital punishment proponents often feel reflexively tentative and apologetic in discussing the issue. After all, abolitionists have sanctimoniously characterized proponents as "mean-spirited" and "hard-hearted" in defending the practice...[more]

Our unstated reference, of course, was to the High Court's decision three terms ago allowing the University of Michigan to prefer certain students for admission to law school based on their skin color. The justices decided to uphold race-based affirmative action by the barest of majorities, 5-4, with perennial swing voter Justice Sandra Day O'Connor being the margin of victory...[more]

CFIF Urges Supreme Court of North Dakota to Protect Free Speech "Today, with unconstitutional regulations such as McCain/Feingold already stifling Americans' free speech rights during critical election periods, individual states simply have no right to restrict cross-state political speech," said Timothy Lee, the Center's Director of Legal and Public Affairs...[more]

From a political perspective, those comments should have surprised no one. After all, Professor Tribe has been no friend to President George W. Bush or his expansive interpretation of presidential power during the War on Terror. But, from a legal perspective, the comments were nothing short of shocking...[more]

This past weekend thousands of lawyers and judges who have converged on Hawaii for the American Bar Association's annual convention witnessed a PDA -- a public display of agony, that is...[more]

Judge Motz, a Reagan appointee, has struck down Maryland's infamous "Wal-Mart Law," which singled out Wal-Mart and required it to spend at least 8% of its payroll on health benefits...[more]

Less than two years ago, the courts of the Golden State were truly rich for trial lawyers who wanted to profit from baseless claims. Back then, anyone could file a lawsuit under the state's unfair competition law -- known as 17200 for its section in the state Business and Professions Code -- against a business to "protect" consumers from any "unlawful, unfair or fraudulent business act or practice" and any "unfair, deceptive, untrue or misleading advertising."...[more]

By Ray Seilie: The American Bar Association (ABA), flagrantly abusing its government-protected monopoly over the legal profession, is shoving affirmative action down the throats of law school administrators throughout the nation, even where state laws explicitly prohibit race-based admissions standards. [more]

Call it a summer ritual. It's hot, it's humid, and it's disappointing. That's right, the end of June has come and gone and, after digesting hundreds of pages of decisions issued by the highest court in the land, conservatives have little to be happy about... once again...[more]

Environmentalists, repeatedly rejected by the democratic process and unable to pass the Kyoto Protocol or their radical agenda, are doing what liberals invariably do when defeated in the marketplace of ideas: turning to the courts...[more]

The six justices who voted to strike down the Vermont law could not agree on how far the First Amendment really goes in protecting what has always been the core of its protections -- political free speech...[more]

Conservatives have had little to celebrate when the Supreme Court of the United States has handed down its most important decisions over the last four terms...[more]

Okay, we get it, CSPI thinks trans fat is bad -- and thinks everyone else should think so, too. And, yes, the lawsuit was inflammatory and designed to make national headlines -- which it did -- but where's the injury?...[more]

Three years ago, a bare majority of the Supreme Court of the United States further delayed Dr. Martin Luther King's dream that his children would one day live in a nation where they would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" when five justices ruled colleges and universities could admit students based on their race...[more]

After nearly two years of litigation, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) won an important free-speech decision last week when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled that Louisiana's campaign finance law does not restrict or regulate independent political issue advertising...[more]

That seems pretty self-explanatory to us. In other words, Chairman Specter, who is firmly ensconced in the legislative branch, the Congress of the United States, cannot infringe on the power granted by the Constitution to another separate and independent branch of the government, the judiciary, the Supreme Court of the United States...[more]

The Congresswoman proved both last month when, according to a police report, she assaulted a Capitol Hill police officer "with [a] closed fist" after he tried to stop her from rushing right through a House office building's security checkpoint without showing her congressional credentials. But that's only the beginning of this story...[more]

"Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory."...[more]

t's shocking, quite frankly, when an editorial published by the Washington Post tackles a constitutional issue more judiciously than a sitting Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States...[more]

We have no doubt that some of America’s brightest legal minds work in the ivory towers of our nation’s law schools. But you wouldn’t know it from the case a self-described “association of 36 law school and law faculties” -- many of which were unwilling to be publicly identified -- pushed all the way to the highest court in the land...[more]

Pity poor William H. Sorrell, Attorney General of Vermont. On February 28, he went before the U.S. Supreme Court. He said political corruption in Vermont is a serious problem. Then under tough questioning from Chief Justice John Roberts he said he hadn't prosecuted anyone for it...[more]

Is Buckley dead? That's the question the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States will consider next week...[more]

It's been almost a year to the day since a federal appeals court ruled that a federal prosecutor could not only force a reporter to testify about her confidential news sources, but could do so without having to tell the reporter, her attorney or the public why...[more]

There wasn't enough room on the front pages of many -- dare we say most -- newspapers Wednesday for all the news, including a proper acknowledgment of and farewell to Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Dwarfed by President George W. Bush's State of the Union address...[more]

If you believe the Supreme Court press corps, then the campaign finance decision handed down this week was a shot across the bow of McCain-Feingold -- a precursor to returning political speech to its most free status...[more]

It wasn't that the Ayotte decision could be Justice O'Connor's last that made it noteworthy. Nor was it that the Ayotte decision was the Supreme Court's first on abortion in more than five years. In fact, it wasn't what Justice O'Connor said or decided in Ayotte, rather it was what she didn't say or decide...[more]

The infamous history reaches all the way back to 1987, which is a long time when you're talking about a sitting United States Senator. He is the Senior Senator from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and he has played a primary role in the Senate's "advice and consent" on every nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States for nearly a quarter century...[more]

With vacancies on the Supreme Court opening up for the first time in more than a decade...[more]

The professors did not have high expectations for the five judges who were frequently mentioned as President Bush's "short listers" for seats on the Supreme Court. In fact, the law professors bluntly stated their "expectation ... that the Bush Five" — Judges Samuel Alito, Emilio Garza, Edith Jones, J. Michael Luttig and J. Harvie Wilkinson —"would fare abysmally in the tournament (given [the law professors'] perception of ideological focus of the current administration)..."[more]

This week, Judge Samuel Alito, Jr., President Bush's nominee to be the next Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, filed his written answers to the questionnaire submitted to him by the Senate Judiciary Committee...[more]

Two months before the Rehnquist Court recessed for the final time, Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe announced...[more]

Senator Russell Feingold didn’t ask Judge John Roberts any questions about the constitutionality of campaign finance “reform” during his four-day-long confirmation hearing...[more]

Just as we predicted, the Supreme Court didn’t do anyone any favors a year ago by relying solely on a legal technicality to overturn the 9th Circuit’s misguided Pledge of Allegiance decision...[more]

America learned just how privileged the press is after the Federal Election Commission released one of its rulings last week...[more]

By William Safire: On July 13, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to consider a proposed federal law that would protect journalists' right to protect the identities of confidential sources...[more]

By Alexander Schwab: It’s ironic that, in the world’s freest nation, it takes only five individuals out of a population of 280 million to empower tyranny, savage liberty and assault the legal foundations of our country...[more]

A journalist — Judith Miller of The New York Times — is in jail today. Her lost freedom is ours. Long before some of this country’s judges decided that the Constitution does not mean what it says, that Constitution prioritized freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press first and foremost against government intrusion...[more]

Chief Justice William Rehnquist may or may not retire in the next few weeks, but a U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down Monday suggests that the curtain has already fallen on his jurisprudential legacy...[more]

According to several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have outraged conservatives, foreign court decisions should have a bearing on U.S. jurisprudence. Most of us contrarily believe that the job of U.S. judges, hard enough as it is, is to apply and interpret U.S. statutes and the U.S. Constitution, which do not in them say refer to the Most Excellent High Court of Tergoolistan to interpret this...[more]

By Justice Antonin Scalia: It’s a pizzazzy topic: Constitutional Interpretation. It is however an important one. I was vividly reminded how important it was last week when the Court came out with a controversial decision in the Roper case...[more]

The facts really should matter — especially when the justices of the highest court in the land exercise their most awesome power to strike down laws duly enacted by our elected representatives...[more]

Apparently the public doesn't have a right to know. That's the lesson that will be learned from Tuesday's federal appeals court decision announcing "there is no First Amendment privilege protecting journalists ... from testifying ... or otherwise providing evidence ... regardless of any confidence promised by the reporter to any source." But reading further into the decision, it only got worse...[more]

The McLawsuit is back yet again. A federal appeals court has reinstated the case nearly a year and a half after a federal judge dismissed (for a second time) the class action complaint, which claims that McDonald’s is responsible for the weight, girth and health of two named teenagers and countless “other similarly situated persons.”...[more]

Rumors are flying in Washington about who will replace William H. Rehnquist as chief justice. On the campaign trail, President Bush mentioned Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as his ideal judges. Apparently some politicians have leaked the idea that it is Thomas who will ultimately be selected, a move that would receive widespread approval among conservative Republicans...[more]

Specifically, the story focused on Novak’s silence in the aftermath of his naming Valerie Plame as the CIA officer who recommended that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, be sent to Niger to investigate an alleged sale of nuclear bomb-making stuff to Iraq. Big flap, Novak’s story caused, still Energizer Bunnying along...[more]

This week, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on the nomination of Alberto Gonzales to be attorney general. It comes as no surprise that he is likely to face hard questions...[more]

Nearly 700 Florida school children attending religious schools using public vouchers may someday be sent back to public schools. Last week, the full Court of Appeal of Florida, First District, ruled (8-5-1) that the voucher program violates Florida’s Constitution because it allows tax dollars to be spent at religious schools...[more]

In anticipation of one of the closest and, indeed, most litigious presidential contests in U.S. history, the Center for Individual Freedom today launched Litigation Watch 2004, the definitive online clearinghouse for the status of and up-to-the-minute news and analysis about election-related litigation in key battleground states and across the country...[more]

More than a quarter century ago, Robert H. Bork noted the conflict between the pro-consumer policy behind the antitrust laws and the pro-competitor approach developed through their enforcement. In his seminal book The Antitrust Paradox: A Policy at War with Itself, Judge Bork, argued that antitrust enforcement had "led to the protection of inefficient competitors, the punishment of successful firms, and, ultimately, the detriment of the interest of consumers, which the antitrust laws were designed to protect in the first place."...[more]

Excessive litigation has created a crisis in America. The time has come to recognize this crisis and demand that our elected officials work together to achieve a solution...[more]

New Yorkers elected Eliot Spitzer to be the state’s chief law enforcement officer — and they very nearly didn’t choose him even for that post. But, in the span of just a few short years, Spitzer has unilaterally and unapologetically expanded his domain, at the expense of everyone else’s, while single-handedly installing himself as America’s lead investigator, chief prosecutor and primary regulator, to name but a few of the titles he has bestowed upon himself...[more]

On August 5, the Center's Assistant General Counsel, Reid Cox, submitted this letter informing the Mayor and City Council of Independence, Kentucky, that limiting when political signs can be posted raises constitutional concerns...[more]

A bare majority of the Colorado Supreme Court last week found what even the U.S. Supreme Court had never found before — a perfectly "constitutional prior restraint." In so discovering, four Colorado justices injected uncertainty into one of the few areas of constitutional law that had been completely clear. In other words, make that one less constitutional certainty...[more]

Just two weeks. That’s the amount of time it took Justice John Paul Stevens to reverse his considered position as to when the U.S. Supreme Court should wade into murky jurisdictional waters to clear up contentious constitutional questions raised by cases of obvious importance...[more]

On Monday, when eight of America’s preeminent legal minds decided a constitutional challenge to the public acknowledgement of our nation’s common religious heritage, the result was nothing less than jurisprudential incoherence...[more]

Apparently it is possible for consumers to know too much about the products they buy and use everyday. After all, that is precisely the message being sent by a growing number of restrictions and lawsuits that target advertisements for stating — wait for it — just the facts. That’s right, for products ranging from food and drugs to alcohol and tobacco, companies are increasingly being forced not to tell the public the truth for fear of being hit with draconian penalties simply because those facts are packaged in a 30-second television spot or a glossy magazine layout...[more]

Our daily sports sections are filled with examples of athletes who operate quite comfortably under the presumption that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. Thanks to the National Football League and our nation’s courts, the validity of that assumption is under review. Last month, on the eve of the National Football League’s college draft, the Supreme Court rejected the plea of running back Maurice Clarett to be allowed to enter the NFL draft after his sophomore year at Ohio State...[more]

It’s getting more difficult and time consuming to board a plane these days. With increased security measures and random passenger searches, the lines are longer and so is the wait to get on board. It may soon get even worse — not because of terrorist threats or NTSB regulations, but, rather, because of trial lawyers...[more]

With the hundreds of thousands of recent global innovations, from international cellular telephone service to intercontinental jet service to the Internet, our world is truly shrinking. What obviously has not caught up with modern technology, however, is the manner in which our national legal systems handle international civil litigation...[more]

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral argument on March 31^st in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the beef checkoff program identified with the popularly recognized "Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner" generic advertising campaign. Erik S. Jaffe presented oral argument on behalf of Jeanne and Steve Charter and hundreds of other independent cattle ranchers who oppose the per-head charge on cattle to pay for promoting beef consumption. Center’s counsel Reid A. Cox and Montana attorney Kelly J. Varnes co-represented the Charters before the Ninth Circuit...[more]