Supreme Court Roundup: High Court’s Recently-Ended Term
CFIF’s Timothy Lee assesses some of the key rulings and other developments from the Supreme Court’s October 2008 term…[Read more and listen to the interview here.]
The Heller Ricochet Returns to the Supreme Court
A year ago, when the Supreme Court finally ruled �that the Second Amendment confer[s] an individual� -- rather than a collective state-held -- �right to keep and bear arms,� we noted that the decision was just the start of constitutional litigation concerning the Second Amendment...[more]
Justice Isn�t Blind for the President or His Supreme Court Nominee
The Memorial Day weekend was barely over when President Barack Obama announced his choice of who would get his Supreme Court nomination. While most Americans were just beginning their holiday-shortened work week, we learned that the �empathetic� nominee the President had been looking for was Judge Sonia Sotomayor, on the bench of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit...[more]
FreedomCast: Supreme Court Preview 2008
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.]
CFIF Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Protect Private Property
The Center for Individual Freedom (�CFIF�) last week joined with nine other national and state organizations in filing an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to grant certiorari in the case of Empress Casino Joliet v. Giannoulias...[more]
The Death Penalty Case that Hasn�t Died
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]
The Deepening Detainee Disaster
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]
D.C. Disses Supremes on Gun Law
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 Supreme Ricochet Has Begun
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]
Erasing the Constitution Through Evolution
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]
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of An Individual�s Right to Keep and Bear Arms
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]
A Supreme Mess of Impracticalities
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]
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]
Constitutional Common Sense Comes Back?
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]
The High Court Retirement that Won't Change Anything
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]
Five for Keeping � and Bearing
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]
Supreme Court Defends American Sovereignty Against International Assault
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]
CFIF Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Preserve the Right of the People to Keep and Bear Arms
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]
In the Line of Fire from Both Sides
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]
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]
FreedomCast: Supreme Court Hears Oral Arguments in Guantanamo Case
Recently, CFIF Director of Legal and Public Affairs Timothy Lee joined CFIF's Renee Giachino to the recent Guantanamo Bay case and others before the Supreme Court, as well as the role that Justice Kennedy has taken over from retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor as the Court's swing vote. ...[Read more and listen to the interview here.]
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]
Unforgivable: The Perennial Persecution of Clarence Thomas
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]
Supreme Court Poised to Unleash Trial Lawyer Onslaught?
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]
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]
FreedomCast: Supreme Court in the News
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.]
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]
'No Reasonable' Chance of Survival for McCain-Feingold
"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]
Winning a Unanimous High Court Decision While Gaining Nothing
The nine justices of the Supreme Court of the United States issued their ruling in Davenport v. Washington Education Association a week ago Thursday -- one of the most highly anticipated decisions of the term...[more]Supreme Court Restores Some Much-Needed Antitrust Sanity
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]
Like Father, Like Son: A Legal Legacy Lost?
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]
Another Irony of Being John McCain
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]
Is the Supreme
Court Moving in a More Conservative Direction?
Recently, ABC News Correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg, author of "Supreme
Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for the Control of the United States
Supreme Court," joined CFIF Corporate Counsel and Senior Vice President Renee
Giachino to discuss the book, the high court's newest members and the controversial
decisions still to be decided this term. ...
[Read more and listen to the interview here.]
Much More Than an Inconvenient Decision
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]
CFIF Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Preserve the Right of Anonymous Free Speech and Association
Amicus Curiae Brief Urges High Court to Hear and Ultimately Reverse Lower Court Decisions in Rongstad v. Lassa...[more]
Supreme Court Restores Some Sanity to Punitive Damages
Ruling Brings Progress, But Doesn't Go Far Enough...[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]
A Very Little Political Free Speech?
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]
Busy Week for CFIF at U.S. Supreme Court
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 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]
Justice Breyer Finally Concedes Judicial Activism
It turns out that your worst suspicions regarding activist judges are true.[more]
Justices Understand Brown, Others Don't
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]
Adult Supervision Required: Supreme Court Addresses Runaway Punitive Damages
Supreme Court precedent be damned, according to the Oregon Supreme Court...[more]
Looming Supreme Court Vacancies: Reason Enough to Vote November 7
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]
Counting Down to a Colorblind Constitution
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]
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 Ask Supreme Court to Impose Kyoto Agenda: Lawsuit Would Regulate what You Exhale
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 First Amendment's Glass Half Full
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]
Securing the Legacy of the Rehnquist or the O'Connor Court?
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]
Another Chance for a Colorblind Constitution
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]
Another Constitutional Lesson for Capitol Hill
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 Washington Post v. Justice Ginsburg
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]
Academic Nonsense and Judicial Sensibility
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]
Vermont Is Corrupt: State Attorney General Says So
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]
The First Amendment's Lifeline
Is Buckley dead? That's the question the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States will consider next week...[more]
A Farewell to Justice O'Connor
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]
A Small Step for Political Speech, a Giant Leap for the First Amendment?
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]
Justice O'Connor's Last Decisive Indecision?
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]
Our Consequential Constitution?
With vacancies on the Supreme Court opening up for the first time in more than a decade...[more]
This is the second of a two-part interview with Erik Jaffe, a constitutional law expert and appellate attorney who clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas...[more]
An
Insider’s Look Behind the Curtain: An Interview with a Former
The United States Supreme Court began its new term this past Monday...[more]
Agreeing With Professor Tribe…
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]
Each summer
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]
The Short Life of Rehnquist’s Long View
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]
Supreme Court Rules Certain Convicted
Felons May Have Guns:
So Where’s the Liberal Outrage?
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]
Scalia: Constitutional Interpretation the Old Fashioned Way
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]
Forgetting Facts While Making Law
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]
Clarence Thomas Is in the Right Seat
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]
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]
The Pledge of Allegiance Decision: Imprudently Standing on a Technicality
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]
Justice Scalia Shoots Down Recusal Motion
Duck hunting season in Louisiana ended in February with quite a bang. Not because of the number of hunters and waterfowl the region attracted, but because of the media attention surrounding one hunting trip in particular — the early January expedition of Vice President Dick Cheney and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia...[more]
Locke v. Davey: Why ‘Play in the Joints’ Doesn’t Mean ‘Read Between the Lines’
Circling themselves like dogs chasing their own tails, advocates for the complete separation between church and state have twisted the Supreme Court’s most recent Establishment Clause opinion in an attempt to eliminate other "religious" programs, including school vouchers and President Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives...[more]
Center's General Counsel Recognized for Efforts in Pledge of Allegiance Case
The Center for Individual Freedom's General Counsel Renee Giachino was spotlighted this week in a feature story praising her and the Center's efforts to reverse the unprecedented decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that held the national Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. The Center filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court, which is set to hear oral arguments in the case on March 24, 2004.
To read the feature story, click here.
Glass Houses and Thrown Stones
People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. In this case, it is the political hatchet that the Sierra Club is trying to throw at Associate Supreme Court Justice Scalia, announcing last week that it was considering formally asking the Justice to recuse himself from the pending Cheney energy task force case, claiming that his personal relationship with Vice President Cheney will unfairly influence his decision in the pending case...[more]
Chief Justice Rehnquist Brushes Off Inquiry Request
Calling Senators’ concerns "ill considered," Chief Justice Rehnquist responded yesterday to an inquiry request filed by U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy and Joe Lieberman...[more]
True Justice, Like Beauty, Is In the Eye of the Beholder
For the second time this term, Justice Antonin Scalia has found himself in hot water with the "Justice Police" for his espoused personal beliefs and personal relationships.
The first attack came after Justice Scalia reportedly told a Religious Freedom Day crowd last January that any changes to the Pledge of Allegiance should be done "democratically," through the legislatures, not the courts, and that removing references to God from public forums would be "contrary to our whole tradition."...[more]
Forget the fight to allow cameras in federal courtrooms. In this post-9/11 world, the battle for open judicial proceedings is being fought over whether the public is allowed to know certain cases exist at all. Case in point: a petition currently pending at the U.S. Supreme Court known to the public only as M.K.B. v. Warden, No. 03-6747. The petitioner is known by his initials alone, and the High Court’s docket reflects neither what court decided the case below nor when that decision was issued – two facts that routinely appear on the docketing statement of every case brought before the nine Justices...[more]
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