ALEXANDRIA, VA – The Center for Individual Freedom (“CFIF”) this week published a new policy paper entitled, “The Constitutional and Historical Foundations of Copyright Protection.”  The paper, authored by noted legal experts Paul Clement, Viet Dinh and Jeffrey Harris of the law firm Bancroft PLLC, is a detailed…

The latest billion-dollar giveaway for unproven discrimination at the United States Department of Agriculture was recently announced by Secretary Tom Vilsack.  The $1.33 billion settlement with Hispanic and women farmers is part of Vilsack’s “new era of civil rights” at USDA that is robbing taxpayers of their day in court. …

The Daily Caller story this week on then-candidate Barack Obama making racially charged statements in 2007 should not be seen as an anomaly. Not just in words but in policies, the Obama administration has often pushed a racially charged agenda, sometimes quite obviously in contravention of the Constitution and federal civil rights laws. A prime example…

Imagine the following harrowing scenario.  You’re an ordinary citizen.  You live in an ordinary community, leading a relatively normal American life.  Perhaps you own a small business.  You struggle to stay afloat in a difficult economy made worse by adverse regulatory headwinds.  Lacking the spare thousands of dollars…

This summer, five justices on the United States Supreme Court rewrote ObamaCare to say that its individual mandate to buy health insurance is a tax, not a penalty.  But if that’s true, it raises another constitutional question that the Court did not address.  Did the process of passing ObamaCare into law violate the Origination Clause…

The Center for Individual Freedom’s “State Sovereignty Project” is being planted in soil already made fertile by resolute actions of conservative state attorneys general. The antiquated term of “states’ rights” doesn’t do justice to their efforts, because they really are defending the states&rsquo…

Governmental coercion, without benefit of due legal process, is just as wrong when used against an individual as when used against a state. A legal case about which I have written numerous times, regarding how the federal government is wrongfully conditioning earned Social Security benefits on the acceptance of unwanted Medicare benefits, has now…

News on four fronts in one week give further evidence, as if any still were needed, that the Obama administration actively and fiercely acts from an ugly, racialist mindset. The first two developments are attitudinal; the other two, more serious in the long term, involve specific legal positions taken, or ducked, by Attorney General Eric Holder&rsquo…

The extent of the damage from bad decisions can sometimes extend beyond the original, obvious victims. Such was the case in the wake of Chief Justice John Roberts’ supremely ill-considered decision allowing ObamaCare to be implemented as a “tax.” Lost in the shuffle, after the decision in NFIB v. Sebelius, was the Supreme Court&rsquo…

Ever heard of transnational legal theory?  If the Obama Administration gets its way, the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty being negotiated in New York this month could become the kind of international legal document that transnational judges inside the United States will use to gut the Second Amendment.  One of the leading American lawyers…

There is a good reason why not even most liberal commentators are applauding the actual legal reasoning Chief Justice John Roberts used to avoid striking down the ObamaCare law: The “reasoning” is thinner than unleavened bread, and crumbles to dust not just upon gentle handling, but merely under the weight of a piercing gaze. Let us count…

Years from now, here is the proposition for which law students will study this week’s Supreme Court ObamaCare decision:  Federal power is not unlimited under the commerce clause after all.  Granted, the United States Supreme Court engaged in a contortion worthy of Cirque de Soleil in upholding ObamaCare’s individual mandate as…

“Our son lost his life protecting this nation, and it is very disappointing that we are now faced with an administration that seems more concerned with protecting themselves rather than revealing the truth behind Operation Fast and Furious.”  ~Josephine Terry and Kent Terry, Sr.  The question is simple:  What is the Obama…

Monday, May 21, 2012, signaled a new round in the fight between Catholic institutions and the federal Department of Health and Human Services over HHS’s controversial contraception mandate.  In a coordinated effort, 43 separate Catholic entities – churches, hospitals, schools and other charities – filed lawsuits in every relevant…

In important court cases, it is the rarely the dissenting opinion that becomes a benchmark. In a case decided last Friday by the D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, however, Judge Stephen Williams issued a tour de force of a dissent, explaining why the federal government should not (in effect) hold entire states guilty of racial discrimination without…

Hate may be a terrible sin, but is it really a crime? A horrible incident in Mobile, Alabama, April 21 earned well-intentioned pleas for it to be investigated as a “hate crime,” as did the now-infamous Trayvon Martin case in Florida and, unfortunately, a growing raft of allegedly race-motivated crimes. No matter whether the perpetrators…

Corrupt Attorney General Eric Holder’s war on white people continues. In its latest installment, the Justice Department on Monday sued the city of Jacksonville, FL, to force the city to jettison the written promotion exams in its fire department. According to Holder and his leading racialist instigator, civil rights division chief Thomas Perez…

Democrats may rue the day, now nine years ago, they violated the Constitution’s spirit by filibustering to kill the nomination of brilliant attorney Miguel Estrada for a federal appeals judgeship. Senate Republicans now have retained Estrada to plead their case against several “recess” appointments made by President Barack Obama…

The Legislature in Alabama, the home state of perhaps the single most prominent American-born jihadi, is poised to become the latest in a line of states outlawing the application of foreign laws in American courts if those laws violate American constitutional rights. The laws are desperately needed: Confused American trial court judges are surprisingly…

This week, it suddenly dawned on bewildered liberals that ObamaCare’s legality was dubious after all.  Behold New York Times bubble-dweller Linda Greenhouse, prior to this week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court:  “The notion that Congress somehow lacks the power to regulate, restructure or basically do whatever…

At National Review Online on Tuesday, columnist John Fund blasted Attorney General Eric Holder for advocating permanent racial discrimination in favor of black Americans. His column is “must” reading. Holder’s position is mind-boggling. It pushes the extreme edges of racialism. Anything approaching those far edges is immoral.…

Second Amendment antagonists claim that the individual right to keep and bear arms is some sort of anachronism, no longer important since the days of the Redcoat.  Decades of sociological research refute that allegation, of course, demonstrating to the contrary that greater firearm possession by law-abiding citizens correlates with lower crime…

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”  --Amendment I, United States Constitution  Freedom of religion is a Constitutional right.  Indeed, it is our nation’s most foundational right.  In contrast, the convenience of government-…

In a devastating smackdown of the Obama administration’s extremist, anti-religious legal philosophy, a unanimous – repeat, unanimous – Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled anew that government usually may not interfere with a religious institution’s hiring and firing practices. The victory for First Amendment religious freedom is…

The Supreme Court’s agreement to consider four separate issues regarding ObamaCare has given rise to fears, mine included, that the court would produce some sort of unsatisfyingly fractured ruling that leaves defenders of liberty sputtering in frustration. The unfortunate model would be the abortion decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which…

If the 1942 decision Wickard v. Filburn doesn’t ring a bell, that’s certainly understandable.  Even informed adults at the time were preoccupied by slightly more immediate threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness than Wickard.  Nevertheless, it’s poetically appropriate that “Wickard” rhymes with…

[Part one of two] The broad scope of the Supreme Court’s decision to consider the constitutionality of ObamaCare makes it more possible for the court to invalidate at least part of the law, although that same broad scope also increases the possibility for a confusing and fractured ruling that punts the biggest legal issues to a future date.…

“The right to be free from federal regulation is not absolute, and yields to the imperative that Congress be free to forge national solutions to national problems…”  Somehow, that absurdity masquerading as legal reasoning actually survived the editing process, and maintained its prominence within the written opinion of Judge…

Here’s a reliable rule of thumb:  If Senator Marco Rubio (R – Florida) and Representative Marsha Blackburn (R – Tennessee) support proposed legislation, it’s likely an excellent idea.  Here’s corollary rule of thumb:  If the self-described Marxist organization Free Press fiercely opposes proposed legislation…

Imagine a country where outside groups could be punished for offering their opinion about the effects of a government official’s actions, while the government itself could knowingly lie with impunity about whether a document even exists. We would see a political opinion punished as a lie while something that is indisputably a lie would be protected…