Tag Archives: Supreme Court

“Nothing would be uniform”

Posted on March 26, 2014 by

As a proud non-lawyer, to me the Hobby Lobby case argued before the Supreme Court yesterday is straightforward: corporations aren’t people, therefore they can’t have religious convictions. Even if I accept how the Citizens United decision endowed corporations with First … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

“[T]he right of free exercise does not relieve an individual of the obligation to comply with a valid and neutral law of general applicability”

Posted on March 24, 2014 by

Antonin Scalia used to be pretty good on First Amendment cases. I don’t know anymore. The Supreme Court will hear two birth control cases on Tuesday that pit Catholic proprietors against the Affordable Care Act’s provisions requiring businesses to cover … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

The evolution of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on free speech

Posted on February 20, 2014 by

To claim that Facebook or Disqus “robbed” you of your “First Amendment rights” is a complaint as common in 2014 as remarking on the loneliness of social media, but the preeminence of that amendment in constitutional law and online forums … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Secrets and lies: the Supreme Court vs. Mark Tushnet

Posted on February 3, 2014 by

Jeffrey Toobin has done well for himself writing Supreme Court biographies. The Nine and The Oath, which are not titles for histories of the Masons, explain in workmanlike prose how the justices get on, the process by which they write … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Scalia: “It’s not to protest abortion. They want to talk to the women”

Posted on January 15, 2014 by

Meanwhile at the home of our Least Dangerous Branch, the question of “buffer zones” at Massachusetts abortion clinics got the Anthony Kennedy treatment: But the overall thrust of Kennedy’s questions and comments was that he perceived the Massachusetts law as … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged | Leave a comment

“To say that, well, Phil Robertson doesn’t have a First Amendment right to a TV show is only to make half an argument.”

Posted on December 20, 2013 by

The First Amendment protects citizens from Congressional and state encroachment on their religious and speech liberties. It does protect us from a business or corporation firing us for blah blah, I know, I know. A&E created this reality show “Duck … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Scalia: “Are you so out of touch with most of America, most of which believes in the Devil?”

Posted on October 7, 2013 by

Antonin Scalia, associate justice of the Supreme Court and gay blade, has an inflated reputation for laffs, which rests in part on how leaden the average SCOTUS opinion is (I spent the weekend with Jean Edward Smith’s John Marshall bio, … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Ruth Bader Ginsberg: “I didn’t want to be right, but sadly I am.”

Posted on July 26, 2013 by

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: “The notion that because the Voting Rights Act had been so tremendously effective we had to stop it didn’t make any sense to me,” Ginsburg said in a wide-ranging interview late Wednesday in her office at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

A proposition

Posted on June 26, 2013 by

I wrote the following almost exactly a year ago. Still applies, with minor revisions. I’m no lawyer but have always been interested in the Court as an institution: its history, personalities, decisions. I often get impatient with liberals when they … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SCOTUS decision: a “poisoned chalice” for Republicans

Posted on June 25, 2013 by

As the news comes in that the Supreme Court has declared Section IV of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional, Joshua Green sees good news, I suppose, in the next five to ten years: On its face, this looks like a … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

State/fed tension

Posted on March 27, 2013 by

Hmm, Students of Windsor and Hollingsworth have always recognized a basic tension between the theories of gay-rights advocates in the cases. The challenge to DOMA is undergirded by a sense that marriage is a matter for state rather than federal … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

What’s a flagpole?

Posted on March 26, 2013 by

Compiling the delightful things Antonin Scalia has written or said about homosexuals since Romer v. Evans in 1996, Adam Serwer shows the frivolousness of the justice’s arguments. The most useful advice: homosexuals aren’t trying hard enough to couple with the … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , | Leave a comment