Constitution

Supreme Court: Trump stays on ballot

Featured image The Supreme Court has held 9-0 that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in blessing the disqualification of Donald Trump from the state’s primary election ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court’s opinion is per curiam. Justice Barrett concurs in part and concurs in the judgment. Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson concur in the judgment (i.e., the result). The Court’s opinions are posted online here. The Court’s per »

Liberal Fragility

Featured image Liberals really are extremely fragile people. This helps explain why they need “safe spaces” with cuddly stuffed animals, grief counselors, and warning labels against “microaggressions.” The latest evidence is a completely unironic and totally un-self-aware piece in the New York Times about the anguish of liberal law professors having to teach constitutional law at a time when the Supreme Court leans right. It’s so upsetting that some professors are moved »

Climate Activists Are Evil

Featured image We are far beyond the point where climate activists could be regarded as misguided but well-meaning. They are evil, pure and simple. Here, climate activists vandalize the United States Constitution display at the National Archives, bleating stupid pronouncements about “rich white men.” You have to go to college to become that dumb: BREAKING: Climate activists just ruined the display of the Constitution in the Rotunda of the National Archives in »

Thinkin’ about “Lincoln”

Featured image I wrote the post below when the film Lincoln was released in 2012. I thought some readers might find it of interest today. My purpose here was to take up the movie in the context of Richard Hofstadter’s famous essay on Lincoln — an essay which is all that bright high-school students may ever learn about him. I have inserted links to the publisher’s pages of the books cited. We »

Trump will be on the ballot

Featured image I just finished listening to the oral argument held before the Supreme Court this morning in Trump v. Anderson. It went on for a little over two hours. The oral argument as a whole was conducted at an extremely high level. My take is that the Court will reverse the decision of the Colorado Supreme Court and that President Trump will not be disqualified from the ballot under section 3 »

In the Supreme Court this morning [With Comment by John]

Featured image The Supreme Court hears oral argument in the Colorado ballot case at 9:00 a.m. this morning — the case of Trump v. Anderson. Did the Colorado Supreme Court err in ordering President Trump excluded from the 2024 presidential primary ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment? Is this national question to be determined separately by each of the 50 states? Is section 3 applicable to the office of the »

Constitutional Crisis at the Border?

Featured image The Biden Administration has dealt a devastating blow to America by opening up the southern border to all comers. The influx of illegals threatens our national security and our economy, and it has placed an intolerable burden on the border states. How intolerable, is demonstrated by the panic that seizes blue cities when they are faced with a tiny fraction of the burden suffered by communities near the open border. »

Realize this

Featured image This morning the Supreme Court hears oral argument in Moore v. United States. It could be one of the most important cases to be heard by the Supreme Court this year. In it the Court has certified this question for review (references to “App.” are to the appendix to the petition for review filed with the Court by counsel for Mr. and Mrs. Moore): The Sixteenth Amendment authorizes Congress to »

Announcement: Hadley Arkes Tomorrow at Berkeley

Featured image I’m finally back from my extended overseas journey—more articles from this to come—and tomorrow I’ll be back on campus hosting the great Hadley Arkes at the law school for a mid-day lecture (12:50 pm – 2 pm, Room 105) based on his new book, Mere Natural Law: Originalism and the Anchoring Truths of the Constitution. (Highly recommended by the way. Podcast hopefully to come.) Needless to say, the idea of »

Dumbest Anti-Trump Theory Yet?

Featured image The criminal prosecutions that Democrats have brought against Donald Trump are all flimsy to various degrees. But the current effort to bar Trump from the 2024 ballot as an “insurrectionist” is possibly their weakest attempt yet. Nevertheless, it continues to gain traction, as reflected in this news from a few hours ago: BREAKING: A group has filed a lawsuit to bar Donald Trump from the primary ballot in Colorado, arguing »

Will Universities Stop Discriminating?

Featured image Of course not. The Supreme Court has held that race discrimination in university admissions violates the 14th Amendment and, where it applies, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It isn’t a leap to apply the same principle to faculty hiring and promotion. But that won’t bring an end to racist practices by universities, any more than Brown v. Board of Education automatically ended racist practices in the »

About That “Color-Blind Constitution”

Featured image Alan Dershowitz struggles mightily yesterday in the Wall Street Journal to persuade us that Earl Warren would have been wholly in favor of the Harvard/UNC decision banning admissions by race based on the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. As much as we may welcome Dershowitz’s continuing defection from the left, this article is not persuasive. To the contrary, the mistakes of the Warren Court contributed significantly to the »

Is administrative law unlawful?

Featured image Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of several books including Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014). Steve Hayward mentioned the book earlier this week in “Will the Supreme Court dismantle the administrative state?” Professor Hamburger argues that administrative law is unlawful, unconstitutional, and illegitimate. Drawing on English legal history, he contends that the regime of agency government resurrects the »

Celebrating Justice Thomas (3)

Featured image Justice Thomas is the greatest Supreme Court justice of the modern era. His concurrence in SFFA v. Harvard is a kind of capstone, but it represents only one area in which Justice Thomas has sought to rectify and deepen the Court’s constitutional jurisprudence. William Wolfe’s tweet below expresses my feeling perfectly. Thank you, Justice Thomas. »

Celebrating Justice Thomas

Featured image With his glorious concurrence in SFFA v. Harvard, today has become a day to salute Justice Clarence Thomas, or so it seems to me. Here is a man who has thought his own way through to a true understanding of the principle of equality that we celebrate today. Justice Thomas’s concurrence in part smacks down Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent. Justice Jackson’s dissent faithfully represents the groupthink denying the equality »

Will the Supreme Court Dismantle the Administrative State?

Featured image As I have written more than once, the government we live under is not the one described in the Constitution. The ubiquitous and powerful arm of our government, found nowhere in the Constitution, is the Fourth Branch, the plethora of federal agencies, the administrative state. The administrative state has assumed much of the power that the Constitution assigns to the legislative and executive branches, a development that has progressed now »

Andrew Kull: The affirmative action cases

Featured image After posting my own brief comments on the Supreme Court’s historic decision in the affirmative action cases on Thursday, I wrote Professor Andrew Kull. Professor Kull is Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and the author of The Color-Blind Constitution. I told him I had been drawing on CBC for something like 20 years to write about the “affirmative action” regime and that »