Constitution
May 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I’m attending the two-day Upper Midwest Employment Law Institute in St. Paul this year. It’s a great program that attracts leading practitioners from all around the country. I have attended several times in years past, but this year I’m here because I need the continuing legal education credits (including Minnesota’s offensive get-your-mind right elimination-of-bias requirement) before June 30. The institute program draws a large audience which begins with plenary sessions
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March 29, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Over at NRO’s Corner, my daughter Eliana has an interesting preview of coming attractions in the Senate: Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee — the Senate’s rabble-rousing GOP triumvirate – seek nothing less than to fundamentally transform the debate over gun control. As has been reported, they will likely filibuster when Harry Reid brings his gun-control legislation up for a vote. In doing so, according to sources, they hope
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March 14, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As a pensioner, when I’m not blogging, I spend much of my time reading and watching sports on television. But nothing I do these days is more amusing than watching Ted Cruz annoy the legacy Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee and cause some of them to betray their foolishness. The latest victims were Dianne Feinstein and Chairman Patrick Leahy. Feinstein has proposed a ban on 157 different models of
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March 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Rand Paul has electrified conservatives nationwide and much of official Washington with his old-fashioned filibuster of President Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Paul is a libertarian, and his filibuster is a protest against what he views as the Obama administration’s unconstitutional usurpation of power. He is right about the broader point: the Obama administration has a long history of lawless disregard of the Constitution and federal
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January 25, 2013 — Steven Hayward
As if the DC Circuit Court opinion striking down Obama’s recess appointments weren’t enough of a blow to liberals, there is the fun constitutional controversy over presidential elections bubbling up again. Liberals who have long hated the Electoral College and want it abolished in favor of direct popular vote are suddenly . . . in love with the EC just as it is. Why? Because noises by some solid blue
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December 31, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I frequently bait the law professoriate with the axiom that if you really want to understand constitutionalism, and the U.S. Constitution in particular, don’t take constitutional law at an elite law school. There you will only receive systematic mis-instruction in the subject.* Joe Knippenberg reminds me that my AEI colleague Walter Berns always said that the problem with law professors is that they taught constitutional law, not the Constitution. Hence
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December 12, 2012 — Steven Hayward
A few days ago in “Flanking Maneuvers” I discussed how the states might be where the resistance to Obama might be most dramatic and effective, and pointed to imminent events in Michigan as an example. The reaction of the Left and their union goons (but I repeat myself) shows how serious they take this challenge to their power. They’ve reacted with their usual grace and calm reason. Not. (Over at
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December 11, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Until today, Illinois was the only state that prohibited virtually all residents from carrying firearms, either openly or concealed, outside the home or other narrowly circumscribed locations. This morning a panel of the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Illinois statute unconstitutional under two recent Supreme Court cases, District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 (2008), and McDonald v. City of Chicago, 130 S. Ct. 3020 (2010). The
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October 31, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia visits Uncommon Knowledge for a wide ranging interview including “the living Constitution,” Roe v. Wade, the constitutionality of the death penalty, the proper reading of the Second Amendment, and the true meaning of stare decisis. The occasion of Justice Scalia’s appearance is the publication of his new book, written with Bryan Garner: Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts. At one point in the conversation,
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October 3, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Obama famously pronounced that the radical Rev. Jeremiah “God damn America” Wright that emerged in the 2008 campaign “is not the Rev. Wright that I know,” but the new videos suggest that Obama knows exactly who Rev. Wright is, and has no problem with it. Charles Kesler points out in I Am the Change that a close reading of Obama’s much-praised Philadelphia speech that supposedly threw Wright under the bus
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August 4, 2012 — Steven Hayward
If you look up “Living Constitution, advocates of,” one of the first entries you will find will be Cass Sunstein, perhaps the most famous (certainly one of the most published) left-leaning legal scholars of our time. Consider just one of his many titles to get the gist of Sunstein: The Second Bill of Rights: FDR’S Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More than Ever. Do I even need to
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July 13, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy wonders whether, in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision upholding Obamacare’s individual mandate, liberals and conservatives are about to swap positions on the proper role of the Supreme Court. For decades, Kerr notes, liberals have tend to view the power of judicial review as an unambiguously positive thing. If the exercise of that power entails striking down statutes, then good: it means that
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July 11, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So, I’ve had a few curious correspondents noting my absence from the page this week asking: Are you back in Bulgaria? Is your power out again? Did we miss another “derecho” storm or something? Is the surf up in California? Have you eloped? No to all of the above. Like two weeks ago when I was teaching an intensive course on foreign policy at the Ashbrook Center in Ohio, this
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