Supreme Court
June 30, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Can the left amp up the hysteria past 11 to 12 or 13? The Supreme Court ruled against the EPA this morning in a 6-3 decision written by Chief Justice Roberts. The case is West Virginia v. EPA. Politico offers this brief summary: The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to President Joe Biden’s climate strategy, ruling that the Environmental Protection Agency has only limited authority to regulate carbon dioxide
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June 28, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Abortion hysteria has overtaken the New York Times–not that hysteria is foreign to the former Gray Lady these days. This story by Carl Hulse isn’t news, it isn’t even an op-ed. It is a liberal’s temper tantrum. Hulse’s point is to blame Mitch McConnell for recent Supreme Court decisions with which he disagrees: “Mitch McConnell’s Court Delivers.” In the course of his screed, Hulse repeatedly gets the facts wrong. Most
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June 27, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Trump said in 2016 that we’d get tired of all the winning, but I don’t think I can ever get tired of the clean sweep coming from the Supreme Court lately (with a nod toward an excellent decision also out today from New York’s appellate courts). The biggest win today is Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, in which the Court ruled by a 6 – 3 margin (familiar number by now)
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June 27, 2022 — John Hinderaker
We are coming off one of the greatest weeks in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. And yet, a largely unreported dissent by Justice Clarence Thomas may be the harbinger of something important that is still to come. The case is Coral Ridge Ministries v. Southern Poverty Law Center, and the opinion by Justice Thomas, dissenting from a denial of a writ of certiorari, is the kind of thing
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June 27, 2022 — Scott Johnson
Chief Justice Roberts is a practitioner judicial statesmanship that is occasionally difficult for an outsider to understand. Most famously, Roberts switched his vote on the constitutionality of Obamacare in the face of President Obama’s intimidation. It was a sorry performance that invited more of the same from those for whom it’s all politics. In Dobbs, Roberts’s statesmanship resulted in an eccentric concurring opinion that none of his colleagues on either
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June 27, 2022 — Scott Johnson
The day before the Supreme Court turned the world upside down and overruled Roe last week, it it held that the Second Amendment protects the right of law-abiding people to carry a gun outside the home for self-defense and that New York’s Sullivan law, which makes that virtually impossible for anyone but VIPs, was therefore unconstitutional. Justice Thomas wrote the opinion for the Court in New York State Rifle &
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June 26, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Justice Clarence Thomas’s moment has arrived. His majority opinion in Bruen (the gun rights case), and his concurrence in Dobbs, are drawing considerable attention, and rightly so. Among many other virtues, his opinions have managed the dual feat of laying out serious legal and constitutional arguments while trolling the left at the same time. This may be my favorite passage in his Bruen majority opinion: After all, the Second Amendment
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June 26, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Howie Carr is one of America’s top radio personalities. He has the big talk show in New England, on which I appear occasionally as a guest. On Friday I was on the show to talk about the Dobbs ruling, and we also touched on the New York firearms decision. It made for an interesting conversation, I think. Here it is; my appearance begins the hour:
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June 25, 2022 — Scott Johnson
When some rotten insider at the Supreme Court leaked Justice Alito’s draft opinion in the Dobbs case last month, it reminded me of the invitation we had received from the editors of National Review to comment on the nomination of then Judge Alito to the Supreme Court by President Bush. Our article was published in the November 21 issue of the magazine that year. I dug it out and posted
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June 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Here are some thoughts on today’s landmark Supreme Court decision, in no particular order: * It represents genuine courage. Politicians and others often pat themselves on the back for being “brave,” usually when nothing much is at stake. In this case, we had not just a maelstrom of hysteria but an actual assassination attempt, encouraged if not explicitly condoned by the Democratic Party. Yet five justices stood strong to uphold
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June 24, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Supreme Court released its opinions in the Dobbs case this morning. Consistent with the leaked draft by Justice Alito, it overrules the Roe and Casey decisions. You can read the opinions here. I haven’t had time yet to review Alito’s majority opinion to see how closely it conforms to what was leaked. The vote was 6-3, with Chief Justice Roberts concurring in the result. He would have upheld the
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June 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court decided Carson v. Makin on a 6-3 vote, with the liberal bloc dissenting. The case related to a program in Maine, whereby the state will pay for specified educational alternatives for parents who live in districts where there is no secondary school. Public and private schools are eligible as long as they are accredited and meet other requirements, except that only “nonsectarian” schools can participate.
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June 23, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, a challenge to a New York State law that barred residents from obtaining a carry permit unless they could show “proper cause.” Proper cause, in turn, required the applicant to “demonstrate a special need for self-protection distinguishable from that of the general community.” Under the Court’s controlling precedents, Heller and McDonald, I think the New York
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June 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Would-be assassin Nicholas Roske failed to carry out his mission of assassinating Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. This isn’t surprising: the sort of person who acts on incitement from the likes of Chuck Schumer is more or less deranged, and more or less incompetent. Yet there are more where Roske came from, and one of them may succeed. What do the Democrats think about attempted assassinations of Supreme Court justices?
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June 10, 2022 — Scott Johnson
I’m scheduled to have another lunch with my conservative attorney friend next week. We were in law school together at the University of Minnesota and crossed paths in the course of our practices. I now seek to persuade him that the law school has become an enemy of everything we believe in and that it would make sense to reconsider his support. Following up on our last lunch on the
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June 8, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The man who traveled to Maryland to try to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been identified as Nicholas John Roske, from Simi Valley, California. He apparently made it to Justice Kavanaugh’s house before being apprehended: Nicholas John Roske, 26, of Simi Valley, Calif., was charged with attempted murder after two U.S. deputy marshals saw him step out of a taxicab in front of the justice’s house in Chevy Chase, Md.,
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June 8, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats should be held accountable for last night’s attempt on the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Most notably, of course, Chuck Schumer issued a fatwa against Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch, which last night’s would-be assassin apparently attempted to execute. But that’s not all. The GOP’s communications staff reminds us of the Democrats’ shameful history of encouraging violence against conservative Supreme Court justices: A man was just arrested outside
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