Posts Tagged ‘Supreme Court’
Religion and the lawbreaking Supreme Court | The Hill – Column
Lawyers sometimes irritate other people with their persnicketiness about technicalities. But scrupulousness about legal detail is what gives courts their authority. It is big news if the Supreme Court ignores statutory limits on its own power. Since Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court has repeatedly issued orders without legal authorization. This was particularly…
Read MoreForced Labor: Why the Thirteenth Amendment Protects Abortion Rights | Washington Monthly – OpEd
or centuries in America, a class of persons was regarded as a servant caste whose duty was to work for the benefit of others and not themselves. That duty was bound up with a complex legal structure that closed off avenues of escape to ensure they did the work they were expected to do. Their…
Read MoreThe Supreme Court’s squandered opportunity | The Hill – Column
In 2022 the Supreme Court threw away an opportunity to ameliorate the toxic polarization of America. After the unseemly gamesmanship that led to the appointments of Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, the new conservative majority should have looked for opportunities to, as Barrett said shortly after her confirmation, “convince you that this court is not comprised of a bunch…
Read MoreHow the Respect for Marriage Act will heal of one of America’s most toxic divisions | The Hill – Column
The Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), which codifies protection for same-sex marriage, is about to be signed by President Biden. It protects hundreds of thousands of families, but it does more than that. It is a step away from America’s political polarization. That’s not just because Congress managed to get something important done on a bipartisan…
Read MoreWith conservative Supreme Court, religion always wins | The Hill – Column
These days, the Supreme Court presents itself as faithfully following the law, while it does pretty much whatever it wants. For example, it invokes tradition as a constraint on its discretion, while manipulating its meaning to avoid enforcing constitutional provisions it doesn’t like — such as the Establishment Clause. In Kennedy v. Bremerton, the Court recently overruled…
Read MoreThe continuing, destructive power of libertarianism | The Hill – Column
At a recent conference on conservative philosophy, I told another professor that I’d just written a critical history of libertarianism. “You’re too late,” he said. “After Trump, libertarianism is dead in American politics.” Would that it were so. The Libertarian Party is indeed in deep trouble, torn apart by factionalism. Despite the increasing ubiquity of communitarian, nationalist rhetoric, however,…
Read MoreElena Kagan and the Supreme Not-A-Court | The Hill Column
The Supreme Court is supposed to decide questions based on the law, not public opinion. Yet its power consists solely in its ability to issue pieces of paper, which have no effect unless other officials, the ones with guns and money, respect it and are willing to enforce its decisions. Justice Elena Kagan and Chief Justice John…
Read MoreReligion and Samuel Alito’s time bomb | The Hill Column
An irresponsible sentence that Justice Samuel Alito wrote eight years ago may now excuse religious people from nearly every legal obligation they have, so long as a hypothetical, nonexistent government program could substitute for it. That became clear this week when Judge Reed O’Connor declared in Braidwood Management v. Becerra that employers with religious objections may offer health plans…
Read MoreReligion and the wrong defense of abortion rights | The Hill Column
It is commonly claimed that restrictions on abortion illegitimately impose some people’s religious beliefs on the rest of us. This is the wrong way to defend abortion rights. It implies that religious motives have no legitimate place in lawmaking. In fact, we all have normative commitments that we have trouble articulating – you could call them matters of…
Read MoreClimate change and the Supreme Court’s version of police abolitionism — The Hill Column
West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, which in June gutted the Biden administration’s ability to reduce the electrical power industry’s carbon emissions, may be the Supreme Court’s most reckless and lawless decision (in an extremely competitive field). The court comes close to anarchism, crippling Congress’s capacity to protect the country from disaster and undermining the…
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