“Dred Scott” is a landmark decision because it answered questions regarding slavery that the Supreme Court had not previously addressed. It is also one of the most infamous decisions, furthering the great divide facing the nation regarding the question of slavery and moving the country further down the path toward the Civil War. Dred Scott [...]
When the law reckons with the matter of life, it inevitably reckons with its own foundation and its own essence. When we attempt to define life in law, in other words, we are necessarily, though implicitly, defining law in an analogous sense at the same time. The background assumption of my brief essay is that [...]
The Supreme Court has found the race-based admission practices of both Harvard University and the University of North Carolina to be unconstitutional violations of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the words of Chief Justice John Roberts, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” In Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., decided [...]
It is the best of times and the worst of times for the pro-life movement. Though the historic Dobbs decision was a great legal victory, the cause for life continues. And it continues in both states that have severely limited abortion and those that have made it a kind of untouchable secular sacrament. The Supreme [...]
President Joseph Biden’s creating and inserting of his student loan forgiveness program, which his Department of Justice solicitor general accurately just called a “benefit” program, into last fall’s midterms elections received a thorough hearing in the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In defense of the program, the government’s case turned on what statutory words normally mean [...]
Perhaps more than any other figure in the early history of the American Republic, John Marshall shaped the Supreme Court as well as attitudes toward and understandings of the U.S. Constitution. John Marshall (September 24, 1755–July 6, 1835) was the fourth man to serve as the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, following [...]
In its 1978 Bakke case, the Supreme Court created and condoned racial preference—“affirmative action” and “diversity”—in university admissions. Now the Court is hearing a fundamental challenge to this widespread and now ever-increasing practice in education and in society. As for the membership of the Court in what may turn out to be landmark decisions in [...]
One of the best contemporary memoirs I’ve read in the last decade is My Grandfather’s Son, which was published in 2007. In his tale that ended with the fierce 1991 confirmation battle for his seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, Clarence Thomas told a remarkable story of his journey from being raised by a single [...]
Not only does the Supreme Court regularly overturn prior precedents, it has established rules for doing so. Here are eight reasons to overturn Roe v. Wade. With the Supreme Court's overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision, The Imaginative Conservative revisits some of its best essays on the topic of human life. With the widespread [...]
The Supreme Court's unanimous decision in the case of Shurtleff v. Boston is in line with the Court’s other recent rulings overturning attempts by state and local government to restrict religious freedom. In Boston, a gay pride flag was allowed to be run up the flagpole of city hall, but the flag of a Christian [...]
Conservatives are rightly disappointed when judges they appointed betray their principles in favor of a legal model without a moral compass. They cannot understand how they find unknown “rights” and “freedoms” in the name of a misdirected constitutionalism that ignores the firm foundation of fundamental truths based on tradition and morals. Modern law has a [...]
The principal basis of the reparations, systemic racism, and Black Lives Matter policy agenda has been the planned and deliberate ignoring of the federal constitution (“any person”) and federal civil rights laws (“no person”), both of which create and guarantee the rights of individuals against racial discrimination by private and public institutions and programs. Now, [...]
Will elementary, secondary, and university students, off campus as well as on campus, be forbidden to criticize, for example, critical race theory and the new American history curricula? And will that prohibition be extended to parents? The grandiose and centralized cradle-through-college education plans of Joe Biden and the Democratic party have now been plainly stated. [...]
Despite controlling neither the sword nor the purse, the Supreme Court has been able to wield considerable power by in effect legislating rather than simply judging. To lessen and perhaps gradually eliminate battles like “Roe v. Wade,” why not reduce the number of Supreme Court justices to five? During the 2020 campaign, which saw the [...]