It is an unfortunate truism that the longer one remains in the legal profession, the less educated he becomes. The law, as the saying goes, is a jealous mistress: She does not permit solicitors to invest time in rival passions—e.g., philosophy, history, and literature—let alone cultivate the niceties and nuances of expression that distinguish the [...]
The Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments in the case of Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell. This is a case in which a small order of nuns is seeking exemption from an Obama Administration requirement that they help distribute free contraceptives and abortifacients (drugs that cause abortions) through their government-mandated healthcare plan. Why [...]
No matter what the party lines, political lies, and euphemisms are, abortion is never safe, and it can also be harmful to women. If the Supreme Court of the United States acts, it might very well help to uphold the right to life across the nation. Abortion that is “safe and legal” is a fallacy, [...]
Antonin Scalia’s defense of the Constitution was rooted in a determination to let the law speak for itself. His “textualism” took its motive force from the simple idea that a judge’s job is to apply the law (or adjudicate under the law) rather than to change it to mean what it “should” mean, or what [...]
Antonin Scalia espoused the idea of judicial restraint, knowing, as did the American Founders, that individuals and society require definite laws for the preservation of order and justice. In Federalist 51, James Madison wrote that “if men were angels, no government would be necessary.” No public figure of his generation was more acutely aware of [...]
I remember talking with a neighbor back in 1970 or so, telling him how my wife had written this blistering letter taking Sears, Roebuck to task for their immoral and incompetent handling of our account. He said, “That’ll show ‘em.” If you are truly an Imaginative Conservative, you will understand that he was right, despite [...]
It’s campaign season again. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Marco Rubio have already announced their bid to become president. More politicians are expected to follow suit. These candidates will, we can be sure, equivocate, pontificate, prevaricate, and grandstand about any number of issues in the coming months, but the one that should be [...]
Natural law seems an unlikely topic for extensive television coverage, nor would one expect United States senators to develop high anxiety over the subject. Yet the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas brought both of those improbable events to pass. Justice Thomas and Senator Joseph Biden grappled repeatedly with the concept of natural law and [...]
The bandwagon in the federal courts to negate the laws of all the states concerning marriage (only eleven states have established homosexual marriage by legislation or ballot initiative) has been rolling since the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision in May 2013, forbidding the federal government from defining marriage in federal programs as it has always been [...]
So now Sarah Palin has called for President Barack Obama’s impeachment. The response from the New York Times and other representatives of the “mainstream” media no doubt will be a combination of derision and studied indifference. And this should not surprise anyone. Unless an almost-literal smoking gun magically appears showing beyond a shadow of a [...]
Many religious folk have been rejoicing at the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the case concerning the Obama Administration’s attempt to force Hobby Lobby and other religious businesses to pay for contraceptive and abortifacient drugs for their employees under the Health and Human Services Mandate. The Court held that the [...]
For decades, now, the universe of constitutional interpretation has been divided into “textualists,” who argue that the document must be read according to the reasonable meaning of its words, and those who argue for a “living” constitution, the meaning of which can “grow” over time to “meet the needs of a changing people and nation.” [...]
Is the Second Reconstruction over? The first ended with the withdrawal of Union troops from the Southern states as part of a deal that gave Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency after the disputed election of 1876. The second began with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a century after Appomattox. Under the VRA, Southern states [...]
Reading Law: The Interpretation of Legal Texts by Antonin Scalia and Bryan A. Garner. These are dark days for American law. In June, Chief Justice John Roberts, in what was a stark betrayal of his oath to uphold the Constitution, upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the “ACA” or “Obamacare”) as a valid [...]