Liberals used to think Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia were the scariest justices on the Court. Then came George W. Bush’s appointees.
Scott Lemieux
Scott Lemieux is a political science professor at the University of Washington. He writes for the blog Lawyers, Guns & Money. Follow @lemieuxlgm
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The Maximalist Supreme Court
What’s the difference between “minimalist” conservative justices and the fundamentalists if they always come to the same conclusions?
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Checks and Imbalances
Whether or not Obama’s military intervention in Libya is constitutional, Congress long ago ceded its power to make war to the president.
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The Impunity of the Roberts Court
John Thompson spent 14 years on death row because prosecutors withheld evidence, but the Supreme Court refuses to hold them accountable.
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The Highly Selective Compassion of Samuel Alito
Emily Bazelon has an excellent article about Sam Alito, focusing on recent opinions in which his views center on his feelings for individuals he considers to have been wronged. Bazelon’s analysis first of all reminds me of Adam’s excellent point that the same conservative commentators who attacked Sonia Sotomayor for some mild comments suggesting that […]
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The Court, Below the Radar
As a class-action suit against Wal-Mart shows, judicial interpretation — not judicial review — is where the Supreme Court’s real power lies.
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Does Let’s Move! Need to Be Targeted at “Obesity?”
To enter the debate between my colleagues Lindsay and Paul, I think it’s important to distinguish between the content of the program itself and certain characterizations of its objectives. I think that we all agree that increasing physical activity and healthy diets are good things, for people of all ages and body types. For this […]
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Who Cares About Clarence Thomas’ Silence at Oral Argument?
One of my idiosyncratic hobbyhorses is the argument that while there are many reasons to criticize Clarence Thomas, his famous silence at oral argument isn’t one of them. So I was happy to see Dahlia Lithwick at Slate express a similar view. As Orin Kerr also argues, how much a justice speaks at oral argument […]
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Pro-Choicers Should Be Serious About Politics.
There are a couple of points worth adding to Pema‘s excellent post below. First of all, accepting the necessity of actually looking at what the proposed statute says rather than what what Phil Jensen claims that he meant, legislators in South Dakota have apparently shelved the bill, which was strongly criticized by the governor. So […]
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The Individual Mandate: Not a Slippery Slope
Requiring all Americans to have health insurance is not only constitutional, but necessary to make health-care reform work.
