The Supremes spoke this morning, and conservatives cheered. But, today is not a day to celebrate. In a “limited ruling,” the Supreme Court held that for-profit companies can claim a religious exemption to providing Obamacare mandated contraceptive coverage. Conservatives lauded the 5-4 decision as a victory. Rep. John Boehner took to Twitter proclaim a great…
Last week, in a surprisingly clear opinion, the Supreme Court limited federal power and took the side of the Constitution over an agency’s regulatory program. “At the bottom of the Supreme Court’s decision today tossing out, in large part, the Obama Administration’s greenhouse gas emissions scheme is a stiff dose of constitutional common sense,” Andrew…
The federal government has once again failed to appropriately regulate its own behavior, with an Idaho federal judge ruling in favor of the constitutionality of the NSA’s spying program. According to a report from the Idaho Spokesman, U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill, in his eight-page decision issued [on June 3], found that under current U.S.…
Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion in Bond v. United States has been sharply criticized (see here and here), so I’ll say few words partially in its favor. The case has seemed odd from the beginning because the federal statute at issue implements the Chemical Weapons Convention and (as the majority says) the local misuse of household chemicals does not seem the type…
Monday’s unanimous (on the result) Supreme Court decision in Bond v. United States uses federalism principles to rule against the federal prosecution of Carol Ann Bond, who attempted to injure a romantic rival with toxic chemicals. Briefly: The majority (Chief Justice Roberts, writing for Justices Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan) thought the statute in question — implementing…
We agree with Thomas Jefferson. Do you?
Bond was a case about the scope of the treaty power—can Congress do something pursuant to a treaty that it can’t otherwise do?—and yet the majority opinion avoided that discussion altogether in the name of a faux judicial minimalism.
If you think a handful of unelected, unaccountable politically-connected lawyers are the only ones who can determine what’s constitutional and what’s not, you prefer the Iranian system of government to the Constitutional government of the Founders.
In a recent New York Times story, justices on the allegedly non-partisan Supreme Court were reported to be much more likely to rule in favor of free speech if they agreed with the ideology of the plantiff. According to the Times, “In cases raising First Amendment claims, a new study found, Justice (Antonin) Scalia voted to uphold the…
Georgetown University Law Center professor Randy Barnett nailed it in a short post on the Volokh Conspiracy Blog this week. Much as I believe that the NSA bulk data seizure program is unconstitutional because it is an “unreasonable” general warrant, the preferable remedy would be a congressional fix. Moreover, I agree that we should never…