Constitutional Law

National Review: The Future of

Posted on April 09, 2009
National Review: The Future of Marriage

Iowa? Vermont?First, if you haven't

Posted on April 08, 2009
Iowa? Vermont?First, if you haven't already, read Eugene Volokh's post about slippery slopes, inspired by the Iowa decision. Some slopes are slippery, others aren't. This one is, regardless of past outrage by editorialists and gay activists over the other side's "absurd" slippery-slope arguments...

Malvolio loses tort action against

Posted on April 08, 2009
Malvolio loses tort action against Olivia.

Iowa Supreme Court: state's EP

Posted on April 03, 2009
Iowa Supreme Court: state's EP clause requires same-sex marriage. Next: Prairie Prop 8?

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How long will the "pro-choice"

Posted on November 18, 2008
How long will the "pro-choice" movement continue to use that name, when its latest initiative is to deny to objecting doctors, pharmacists, etc., any choice as to whether to take part in abortions or not? The latest administrative battle over this issue is reported, with biases all in place, here...

David Lat nails it: "New Haven

Posted on November 13, 2008
David Lat nails it: "New Haven and judicial fiat. Some things just belong together."

The headline news not in the headlines:California

Posted on November 05, 2008
The headline news not in the headlines:California voters approve Proposition 8, overturning state Supreme Court decision that created same-sex marriage.

A Facebook group for us conservative

Posted on November 02, 2008
A Facebook group for us conservative Yalies: Coastal Elites for Sarah Palin!

Let me see if I can figure out

Posted on November 01, 2008
Let me see if I can figure out this Liddy Dole "Godless" ad thing. It says here:Dole's 30-second advertisement shows clips of some members of an atheist advocacy group -- the Godless Americans Political Action Committee -- talking about some of their goals, such as taking "under God" out of the Pledge of Allegiance and removing "In God We Trust" from U...

Electoral College: I just want

Posted on November 01, 2008
Electoral College: I just want to put this on the record before the election. It's just possible that, as in 2000, the popular vote and the electoral vote will reach opposite results. This could benefit either candidate.Under our Constitution, we choose our Presidents by electoral vote...

Here is a guest column that ran

Posted on October 27, 2008
Here is a guest column that ran in The Philadelphia Inquirer.Here is a story on the even-faster-than-expected circulation decline of American newspapers. Here is a list where you can find the Philly Inq's place within the sinkhole.I link, you correlate.

This Obama interview from 2001

Posted on October 27, 2008
This Obama interview from 2001 is rattling around the Web today, because it presumably shows the radical nature of his commitment to economic redistribution. Drudge hedder: "Tragedy the 'redistribution of wealth' not pursued by Supreme Court."Kind of, sort of, but maybe not quite...

Prof. Kmiec: a parting of the waysFormer

Posted on October 15, 2008
Prof. Kmiec: a parting of the waysFormer students have been asking me about my continuing allegiance, vel non, to Prof. Douglas Kmiec's con law casebook (co-edited with Dean Eastman and Profs. Presser and Marcin), given -- Prof. Kmiec's sudden turn toward Obama advocacy, you were thinking? Shoot, man, con law casebook editors as a class think Daily Kos is a news site...

Oh, just remembered -- I promised

Posted on October 14, 2008
Oh, just remembered -- I promised I'd report about the McCain-Palin rally down here in Virginia Beach, and whether anything went on there, from either side, that portended an impending police state or rule by political militias (left or right: there are political militias of the left as well as of the right, and they can get pretty frisky too, as people found out in Madrid in the early- to mid-1930s...

Another data-point for Barone's

Posted on October 14, 2008
Another data-point for Barone's file: be nice to Obama's campaign callers, or they'll set the Secret Service on you.

"Coming Obama Thugocracy?" Michael

Posted on October 11, 2008
"Coming Obama Thugocracy?" Michael Barone pulls together a number of data points about initiatives from the Obama campaign and elsewhere that are, to say the least, First-Amendment-insensitive.EDITED TO ADD: Is there a new sort of "angry Right" that supplies some sort of counterpoise? Perhaps I'll be in more of a position to tell you after I attend the McCain-Palin rally in Virginia Beach on Monday.

Connecticut joins the same-sex

Posted on October 10, 2008
Connecticut joins the same-sex marriage bandwagon, in what is fast emerging as the time-honored way: by a 1-vote margin of on a state supreme court.In that bizarre state where most Republicans are liberal and most conservatives are Democrats, Republican Governor Jodi Rell says, well, that's it -- but Democratic House Speaker Jim Amann says the legislature will act...

The Court's refusal to reconsider

Posted on October 08, 2008
The Court's refusal to reconsider Kennedy v. Louisiana in light of the overlooked death penalty for rape in the UCMJ could be seen as part of the Court's overall "the military is different" jurisprudence; cf. Rostker v. Goldberg, Goldman v. Weinberger...

A too-much-overlooked remark by

Posted on September 29, 2008
A too-much-overlooked remark by Justice Frankfurter, perhaps applicable to Boumedienne (on my mind b/c our Law Review here at Regent just had a symposium on that and related issues); concurring in U.S. v. Lovett, Frankfurter wrote:Not to exercise by indirection authority which the Constitution denied to this Court calls for the severest intellectual detachment, and the most alert self-restraint...

Never get in a car with strangers

Posted on September 23, 2008
Never get in a car with strangers who offer you "compelling state interest" tests, I always tell my students. Mr. Compelling State Interest is not your friend.

Many thanks to those who have written

Posted on September 23, 2008
Many thanks to those who have written asking that I RSS-enable this blog. Believe me, I have been trying to do so. Every site or Blogger function that proposes to offer help assumes that if you're already blogging, you already know all the relevant jargon...

Major resource discovery: The Alexander

Posted on August 27, 2008
Major resource discovery: The Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization. See esp. the databases under the tabs "American History" and "Western Civilization" in the left-hand margin.

Calif. S.Ct: under garden-variety

Posted on August 18, 2008
Calif. S.Ct: under garden-variety civil-rights statute -- i.e., of the "you can't bar blacks from your hotel" type -- doctors specializing in fertility treatment must extend treatment to same-sex couples.This news item doesn't refresh the memory as to whether California has a state RFRA, but I'll bet if it does, or gets one, it'll make no difference...

Medellin, continuedFirst, I hope

Posted on August 06, 2008
Medellin, continuedFirst, I hope readers prayed for Medellin last night, and for his victims and their families. I'll continue to do so. I'm Catholic so I get to do that. 2 Maccabees 12:43-46. (Wuzzat? -- What, it's MY fault somebody threw some books out your Bible?)Second, of last night's dissents, only Breyer's was really substantive...

Medellin: I'm monitoring the execution

Posted on August 05, 2008
Medellin: I'm monitoring the execution sitution via Scotublog and Google News. The last-minute argument for delay is non-trivial. As presented by Lyle Denniston:?Texas is about to execute Mr. Medellin anyway, taking the decision out of Congress? hands and placing the United States irrevocably in breach [of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations]...

Well, I just filled in a "survey"

Posted on August 05, 2008
Well, I just filled in a "survey" for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, coming out for low taxes, a strong national defense, and a marriage amendment, and against "gays" being "permitted to serve openly in the military"; but also against making it a "top priority" to secure our borders and control immigration (the question didn't specify "illegal" immigration, interestingly enough), and also against a flag-protection amendment...

Colleague Craig Stern on SSRN:

Posted on July 16, 2008
Colleague Craig Stern on SSRN: "The Coherence of Natural Inalienable Rights"

From Heller:In any event, the meaning

Posted on June 29, 2008
From Heller:In any event, the meaning of ?bear arms? that petitioners and Justice Stevens propose is not even the (sometimes) idiomatic meaning. Rather, they manufacture a hybrid definition, whereby ?bear arms? connotes the actual carrying of arms (and therefore is not really an idiom) but only in the service of an organized militia...

Yowza!

Posted on June 26, 2008
Yowza!

Kennedy v. Louisiana, the child-rape

Posted on June 25, 2008
Kennedy v. Louisiana, the child-rape death-penalty case: It would be hard to deliver a clearer, more workmanlike, here's-why-you're-wrong-any-questions kind of dissent than did Justice Alito today. Justice Scalia would have given off more sparks, but no one could have done a better job putting it down where the horses can get it: first of all, of course very few states adopt the death penalty for child rape -- they were scared by dicta in the Coker v...

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