All Posts Tagged With: "Supreme Court"
Money Is Not Speech
“The Supreme Court said that money equals speech!” Proponents of campaign finance regulation have thrown this trope around freely since 2010’s landmark Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission. Fortunately, the Court never actually made such an absurd equation. It would be hard to take the Court seriously if it had. But [...]
30Nov2011 | Michael Cummins | 2 comments | ContinuedJudicial Activism and Parental Rights
The charge of judicial activism seems to be more the product of disliking the outcome than of any real principle of constitutional interpretation.
10Mar2011 | Steven Horwitz | 9 comments | ContinuedOf Fallible Umpires and Rogue Judges
There is a striking similarity between blown calls by umpires in baseball and blown calls by judges in our legal system. We now know, unambiguously, that umpires make mistakes—sometimes excruciatingly costly ones. According to baseball purists, those mistakes “are part of the game.” Yet there is a rising chorus of calls for Major League Baseball to [...]
22Oct2010 | David N. Laband | 1 comment | ContinuedThe Great Decision: Jefferson, Adams, Marshall, and the Battle for the Supreme Court
The Supreme Court’s decision in Marbury v. Madison (1803) is among the most famous in its history. Shrouded in myth and featuring a cast of historical demigods, the story of the case is a staple of biographies of the second, third, and fourth presidents, as well as Chief Justice John Marshall. Constitutional law courses commonly [...]
25Aug2010 | Kevin Gutzman | 1 comment | Continued“The Taxing Power, My Dear”
The legal committee soon broke into a row because the legal problems were so terrible. The constitutional problem was the greatest one. How could you get around this business of the State-Federal relationships? It seemed that couldn’t be done. We continued to wrangle about it for days. But one day I went out to tea, [...]
12Jul2010 | FEE Admin | 0 comments | ContinuedLeviathan: The Growth of Local Government and the Erosion of Liberty
Does government have too much power? Certainly—just think of all the freedom Americans have lost on account of the income tax, Social Security, Department of Labor regulations, the threat of antitrust prosecution, and so on. Note that in my short list of examples, each one is due to action by the federal government. In Leviathan, [...]
12Jul2010 | George C. Leef | 0 comments | ContinuedCapital Letters
Don’t Let the Court Off the Hook To the Editor: As a former wartime draftee — the Korean War — I’m of two minds re Aeon J. Skoble’s “Neither Slavery Nor Involuntary Servitude” piece in your September issue (“It Just Ain’t So!). No question, he did a very good job of picking apart the operational [...]
6Jul2010 | FEE Admin | 1 comment | ContinuedSupreme Court Says 2nd Amendment Applies to States
Just in from the New York Times: The Supreme Court ruled, 5-4, that the Second Amendment, which forbids Congress from infringing the right to keep and bear arms, applies to state and local governments as well. The case, McDonald v. Chicago, No. 08-1521, involved a challenge to the City of Chicago’s gun control law, regarded [...]
28Jun2010 | Sheldon Richman | 4 comments | ContinuedRizzo on the Supreme Court Ruling
I highly recommend this post by Mario Rizzo on the Supreme Court free-speech decision. Nobody has put it better. A tidbit: The terrible truth of the matter is that a large complex government is incompatible with political and personal freedom. It is not just the economic freedom in various sectors that is threatened by a [...]
24Jan2010 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedA Manifesto for Media Freedom
Americans are blessed with access to an unprecedented variety of media–not to mention ways in which information can be stored and the points of view and ownership interests represented. As documented in the brisk book A Manifesto for Media Freedom, this cornucopia of media options has led not to celebration of the marvelous diversity that [...]
23Sep2009 | Brian Doherty | 0 comments | ContinuedSotomayor, Freedom, and the Law
The dreary Senate hearing on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court left me so in the doldrums that my only chance for solace was to dig out my copy of Freedom and the Law (1961) by Bruno Leoni. Leoni (1913-1967) was a professor of legal theory and a lawyer in [...]
17Jul2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedTGIF: Sotomayor, Freedom, and the Law
The dreary Senate hearing on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court left me so in the doldrums that my only chance for solace was to dig out my copy of Freedom and the Law (1961) by Bruno Leoni. The rest of TGIF is here.
17Jul2009 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | ContinuedFDR’s Lucky Timing
It’s not clear how any of FDR’s 1933 policies could have accounted for a 17 percent increase in GDP, even if they promoted expansion, because they wouldn’t have had time to ripple through the economy. It seems more likely that FDR had the good fortune to come into office near the bottom of the Depression, and enough adjustments in wages, prices, and other factors had occurred that the economy was ready to recover.
10Jun2009 | Jim Powell | 5 comments | ContinuedJudges, Empathy, and Bastiat
In case someone hasn’t seen John Hasnas’s important Wall Street Journal op-ed on why an “empathetic” judge or justice is likely to commit Bastiat’s fallacy of overlooking the “what is not seen,” it is here. “The ‘Unseen’ Deserve Empathy, Too” is well worth reading!
1Jun2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedAlice in Wonderland
From TalkingPointsMemo: Known as a moderate on the court, [Supreme Court nominee-designate Sonia] Sotomayor often forges consensus and agreeing with her more conservative nominees far more frequently than she disagrees with them. In cases where Sotomayor and at least one judge appointed by a Republican president were on the three-judge panel, Sotomayor and the Republican [...]
28May2009 | Sheldon Richman | 0 comments | ContinuedSupreme Neglect: How to Revive Constitutional Protection for Private Property
The framers of the Constitution were acutely aware that politics—even in the highly limited democracy they envisioned—could be dangerous to private property. For that reason they added the “takings” clause to the Fifth Amendment: “Nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.” Unfortunately, like so much other constitutional language intended to [...]
2Apr2009 | George C. Leef | 1 comment | ContinuedGetting Rights Wrong
It's the Fourth of July, the
day we ought to contemplate and rejoice in Jefferson's radical declaration of
the “self-evident” truth that all individuals
are
equally endowed with “certain unalienable Rights, … among these … Life,
Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Alas, the day cannot be one
of unmitigated joy since we have again been reminded that the purported
protectors of our liberties have little understanding of those rights. We thus
live under constant threat from the very people who claim to protect us. As you might guess, I am
referring to the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Second Amendment case, District
of Columbia v. Heller.
More . . .
A NEW article by Sheldon Richman
5Jul2008 | Sheldon Richman | 1 comment | Continued-
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