Constitution (US)
Book Review: ‘Lady Justice,’ by Dahlia Lithwick
LADY JUSTICE: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America, by Dahlia Lithwick In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that women had no constitutional right to practice law. Indeed, as Dahlia Lithwick notes in this stirring book, a justice explained that the “natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female […]
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What a Reckoning at the Supreme Court Could Look Like
In my view, court packing, the idea that arguably launched the commission, fails that test. That’s not because adding justices would be a radical break from past practice. Adding and removing justices was common practice in the 1800s, partly as a way to manage the court’s workload and partly as a way to control the […]
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Did the Supreme Court Open the Door to Reviving One of Its Worst Decisions?
The dominance on the court of “originalism,” the doctrine that interprets the constitution and its amendments as they would have been understood at the time they were written, also bodes well for the principles of Lochner. As David Bernstein, a law professor at George Mason University, contends in his 2012 book, “Rehabilitating Lochner,” proponents of […]
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Supreme Court May Hear ‘800-Pound Gorilla’ of Election Law Cases
WASHINGTON — In October 2020, with the presidential election looming, four conservative justices issued opinions that seemed prepared to endorse a legal theory that would radically reshape how federal elections are conducted. The theory would give state legislatures independent power, not subject to review by state courts, to set election rules at odds with state […]
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Don’t Be Fooled. It’s All About Women and Sex.
When I was back in high school — a Catholic girls’ school in Cincinnati at the beginning of the sexual revolution — our religion class covered the abortion issue in approximately 45 seconds. “Abortion is murder,” said the priest who was giving the lesson, before moving on to more controversial topics, like necking and heavy […]
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Gorsuch Calls for Overruling ‘Shameful’ Cases on U.S. Territories
WASHINGTON — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch last month issued a 10-page concurring opinion that amounted to a plea. The Supreme Court, he wrote, must find a case in which to overrule a series of discredited decisions issued in the early 1900s that were based on racist assumptions and imperial ambitions. The decisions, known as the […]
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Marjorie Taylor Greene Denies ‘Insurrectionist’ Charge in Court
Mr. Bopp dismissed the case as precisely the opposite, asserting that the law was on the side of his client, who, far from engaging in insurrection, had been a victim during the riot — scared, confused, and fearing for her life as Mr. Trump’s supporters swarmed through the Capitol, where she was present just to […]
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Effort to Remove Marjorie Taylor Greene From Ballot Can Proceed, Judge Says
A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for a group of Georgia voters to move forward with legal efforts seeking to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from running for re-election to Congress, citing her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The disqualification effort is based on a constitutional provision adopted […]
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Fearing a Repeat of Jan. 6, Congress Eyes Changes to Electoral Count Law
WASHINGTON — Members of the select congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol are pressing to overhaul the complex and little-known law that former President Donald J. Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election, arguing that the ambiguity of the statute puts democracy itself at risk. The […]
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