Supreme court

The Supreme Court has decided Tuesday that state legislatures do not have untrammeled power to draw congressional districts and must adhere to their own constitutions, which state supreme courts can adjudicate. As such, independent state legislature theory — which the North Carolina state legislature utilized to bring its case before the court — is not a viable legal theory. The decision in Moore v. Harper was 6-3, with Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch taking up the dissent.  The court wrote in its thirty-page decision that, contrary to independent state legislature theory, “The Elections Clause does not vest exclusive and independent authority in state legislatures to set the rules regarding federal elections.

The Supreme Court is entering the home stretch of its session, with just days left before it goes into recess for the summer. Some of the most significant decisions have yet to be issued, teeing up a big week. Here is what some of those cases are. Moore v. Harper This case tackles whether a state’s supreme court can rule on gerrymandering cases. The plaintiffs are testing the independent state legislature theory, which argues that state legislatures have the prerogative in redistricting, and that state supreme courts cannot get involved in the process. North Carolina’s supreme court has since switched its original decision against the state legislature, meaning that the US Supreme Court might drop the case instead of issuing a decision. Students for Fair Admissions v.

Some weeks it feels like the line between politics and the law has all but vanished. From Hunter Biden’s plea deal and Donald Trump’s ongoing criminal woes to the brouhaha surrounding gifts accepted by Supreme Court justices and John Durham’s appearance before the House Judiciary Committee to defend his report on the FBI and Russiagate, this is one such week.  For more on the Hunter story, check out my colleague Ben Domenech’s latest. Meanwhile, a fresh row about the Supreme Court bubbled up in an unusual way overnight.

It’s going to be an awkward Fourth of July cookout chez Biden, as Hunter’s legal team is reportedly planning to invoke a Supreme Court ruling dad Joe said “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution.” But hey, Hunter seems to be thinking, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, right? Especially when doing so could keep you out of prison. The SCTOUS opinion that new Second Amendment rights poster-boy Hunter Biden is embracing was handed down in June 2022. New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen challenged a New York law requiring residents applying for concealed carry weapons permits to show “proper cause” for carrying a gun.

Did Clarence Thomas do anything wrong in accepting gifts from a wealthy Republican? Or is he the victim of years of pent-up anger at the Supreme Court by Democrats? Yes. According to an investigation by ProPublica, for more than twenty years, Justice Thomas received lavish and expensive gifts, including trips on a private yacht and a private jet, from Harlan Crow, a Texas billionaire and real estate developer with a long record of support for Republican politicians. Under the ethics regulations that guide Supreme Court justices, it is not clear that Thomas had to report any of this.

Nebraska attorney general Mike Hilgers expressed optimism about the outcome of a Supreme Court case challenging President Joe Biden's student debt forgiveness program during a Tuesday interview with The Spectator. Hilgers said following oral arguments on Tuesday morning that the justices asked "very positive" questions about the White House's authority to institute the program, which would offer up to $20,000 in loan forgiveness to individual borrowers making less than $125,000 a year or $250,000 a year for households. "To some degree it's always a little bit of reading the tea leaves, but I thought I the questions the justices asked were very positive.

A friend makes maps, colorful graphic maps of mostly Washington, DC neighborhoods. She sells them, often framed, by the bushel at farmer's markets and through her own shop. She often asks people where they live, but never how they live. Her service — the map — is neutral regarding whom one is married to, what religion they practice, which political party they support. Everyone is welcome to buy a map, and all the maps are the same. Not so for the hypothetical wedding cake maker in the next stall. While anyone is free (indeed, allowed by law) to buy an off-the-rack cake, she refuses to use her form of speech to support LGBTQ weddings. She'll sell a gay couple a cake reading "Have a Great Day" but will not create a rainbow design with two women holding hands.

Donald Trump is suing CNN for $475 million for defamation, claiming the network associated him with Adolf Hitler and portrayed him as a Russian lackey. E. Jean Carroll is in turn suing Trump for defamation in connection with him allegedly raping her. Mike “MyPillow” Lindell is being sued for $1.3 billion for defamation in connection with remarks he made about the 2020 presidential election being false. And way outside politics in America, a foreign English teacher in Thailand faces two years in jail for defamation over a negative online review of a resort he stayed at. What is defamation? Why is it so hard to prove in the United States but relatively easy to prove in most other countries?

I first met Ken Starr in 1989. I was a Wall Street Journal editorial writer who was invited to speak at a conference held by the Federalist Society’s chapter at Cornell University. I met two very impressive people that day. One was Leonard Leo, the head of the Cornell Federalist Society. Only twenty-four, it was clear he had a natural genius for organizing, planning and networking. As the later head of the Federalist Society, he turned it into the premier farm team for conservative lawyers who wanted to become judges. In 2020, then-CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin told a group of lawyers that Leo had played a major role in the selection of a majority of the Supreme Court.

For nearly half a century, American politics has been defined according to the strictures of a single Supreme Court decision: Roe v. Wade. The 1973 case determined abortion policy for the entire nation, striking down state rules and creating a political movement in response which played out in unexpected and completely polarized ways. It drove southern evangelical Christians and northern Catholics into unorthodox political partnerships. It cut across the Democratic Party coalition, leading to constant squabbling even through the passage of Obamacare. It led directly to the creation of the conservative legal movement, the elevation of prospective judicial nominees as of the utmost importance in assessing presidential candidates.

We don't really negotiate much in the US and so we're bad at it. The American style of negotiating is to demand everything and settle for nothing less. We ask for an outrageously large amount and "bargain down" after the other side offers an equally outrageous small amount. Starting anywhere near your actual number is considered a sign of weakness. We don't like gray areas and we don't like to feel like we've lost out on something. So being asked to support something that on its face seems reasonable, like allowing two people in love living together in a home they co-own to marry, means buying into a whole LGBTQIA2+ agenda that somehow includes forcing kids to listen to drag queens read stories aloud about sexually ambitious caterpillars and their same-sex tadpole pals.

American idiot and Green Day lead singer Billie Joe Armstrong said he is going to renounce his US citizenship and move to England because he is so upset over the Supreme Court overturning the landmark abortion case Roe v. Wade. The singer made the comments to a crowd at the band's show in London, specifically "F*ck America, I’m f*cking renouncing my citizenship. I’m f*cking coming here." He called the justices "pr*cks" and said "f*ck the Supreme Court of America." Can he do that? Does it make any sense? Armstrong should first check on what abortion laws look like in the United Kingdom. Assuming he understands the difference, the UK is composed of Scotland, Wales, England, and Northern Ireland.

Sit back with me for a moment and marvel at the level of sociopathy it took for our most recognizable members of Congress to feign arrest before a swarm of cameras, complete with imaginary handcuffs. Of course, politics is just one big propaganda play, staged for the voters in pursuit of power. The media is supposed to apply scrutiny to the political theater, and separate nuggets of truth from hackneyed bluster for the audience’s benefit. But what happens when members of the media are not just complicit in the agitprop itself, but find themselves the mark? This was the case on Tuesday as members of Congress staged a protest in front of the Supreme Court.

The shockwaves of this past Supreme Court term continue to shake the political left. Roe v. Wade is gone. Gun rights were further secured. Religious liberty was vindicated. The reaction among progressives (beyond anger) has been to attack the Court as illegitimate. Of course, they do not mean the Court is inherently unconstitutional. Article III makes that plain to even the most evolving of living constitutionalists. Instead, they say that the Court has committed two sins this term: the justices have engaged in judicial activism and they've acted undemocratically. These accusations seem based in frustration more than perceptive analysis. First, let’s tackle the claim that the Court engaged in judicial activism. The essence of judicial activism is to “legislate from the bench.

Cockburn doesn’t leave the swampy bounds of the District too often, but he has now and then been tempted by a trip to Colorado’s Western Slope, where, until last Sunday, Representative Lauren Boebert ran a restaurant in the town of Rifle. Every waitress who worked there open-carried a gun. Cockburn learned of this Second Amendment-themed eatery through a video his colleague Teresa Mull produced back when Boebert was just a gun and burger-slinging small business owner. Now, eight years later, Shooters Grill has closed. According to the Glenwood Springs Post Independent, Boebert was shocked to learn that her new landlord would not be renewing her restaurant’s lease: Boebert said the letter came as a shock.