Supreme court

There will be no hot limousine liberals' summer in 2023. The Supreme Court has in a series of rulings struck down everything that those high earning, Uber Black-ordering, sushi and box-seats-at-Taylor Swift liberals favor when it comes to government policy. If you are someone who knows all the indie films and foreign contenders for the Oscars every year, our hearts go out to you in your moment of pain. You have been dealt an excruciating blow by the 6-3 conservative majority on the court.

Anyone looking for a villain in the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down decades of affirmative action precedent will find one in Clarence Thomas. Critics have long found Thomas’s politics vexing in light of his race, a frustration that has only grown more pronounced as the affirmative action decision drew near. To hear his detractors tell it, Thomas was himself the beneficiary of affirmative action policies, both as an undergraduate at the College of the Holy Cross and later at Yale Law School. That Thomas could have such an experience and still strike down race-based admissions policies seems to make him a hypocrite — and an ungrateful one at that.

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.