Free Republic

No one’s freedom provides the right to endanger others. That is the point of the adage that my right to swing my fist ends at another person’s nose. The government always has the power to impose restrictions on behavior to protect other people from harm, including to stop the spread of a communicable disease. Yet these basic principles are forgotten by those who opposed a mask mandate and who now are trying to prohibit vaccine passports. Indeed, the government can and should require that everyone be vaccinated against COVID. There is no constitutional right to refuse to wear a mask...

In 1987, Robert Bork was denied confirmation to the Supreme Court because his originalist beliefs were deemed a serious threat to constitutional rights. Originalism is no less dangerous for those rights today, yet Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s repeated statements professing her belief in originalism have been met with little objection. Originalists believe that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it was adopted and that it can change only by constitutional amendment. Under this view, the First Amendment means the same thing as when it was adopted in 1791 and the 14th Amendment means the same thing as...

WASHINGTON — In the spring of 2014, a friend tried to nudge Judge Stephen Reinhardt, then an 83-year-old liberal stalwart on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, into stepping aside from full-time duties so President Barack Obama could nominate a successor. The friend, Erwin Chemerinsky, now the dean at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, said he had gently suggested to Judge Reinhardt that he and another longtime liberal figure on the San Francisco-based court make way while Democrats still had the power to assure that jurists with a similar philosophy would take their...

Here’s another letter that I sent today to the Los Angeles Times: Criticizing the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United, Erwin Chemerinsky asserts that “There is no way to see this other than as the conservative justices using judicial review to advance the traditional conservative ideological agenda” (“Conservatives embrace judicial activism in campaign finance ruling,” Jan. 23). Really? Then why did both the AFL-CIO and the ACLU submit amicus briefs to the Court in support of the eventual winning outcome? Do these two organizations now embrace “the traditional conservative ideological agenda”? Seems unlikely. The better explanation for this ruling...

Florida’s attorney general questioned the constitutionality of the federal health care bill on Tuesday, calling on states to study whether to file suit to kill a provision requiring that individuals buy health insurance or pay a fine. The attorney general, William McCollum, a Republican who is running for governor in 2010, said that the so-called mandate was “an affront to our country’s principles.” He added that the fine might be illegal because, in his view, it is disconnected from any commercial act. “It’s a tax on living,” Mr. McCollum said in a telephone conference call with reporters. “It’s a tax...

The dean of California's newest law school is suing this seaside community over its treatment of the homeless. The suit should serve as a warning to the business establishment of Orange County, Calif., -- which has poured over $24 million into the still-unopened University of California, Irvine law school -- that it is creating a litigation monster that will endanger the county's fabled quality of life. The law school will open its doors this fall. Part of its core mission is to train students in "public interest" law []. The term "public interest" law is a masterstroke of misrepresentation, since...

A law school opening next fall in Southern California is offering a big incentive to top students who might be thinking twice about the cost of a legal education during the recession: free tuition for three years. The offer is part of a strategy by Erwin Chemerinsky, a renowned constitutional law scholar and dean of the new school at the University of California, Irvine, to attract Ivy League-caliber students to the first new public law school in the state in 40 years. The law school hopes to offer full scholarships to all 60 members of its inaugural class in 2009....

The Supreme Court's invalidation of the District of Columbia's handgun ban powerfully shows that the conservative rhetoric about judicial restraint is a lie. In striking down the law, Justice Antonin Scalia's majority opinion, joined by the court's four other most conservative justices, is quite activist in pursuing the conservative political agenda of protecting gun owners. If the terms "judicial activism" and "judicial restraint" have any meaning, it is that a court is activist when it is invalidating laws and overruling precedent, and restrained when deferring to popularly elected legislatures and following prior decisions. Never before had the Supreme Court found...

...The saga of controversial liberal law professor Erwin Chemerinsky's on-again, off-again deanship at the new UC Irvine law school was highly unusual in two ways. First, the pressure to enforce political orthodoxy at Chemerinsky's expense came from the right, not the left, and second, academic freedom and 1st Amendment values won a resounding victory when Chemerinsky was ultimately rehired ...The regents had invited Summers to be the keynote speaker at a dinner tonight in Sacramento. They then uninvited him last week after some UC faculty protested that "inviting a keynote speaker who has come to symbolize gender and racial prejudice...

Southern California political, media and legal circles have been in a dither over the selection of liberal law professor Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of UC Irvine's new law school, his de-selection after protests by conservative groups and his re-selection on Monday. Setting aside the demonstrable fact that California needs another public law school like it needs another drought, it has been an unseemly situation at best, raising all sorts of questions about academic freedom. Conservatives complained that Chemerinsky's initial hiring by UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake was an affront, citing his years of legal and political activism on the left....

WARDLAW, Circuit Judge: Plaintiffs Cynthia and Craig Corrie, Mahmoud Al Sho’bi, Fathiya Muhammad Sulayman Fayed, Fayez Ali Mohammed Abu Hussein, Majeda Radwan Abu Hussein, and Eida Ibrahim Suleiman Khalafallah filed this action after their family members were killed or injured when the Israeli Defense Forces (“IDF”) demolished homes in the Palestinian Territories using bulldozers manufactured by Caterpillar, Inc., a United States corporation. The IDF ordered the bulldozers directly from Caterpillar, but the United States government paid for them. The district court dismissed the action under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), finding it lacked jurisdiction because, inter alia, the political...

The constitutional scholar says university officials told him the deal was off to head the new school because he was too ‘politically controversial.’ IRVINE, Calif. -- In a showdown over academic freedom, a prominent legal scholar said Wednesday that the University of California, Irvine's chancellor had succumbed to conservative political pressure in rescinding his contract to head the university's new law school, a charge the chancellor vehemently denied. Erwin Chemerinsky, a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law, said he had signed a contract Sept. 4, only to be told Tuesday by Chancellor Michael V. Drake that he was voiding their...

Noted Duke University law professor Erwin Chemerinsky signed a contract to be the dean at the University of California-Irvine's new law school, but was dumped, he said, when the university's chancellor told him he was "too politically controversial." Chemerinsky, a celebrated constitutional law scholar, said Wednesday that Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake flew to Durham from Washington to rescind the job offer face to face. The two met Tuesday at the Sheraton hotel near the Raleigh-Durham airport. "He thought it would be a bloody fight with the Board of Regents," Chemerinsky said. The professor said he was offered the dean's position...

Valerie Plame Wilson, the woman at the center of the CIA-leak investigation, says she played no role in sending her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. “She vehemently denies that she had anything to do with suggesting Joseph Wilson do this,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, the Duke University law professor who is representing the Wilsons in their recently filed lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney, top White House adviser Karl Rove, former vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, and ten unidentified co-defendants. “She has said to me that she...

Today Hugh Hewitt had Erwin Chemerinsky on his fine radio talk show. The discussion centered around the shamful oped piece in today's LA Times where Erwin blasted the US for violating international law for G'itmo detainees, the war on Iraq, etc. I see this as more hate America talk and basically providing aid and comfort to an enemy who may very well use this article from a prominent US lawyer in it's propaganda war. I encourage everyone to voice their displeasure with Hugh in giving Mr. Chemerinsky a platform to voice his anti-American views. I for one have told Mr....