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On Monday oral arguments will begin for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a case which will demand arguably the most important ruling the Supreme Court will make in a century. And the Court’s decision on the Constitutionality of ObamaCare’s individual mandate will indeed be that important, for a finding that it is Constitutional and may therefore be implemented would provide the federal government unlimited, dictatorial power over the lives and actions of the American people. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals found the individual mandate unconstitutional, ruling quite correctly that the Article I, Section 8 Commerce Clause powers...

The liberal campaign against SCOTUS conservatives By: Kenneth P. Vogel March 7, 2011 04:43 AM EST Still reeling from a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that opened the door to an explosion of political ads from corporate interests, and fearful the court could overturn President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, liberal groups have launched an aggressive – and at times personal – attack on the court’s most conservative justices. The sharp questioning of the impartiality and ethics of Justices Clarence Thomas, Antonin Scalia and to a lesser extent Samuel Alito represents the most concerted attack on a bloc of justices since the...

As the challenge to Obamacare’s constitutionality approaches the Supreme Court, the question on everyone’s mind is: How will Anthony Kennedy vote? But perhaps we should also ask: How will Antonin Scalia vote? Scalia is known as one of the Court’s most conservative justices, but a concurrence he wrote in a 2005 case should give opponents of the health-care law pause.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., raised a few eyebrows last fall when she announced plans to hold "Conservative Constitutional Seminars" for arriving members of the new GOP-controlled House. But the decision of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia to speak at the first class on Monday has raised legal hackles about his participation in what turns out to be a closed-door event in conjunction with Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus. One of the most outspoken critics is University of Minnesota law professor Richard Painter, chief White House ethics lawyer under former President George W. Bush. Painter notes that Bachmann is among...

Several House and Senate Democrats joined feminists at a press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday to push for the introduction and passage of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing women’s rights. The conference was timed to coincide with the reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, as ordered by the newly elected Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio). “Recently, Supreme Court Justice (Antonin) Scalia stated his opinion that no provision in the Constitution, or the 14th amendment, would provide full and true equality to women and give them protection against sex discrimination,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) said....

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (Photo: Stephen Masker) January 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a recent interview with California Lawyer, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia stated that abortion is not included in the U.S. Constitution. Scalia, who is opposed to the notion of an “evolving” or “living” Constitution, told interviewer Calvin Massey that by giving some of the “necessarily broad” provisions of the Constitution an “evolving meaning,” these provisions fail to do their job, which is to put in place limitations on what society can or cannot do. Even if “the current society has come to different views [than the...

Last October marked the 24th anniversary of Justice Antonin Scalia's appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court. Well known for his sharp wit as well as his originalist approach to the Constitution, Justice Scalia consistently asks more questions during oral arguments and makes more comments than any other Supreme Court justice. And according to one study, he also gets the most laughs from those who come to watch these arguments. In September Justice Scalia spoke with UC Hastings law professor Calvin Massey. Q. How would you characterize the role of the Supreme Court in American society, now that you've been a...

Anyone who thinks the vaccine case now before the Supreme Court is merely a matter of giving injured plaintiffs their day in court has misconceived the stakes for those who reap the benefits of vaccines. The U.S. Supreme Court has just heard oral arguments in the case of Bruesewitz v. Wyeth, in which the parents of a severely disabled child wish to sue the manufacturer of a childhood vaccine for causing their child’s disability. At this stage, the dispute is over a purely legal issue: the scope of federal preemption. The 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act largely removed childhood...

Justice Elena Kagan cast her first recorded vote on the Supreme Court late Tuesday, joining the liberals in dissent when the high court cleared the way for the execution of an Arizona murderer. The 5-4 ruling overturned orders by a federal judge in Phoenix and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco that had stopped the execution by lethal injection of Jeffrey Landrigan. A judge had put the execution on hold because she said she was "left to speculate" whether this drug was safe for its intended use. "There is no evidence in the record to suggest...

One wonders how Ed Whelan of the Ethics and Public Policy Center managed to get a hold of a private letter sent to President Obama by Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe advising him against nominating Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, but be that as it may, its contents are quite interesting and show just how nakedly political Tribe’s view of a justice really is and also how little he thinks of Sotomayor. In the May 2009 letter (PDF link here), Tribe advises Obama to refrain from choosing Sotomayor because “she’s not nearly as smart as she seems to think...

I’ve obtained a copy of an interesting letter that Harvard law professor Larry Tribe wrote to his protégé, President Barack Obama, in the immediate aftermath of Justice Souter’s announcement of his decision to retire from the Court. I will post a PDF of the letter shortly. [Update: Here’s the letter.] In the meantime, I’ll call attention, in this post and two or three others, to some of its highlights. The express purpose of Tribe’s letter is to urge that Obama nominate Elena Kagan to the Souter vacancy. But before making his affirmative case for Kagan, Tribe argues strongly against the...

The New York Times recently published two back-to-back articles (here and here) mocking members of the Tea Party Movement for supporting repeal of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution—the one that changed the election of US Senators from state legislatures to the popular vote system we have today. Having endorsed this idea myself on occasion, I am compelled to say that just because some crazy people endorse an idea doesn’t necessarily make the idea crazy. Following are links to some serious commentaries supporting a return to the original system of electing senators established by the Constitution.   George Mason Law...

On Thursday, Justice Antonin Scalia gave the commencement address at Langley High School, in Virginia, where his granddaughter was graduating. An excerpt:

Although one can understand Estrada’s personal desire to be magnanimous in defeat, his letter is ill-advised. From a purely tactical stand-point, the implications of what Estrada is saying are obvious: If the Democrats block nominees on ideological grounds -- as they did with Estrada -- and the Republicans rely on traditional credentials, eschewing ideology, we will wind up with a court of well-credentialed liberals.

How is the U.S. constitution meant to be read by the judges who interpret it? As it was written and ratified back in the 1780s? Or are its words and phrases meant to change along with a society’s customs, mores and viewpoints? It’s a debate that’s roiled the justices on the U.S. Supreme Court for years; a divide currently embodied in Justices Antonin Scalia and Justice Stephen Breyer (pictured). Scalia’s an unapologetic “originalist,” while Breyer, author of a book called Active Liberty, tends to push for a more expansive reading of the Great Document. On Tuesday, the duo talked about...

Otis McDonald, 76, stands before the Supreme Court, which Tuesday heard arguments in his suit to overturn Chicago's handgun ban Gun Rights: Otis McDonald, 76, an Army vet who lives in a high-crime area of Chicago, thinks the Constitution gives him the right to bear arms to protect himself and his wife as he protected his country. We think so too. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on behalf of four Chicago residents led by homeowner McDonald, the Second Amendment Foundation and the Illinois State Rifle Association to overturn Chicago's three-decade-old ban on owning handguns. In a 5-4...

Nothing—not even George W. Bush—has sent liberaldom screaming into the streets more than the Supreme Court's recent 5-4 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The Court's ruling that corporations have a free-speech right to express opinions about politicians running for office really let the furies out. President Obama's in-their-face criticism of the Supreme Court over Citizens United at his State of the Union speech got pundits on every blogger barstool chattering about the propriety of this public smackdown. That's nothing compared to how the Supremes smack each other inside their public decisions. Justice John Paul Stevens dismissed the...

Counting the majority opinion and the various partial concurrences and dissents, today’s landmark First Amendment decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission clocks in a hefty 183-pages. But one thing that jumped right out while reading the dissent (it’s also a concurrence, in parts) written by Justice John Paul Stevens and joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor, is Stevens' angry tone. He calls the idea that the First Amendment forbids distinctions between individuals and individuals organized as a corporation “a glittering generality” with no foundation in the law, and later declares, “Under the majority's...

Do you want government regulating what movies can be shown to the public? Do you want the government determining what movies can be advertised? Or what books can be sold? Well, the Obama administration actually argued for these regulations before the Supreme Court in defending campaign finance regulations. Actually, they went even further and said that such regulations were essential to limiting how much money is spent on political campaigns. Fortunately, the Supreme Court disagreed. On Thursday, in the case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court struck down a law that had been used to stop the...

Love him or hate him, Antonin Scalia has had a greater influence on the way Americans debate the law today than any other modern Supreme Court justice. Conservatives hail Scalia as the founding prophet of their true faith — the Jurisprudence of Original Understanding — and the leader of the opposition to moral relativism and judicial imperialism in the age of Obama. [...] It’s hard to write a fair-minded biography of such a polarizing figure, but that’s what Joan Biskupic has done with “American Original.” ... On the court, Scalia has shown a disdain for elites that keeps him not...

Gun Control: The Supreme Court agrees to decide if the Second Amendment applies to all of us, or just Washington, D.C. Why would the Founders put in the Bill of Rights something applying only to a federal enclave? In a 5-4 decision last year written by Justice Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court overturned a draconian District of Columbia gun ban enacted 32 years ago that barred private ownership of handguns at all. Scalia wrote that an individual's right to bear arms is supported by "the historical narrative" both before and after the Second Amendment was adopted. The court ruled that...

(Corrected) Gun Control: In a case headed for the Supreme Court, a three-judge panel rules Chicago's gun ban constitutional since the 2nd Amendment doesn't apply to states and cities. High court nominee Sonia Sotomayor concurs.Those Pennsylvania townsfolk bitterly clinging to their guns may have been premature in celebrating the decision in D.C. v. Heller that the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does indeed guarantee an individual right to keep and bear arms.

<p>A political ad that lucky New Yorkers get to see on television begins with "A million lawyers in America" and goes on to wonder about certain no-bid contracts in nearby New Jersey that will not concern us today. But every time the ad runs, I cannot help thinking about Sonia Sotomayor: A million lawyers in America and Barack Obama chooses her for the Supreme Court.</p>

The 6th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast will take place on May 8, 2009: 6th Annual National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Mass Thursday, May 7, 6:30 pm The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle 1725 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. ---- National Catholic Prayer Breakfast Friday, May 8 - 7:45 am Hilton Washington 1919 Connecticut Avenue, N.W. (Doors open at 6:45 am - Rosary at 7:15 am) Among those who already believe this event to be just some "right-wing" Catholic gathering organized by "stalwart Republican operatives" to "advance the divisive partisanship of the right and seek to hijack Catholic teaching for the...

A California attorney lobbying the U.S. Supreme Court for a review of Barack Obama's qualifications to be president confronted the chief justice yesterday with legal briefs and a WND petition bearing names of over 325,000 people asking the court to rule on whether or not the sitting president fulfills the Constitution's "natural-born citizen" clause. According to Orly Taitz, the attorney who confronted Chief Justice John Roberts at a lecture at the University of Idaho, the judge promised before the gathered crowd that he would, indeed, read and review the briefs and petition. "I addressed him in front of 800 people...

In a room filled with some of Palm Beach County's most powerful people, it took a 20-year-old political science student to throw off U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Tuesday afternoon. Student Sarah Jeck stood in front of 750 people and asked Scalia why cameras are not allowed in the U.S. Supreme Court even though the court hearings are open, transcripts are available and the court's justices are open enough to go "out on book tours." Scalia was at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts in part to do a book signing and wasn't happy at the question....

On Wednesday's Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann claimed that pro-gun groups like the NRA "are trying to increase deaths by gun," as he used his "Worst Person" segment to attack a gun rights activist who infiltrated gun control groups to spy on them: "Mary Lou Sapone infiltrated the executive boards and learned the plans of organizations trying to decrease deaths by gun in this country, and apparently reported it back to organizations like the NRA, which are trying to increase deaths by gun in this country." A month earlier, on the June 26 show, after the Supreme Court struck...

Justice Antonin Scalia: Al Gore to blame for 2000 US election mess By Toby Harnden in Washington Last Updated: 6:35PM BST 26/06/2008 The 2000 presidential election debacle was the fault of Al Gore, who should have followed Richard Nixon's 1960 example and conceded without legal action, according to the Supreme Court's leading conservative judge. The 2000 election remains a source of discontent for Democrats "Richard Nixon, when he lost to [John F.] Kennedy thought that the election had been stolen in Chicago, which was very likely true with the system at the time," Justice Antonin Scalia told The Telegraph. "But...

Warrensburg, MO (LifeNews.com) -- Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia spoke to students at the University of Central Missouri on Tuesday night and told them that abortion isn't found in the Constitution. He also indicated he would be lucky to get 60 votes in today's political climate where abortion rules how senators vote on judicial confirmations. "The reality is the Constitution doesn't address the subject at all," Scalia said of abortion. "It is one of the many subjects not in the Constitution which is therefore left to democracy." "If you want the right to an abortion, persuade your fellow citizens...

Philadelphia, PA (LifeNews.com) -- Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia attended Catholic celebratory events on Monday and gave a speech at Villanova Law School's Second Annual John F. Scarpa Conference on Law, Politics & Culture. He reconfirmed his belief that the so-called right to abortion is found nowhere in the Constitution. He said that notion is not guided by his Catholic views but by his understanding of the Constitution and his perspective as a "strict originalist" and "legal positivist." "Not everything you may care about is in the Constitution," he told the audience, according to a report in The Bulletin newspaper....

The next U.S. president could reshape the Supreme Court, where the two oldest members are liberals and volatile decisions like abortion now hinge on a single swing vote. The possible sea change has already surfaced 18 months before the November 2008 election and could develop into a major campaign issue for Democrats who want to move the court to the left and Republicans who hope to plant it firmly in the conservative camp. The U.S. high court is now evenly split between conservative and liberal justices, who have been divided by 5-4 votes on abortion rights, the death penalty and...

If Americans want to secure new constitutional rights, they should look to the legislative branch, not the Supreme Court, Justice Antonin Scalia said last week. “If you want new rights, create them by statute,” Scalia said April 27 in a speech at the University of Delaware. “If you want new constitutional rights, then you need to amend the Constitution.” Defending his “originalist” approach to interpreting what the framers of the Constitution intended, Scalia said too many Americans, from the man in the street to academics and judges, mistakenly consider it to be a document that must evolve to meet the...

The conservative ideological majority on the U.S. Supreme Court that determined the 2000 election in favor of President Bush should have grown stronger when Bush chose Justice Samuel Alito to replace the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor. Yet in carrying out its first priority, the war on terror, the White House has encountered unwelcome resistance from the court. Objections to Bush’s sweeping view of executive power have come not only from liberals and centrists, like Justice Anthony Kennedy but, more remarkably, from Justice Antonin Scalia, who may end up playing a pivotal role in future war-on-terror cases. Scalia has long been...

by George Weigel Other Articles by George WeigelContact this Author Two Catholics of Consequence 11/03/06 Two of the most influential Catholics in American public life marked important milestones in their lives and careers last month. The nation owes both men a large debt of gratitude. For the first time in a very long time, Henry Hyde’s name will not be on a ballot in this election cycle: one of the greatest Catholic legislators in US history is retiring, full of years — and not a few pains — but unbroken and unbowed. It’s hard to imagine the US House of Representatives...

WASHINGTON - There is something liberating about a lifetime appointment and a certainty in the correctness of one's ideas. Justice Antonin Scalia has both. He travels the world as a sought-after speaker, snags White House dinner invitations and packs one of the most powerful pens on Earth as a leading conservative voice on the U.S. Supreme Court. More than once, he has looked over a crowd of Washington power-brokers and observed that there is no one in the group who can help him or hurt him. Yet while Scalia's influence and presence are undisputed, there have been significant frustrations as...

Justice Antonin Scalia was the Supreme Court's most frequent traveler last year with 24 expense-paid trips that took him as far as Ireland, Italy, Turkey and Australia. Law schools and legal groups paid for most of Scalia's travel, although Italian heritage organizations, media giant Time Warner Inc., the Roman Catholic Diocese of Louisiana and the Juilliard School also covered some trips. The information was included in Scalia's financial disclosure report, filed earlier this month. The other eight justices' finances for 2005 were disclosed in June. Scalia received an extension. Scalia also is one of at least six millionaires among the...

Famously feisty Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia yesterday denied that he made an obscene gesture Sunday inside the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, accusing the Herald staff of “watching too many Sopranos episodes.” In a letter to the editor, an almost unheard-of step for a Supreme Court justice, Scalia said a reporter misinterpreted the gesture he made when she asked whether his participation in Sunday’s special Mass for lawyers might cause some people to question his impartiality in matters of church and state. “Your reporter, an up-and-coming ‘gotcha’ star named Laurel J. Sweet, asked me (o-so-sweetly) what I said to...

Chief Justice John Roberts declined to participate in the U.S. Supreme Court hearing that yesterday took up the appeal of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, who served as Osama Bin Laden's driver for five years. Roberts was forced to step aside because he had rendered an opinion on Hamdan's claims while sitting on a lower court. Roberts' recusal was regrettable because his legal thinking was spot-on in upholding President Bush's power to try Hamdan, now held at Guantanamo Bay, before a military tribunal. Roberts concluded that Congress had authorized the President to convene such tribunals and that Hamdan can be so tried...

WHEN IT HEARS ARGUMENTS IN Hamdan v. Rumsfeld this Tuesday, the Supreme Court will consider whether the Bush administration can try Guantanamo detainees in special military tribunals, or whether the detainees' cases have to be heard in federal court. In the run-up to the hearing, liberal proponents of federal judicial involvement declared their own war--on Justice Scalia's right to participate in the legal debate.It began with a Newsweek report about a speech Scalia delivered on March 8 at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. (Unfortunately, no transcript of his remarks has been published.) There, Justice Scalia allegedly told attendees that...

He's ba-a-a-ck. Not that he ever really goes away. After all, he has life tenure. This time the Hon. Antonin Scalia was calling those of us who think of the Constitution of the United States as a living document "idiots." No, this wasn't Ann Coulter doing her stand-up routine, but rather an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Welcome to civil discourse, 21st century-style. A decent respect for those who hold to a different philosophy of law, or of anything else, now seems to have gone the way of powdered wigs, dress swords and chivalry in general. This time...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia fondly remembers carrying a rifle around New York City as a boy and says outdoorsmen should attack the idea that guns are only used for crimes. An avid outdoorsmen who's hunted with Vice President Dick Cheney, Scalia spoke Saturday at the National Wild Turkey Federation's annual convention. "The attitude of people associating guns with nothing but crime, that is what has to be changed," Scalia told the audience of about 2,000. "I grew up at a time when people were not afraid of people with firearms," said Scalia, noting that as a youth in...

Justice Antonin Scalia certainly has poor judgment when it comes to vacations. Justice Scalia was apparently unchastened by the criticism of his 2004 duck-hunting excursion with Vice President Dick Cheney, one of that term's most prominent Supreme Court litigants. Last September, he skipped the swearing-in of Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. because of another ethically dubious trip, this time to the posh Ritz-Carlton at the Beaver Creek ski resort in Colorado. He was there to teach a 10-hour seminar over a couple of days for a conservative group, the Federalist Society. "Nightline" recently reported that the gig had left Justice...

Al Franken stepped out of his comfortable echo-chamber of Air America on Monday night and was given more than one lesson by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. The C-List political commentator attempted to rip off a sophomoric shot at Justice Scalia, but was quickly embarrassed, according to a report in the NY Post. Franken, apparently unaware of exactly how far he was stepping up in class, was chided "as if he were a delinquent schoolboy at Time Warner Center on Monday night.

In the great Alito-Scalito debate, everyone makes one mistake: They seem to assume that if Samuel Alito is as conservative as Antonin Scalia, that's about as conservative as a judge can be. Not so. In important ways, Samuel Alito could prove more conservative than Antonin Scalia. And the record suggests he will.Yes, Alito shares Justice Antonin Scalia's ambivalence toward judicial activism. Both men tout their own restraint in deferring to majorities that step on individual rights (including a woman's decision whether to bear a child). Both men also act aggressively to override majorities that touch states' rights like sovereign immunity...

THE ONE THING people seem to know for sure about Samuel Alito is his nickname: "Scalito." The name is meant to denote Alito's similarities to associate Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, whom the Senate confirmed, on Ronald Reagan's urging, to the Court in 1986. It's a catchy moniker, and rolls off the tongue, and may, if the media takes its cues from the press release manufacturers at the Democratic National Committee, become the catchphrase of Alito's upcoming Senate confirmation hearings.Which would be a shame. The nickname is misleading. The two men may share a vowel at the end of their...

Per Fox News...

In an interview set for broadcast on Monday, leading conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia appears to be defending Harriet Miers against critics who say she doesn't have the qualifications to sit on the High Court. "I think it's a good thing to have people from all sorts of backgrounds [on the Court]," Scalia tells CNBC's Maria Bartiromo, as the debate rages over Miers' lack of judical experience. Without mentioning the Bush nominee by name, the conservative legal icon said that the High Court needed someone who had never served as a judge to take the place of the late...

The government is privileged to choose what artwork is worthwhile without being accused of censorship as long as it is funding the art, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said Thursday. ``The First Amendment has not repealed the ancient rule of life, that he who pays the piper calls the tune,'' Scalia said at a symposium entitled ``American Society and the Arts,'' hosted by the Juilliard School. Scalia discussed and fielded questions about only the arts. He said he was not suggesting that the government not fund the arts but that if it does, just like when it runs a...

But what kind of conservative? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 25, 2005 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2005 Creators Syndicate, Inc. Will George Bush be seen historically as the George Patton – or the George McClellan of the culture wars? That question endures. For with his nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, the president consciously chose to avoid battle with the Left. As he did not want a fight, Bush named a conservative without a single scar from the culture wars and no record of having served. He chose an establishment-conservative, not a warrior-conservative. Judge Roberts is a man of high...

If the White House has seemed a bit adrift on domestic matters, my guess is that's because they know something you don't know: The entire domestic debate is about to be taken up by a battle royale over two Supreme Court nominations. Social Security may not be going anywhere, but it makes little sense to try to introduce another major initiative when in a few weeks' time we are likely to have the mother of all partisan confrontations. The likely first move is the announcement that William Rehnquist is stepping down, opening up the job of chief justice of the...