Free Republic

The United States Supreme Court likes its mystery: Cases are argued in public, briefs are available for all to read, but its real work is carried out in conferences attended by the nine justices alone. So private are those deliberations that in the rare instances when they are interrupted, it is by a knock on the door; the junior justice, by tradition, answers, is passed a note, closes the door, and then delivers the news to the brethren. It's thus a bit surprising — and refreshing — to have a sitting member of the court produce a book examining its...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has expressed a willingness to ban protesters from burning the Koran as the modern day equivalent of shouting fire in a crowded theater.The Supreme Court has ruled burning the American flag in protest is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.Breyer spoke to George Stephanopoulos on ABC's Good Morning America today:But Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer told me on "GMA" that he's not prepared to conclude that -- in the internet age -- the First Amendment condones Koran burning.“Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater,” Breyer...

I’m not sure which is more unsettling — the fact that a Supreme Court justice can get the First Amendment so wrong, or that it is so unclear that George Stephanopoulos thought to ask the question. Until now, I perhaps naïvely thought that everyone understood that the provocateurial pastor in Florida had the right to burn Korans, or any other book he legitimately owned, but that it was a really bad idea for many reasons, most of which Allahpundit argued in his excellent posts on the subject. Silly me: Last week we saw a Florida Pastor – with 30 members...

You can't burn a Koran in a crowded theater, and Supreme CourtJustice Stephen Breyer suggests that to placate foreign extremists, Koran burning might be banned everywhere else in America too. In an interview aired Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America,"Justice Breyer, who is on tour promoting his new book, averred that in the Internet age, speech traditionally protected by the First Amendment may have to be weighed against its global impact. George Stephanopoulos asked the justice about the canceled Sept. 11 Koran burning proposed by Pastor Terry Jones, and whether the fact that people riot in Afghanistan over what happens...

A Florida pastor who canceled plans for his congregation to burn Qurans on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks had the right to follow through with his intentions, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer said Wednesday. In an interview Wednesday on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” the associate justice compared the act of burning Islam’s holy book to setting the American on flag on fire when asked whether the Rev. Terry Jones had the right to carry out the controversial plan. “We protect expression that we hate,” he said. “When you have a country of 300 million different people who think...

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...

As if it weren't bad enough that the U.S. Supreme Court majority pays little heed to the U.S. Constitution, now it is becoming clear five or six members of the court are being influenced by the constitutions and courts of foreign countries. Ruth Bader Ginsburg blew the court's cover in a speech to the American Constitution Society, explaining that her colleagues are looking beyond America's borders for guidance in handling cases on issues like the death penalty and homosexual rights. In a decision earlier this summer in a Texas case in which anti-sodomy laws were overruled, the justices first referred...

It’s bad enough when judges legislate from the bench, but appealing to foreign courts for precedent to apply in our country is, in the minds of some, almost treasonous.  Yet an appeal to foreign courts – to share with a “wider civilization” – was part of the reasoning used by the United States Supreme Court in its majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas. In Lawrence, the court announced a new, fabricated constitutional right to engage in sodomy.  Its arguments were so questionable that the majority in Lawrence had to refer not just to the legal alchemy of Griswold v....

Last weekend, Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Sandra Day O'Connor appeared on ABC News' "This Week," hosted by George Stephanopoulos. Most of you may have missed that show – it has descended to its lowest rating from its high when the late, great David Brinkley was the host. Justice Breyer made the following extraordinary comment on that show: "Through commerce, through globalization, through the spread of democratic institutions, through immigration to America, it's becoming more and more one world of many different kinds of people. And how they're going to live together across the world will be the challenge, and...

In a rare appearance on a television news show, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism. Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and his colleague Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who, in a dissent in last month's Texas sodomy ruling, contended the views of foreign jurists are irrelevant under the U.S. Constitution. Breyer had held that a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that homosexuals...

LAW OF THE LAND Justice: Can Constitution make it in global age? On TV, Breyer wonders whether it will 'fit into governing documents of other nations' Posted: July 7, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com In a rare appearance on a television news show, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism. Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and his colleague Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who,...

LAW OF THE LAND Justice: Can Constitution make it in global age? On TV, Breyer wonders whether it will 'fit into governing documents of other nations' Posted: July 7, 2003 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2003 WorldNetDaily.com In a rare appearance on a television news show, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer questioned whether the U.S. Constitution, the oldest governing document in use in the world today, will continue to be relevant in an age of globalism. Speaking with ABC News' "This Week" host George Stephanopoulos and his colleague Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, Breyer took issue with Justice Antonin Scalia, who,...