Free Republic

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, which will decide whether health insurance subsidies should be available nationwide or only in those 16 states that established exchanges. Several questions have recently emerged over the legitimacy of the plaintiffs’ case, including issues of jurisdiction and congressional intent, but there’s an even deeper flaw: The plaintiffs’ interpretation would render the statute unconstitutional. Several of my colleagues and I made this case in an amicus brief to the Court. If the plaintiffs’ interpretation carries the day, then Obamacare has threatened states that failed to establish exchanges with...

Dear Justice Kennedy, June is nigh, and with it will comes your ruling on the most contentious political issue of our time: marriage. I write because I am one of many children with gay parents who believe we should protect marriage. I believe you were right when, during the Proposition 8 deliberations, you said “the voice of those children [of same-sex parents] is important.” I’d like to explain why I think redefining marriage would actually serve to strip these children of their most fundamental rights. It’s very difficult to speak about this subject, because I love my mom. Most of...

The execution of the only woman on Georgia's death row has been postponed at the last minute for a second time in less than a week - because the drug used in the lethal injection she was scheduled to receive was 'cloudy'. Kelly Renee Gissendaner, 46, was due to be given an injection of pentobarbital at a prison in Jackson at 7pm on Monday in retribution for plotting the murder of her husband in 1997. But after officials observed the drug to be used in the execution had a 'cloudy' appearance, they postponed her death until a future, unspecified date...

The United States Supreme Court will, by June, plunge the nation back into the throws of culture war. At least five justices will substitute their values for those of democracy, further undermining the democratic underpinnings of our republic. By June, the nation's top court will find that gay marriage is in the constitution. They will, more likely than not, go all the way instead of deciding the states can decide for themselves. In 1973, the Supreme Court again substituted the morality of five members of the court for the nation and legalized abortion. At the time, liberal publications assumed the...

The Supreme Court on Thursday put out its dramatic decision in the Rachel Corrie case, rejecting her family's appeal of a lower court decision which had denied them civil damages for wrongful death in which Corrie died in connection with an IDF bulldozer. At the same time, the court accepted a separate appeal by the family and reversed a separate lower court decision - with the result that the lower court will need to further probe the family's claim regarding the possible misplacement of some of Corrie's remains. In the first decision, the court upheld the "combat activities exception" principle...

Linda Greenhouse, a New York Times Supreme Court reporter, stunningly suggests in a recent article that the justices need to be scolded into “reading the briefs” in a pending case. She concludes with an astonishing rhetorical flourish: Like Lucille Ball, the Court will “have a great deal of explaining to do” if it fails to rule in the manner she suggests. It takes a lot of chutzpah to admonish the Supreme Court in such fashion. If someone is going to do so, she had better make certain that her facts are correct, and that her legal arguments are unimpeachable. Unfortunately,...

When the Supreme Court rules about whether to impose same-sex “marriage” on the entire nation, the House of Representatives will remain mum on the subject. House Speaker John Boehner confirmed that the Republican-controlled body will not weigh in on either side of the constitutional issue. “I don’t expect that we’re going to weigh in on this,” Boehner said at a press conference last Thursday. “The court will make its decision and that’s why they’re there, to be the highest court in the land.” The House's decision effectively abandons the legal field to federal institutions that support the redefinition of marriage....

Link only, due to AP source.

Order at the link. Notably Alito and Roberts did not join the dissent.

In a momentous ruling this morning, Canada’s highest court unanimously ruled to open the door to a doctor helping kill someone nearing the end-of-life stage, a ruling comparable to the sweeping Morgentaler ruling 27 years ago that allowed a doctor to kill someone at the earliest pre-born stage of life. In Carter v. Canada, the Court overturned a previous law prohibiting assisted suicide, in effect reversing the previous 1993 Rodriguez decision in which it said the state’s obligation to “protect the vulnerable” outweighed the rights of the individual to self-determination. The ruling makes Canada join the ranks of Switzerland, the...

President Barack Obama once mulled whether to make Hillary Clinton a Supreme Court justice, according to his top former adviser. The Daily News reported Tuesday that former White House official David Axelrod said Obama considered offering Clinton the job after defeating her in the presidential primary six years ago. Axelrod made the claim in his new book, "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics." The 2008 primary contest was highly charged and at times bitter. Now facing the general election as the Democratic nominee, Obama needed Clinton's supporters to rally behind his candidacy. At the time, Obama was said to be...

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the likely swing vote in the U.S. Supreme Court's upcoming gay marriage decision, appeared to place a high value in how the Court will affect the children of gay parents. Some of those children are now telling Kennedy and the Court that redefining marriage to include same-sex couples is harmful for children. During oral arguments for the 2013 gay marriage case Hollingsworth vs. Perry, Kennedy asked, "there is an immediate ... what could be a legal injury, and that's the voice of these children [of same-sex parents]. There are some 40,000 children in California ... that live...

States can simply nullify unconstitutional laws and rulings, for how can they be forced to follow these federal laws and rulings if they are illegal from a constitutional point of view, in the first place? An email I received recently asked about the Exceptions clause in Article III of the United States Constitution. Here is my reply: Dear XXXXXX, First, we must establish a proper premise. Part of the problem with dealing with folks that either oppose the Constitution, or have fallen for the “case law” interpretation, is that they don’t understand the argument because they are operating from a...

In what has been described as a new front in the battle over same-sex marriage, legislators in several states under judicial orders to confer marital status on same-sex couples have introduced bills to forbid state or local officials from issuing marriage licenses to couples of the same gender. The bills would also strip the salaries of employees who issued the licenses, the New York Times reported Thursday.The bills have been introduced in the legislatures of Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Texas, with South Carolina also considering a bill that would allow officials to opt out of issuing such licenses if it...

I was too sick to grapple with the recently revealed fact that the Supreme Court is going to decide some foundational issues with respect to marriage equality this spring and summer. And maybe because I’ve spent so long worrying about a premature decision that I cannot quite believe that the Fourteenth Amendment will find one more minority to protect. The power of the language and arguments in the Windsor decision would be very hard to take back, and with 36 states now offering marriage equality, the ruling would not be another Roe (there’s already a budding national majority for equal...

Ted Cruz, an outspoken attorney whose first elected role was as a U.S. senator from Texas, is seen as a strong contender for a run for president in 2016. Although he’s only been a senator since 2012, Cruz has already ingratiated himself with the Tea Party. Here are seven highlights from his pre-politics life: 1. His father was a political prisoner of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista during Fidel Castro's revolution and nearly lost his life. "Being the son of an immigrant who came here fleeing oppression and seeking freedom, I think, is an incredible gift," Cruz has said. "It makes...

In November of 1996 First Things hosted a symposium titled “The Judicial Usurpation of Politics” in which contributors discussed the threat to American democracy posed by the Supreme Court instated imposition of abortion on America. Nothing rivals the sheer volume of innocent human beings killed by abortion and yet First Things saw fit to focus not on the babies themselves or the mothers and fathers, but on the threat to democracy and the American experiment posed by the judicial over-reach that legalized abortion.The legalization of same-sex “marriage” does not bring with it the innocent blood which cries to heaven,...

The American Family Association has called on U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from the marriage equality cases the court announced last Friday (Jan. 16), that it will be hearing appeals on, likely in April. Ginsberg and Kagan should not participate in the hearing, AFA President Tim Wildmon has declared, because they have both officiated as same-sex weddings, according to reports by the UK LGBT news site Pink News. SCOTUS announced Friday that the court will accept appeals on four marriage equality cases — from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The four cases...

I will say no to those who want to remove the moral pillars that have served our society and all societies over the millennia. Over the course of its history the Supreme Court has made some very bad decisions and the decision to declare abortion legal ranks high among them. On January 22, 1973, in Roe v. Wade the Court interpreted the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to extend a right of privacy to a woman’s decision to have an abortion prior to the third trimester of pregnancy. There have been 57.5 million abortions since 1973—42 years—when the...

I’ve long been skeptical of claims that justices in religious freedom cases — and especially devoutly Christian justices, such as Justice Antonin Scalia — are biased in favor of Christians in religious exemption cases. To be sure, justices are people, and people have biases, usually in favor of their own groups. But justices also know quite well that their opinions will affect many more cases, including cases brought by other religious groups. I’m also skeptical of trying to prove such biases simply by counting cases. Different cases involve different legal issues, and — especially when you have only a few...