Free Republic

Should the U.S. Supreme Court reconsider the famous 'Miranda' rights? One law professor at the University of Utah S.J. Quinney College of Law, Paul Cassell, made a case for remaking what we know today as the 'Miranda' rights at a Heritage Foundation debate. Cassell noted, "Whenever we talk about the Warren Court decisions, the sense is often the world didn't exist until the Warren Court came along." For the audience, he reminded them that before the court case and decision, confessions given to law enforcement were admissible in court. He gave background information on the Miranda v. Arizona case, where...

Our nation has become inured to usurpations from scotus. What is worse, long after the detrimental effects of its usurpations become clear, it is practically impossible to reverse the rot or even fire the judges. Among its worst decisions is one from fifty years ago that today’s social justice warriors just love. Alabama plaintiffs in Reynolds v. Sims (1964) sought 14th Amendment relief from state legislative districts with unequal populations. Scotus: “We hold that, as a basic constitutional standard, the Equal Protection Clause requires that the seats in both houses of a bicameral state legislature must be apportioned on a...

Real America is understandably abuzz over the Phil Robertson Controversy. Robertson, the patriarch of the Arts and Entertainment Network series "Duck Dynasty," has been accused of every possible crime against humanity ever since word of his interview with GQ magazine, containing his blunt assessment of homosexuality as sin, became known to the public. According to the homosexual advocacy, along with their parakeets among the media elite, Robertson was expressing "hate and intolerance" (their standard characterization of any disagreement with their lifestyle choices). Furthermore, in a clear expression of their real regard for "tolerance," they insist that he and his kind...

Supreme Court Steps Closer to Repeal of Evidence Ruling By ADAM LIPTAK Published: January 30, 2009 The Reagan administration’s attacks on the exclusionary rule — a barrage of speeches, opinion articles, litigation and proposed legislation — never gained much traction. But now that young lawyer, John G. Roberts Jr., is chief justice of the United States. This month, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority in Herring v. United States, a 5-to-4 decision, took a big step toward the goal he had discussed a quarter-century before. Taking aim at one of the towering legacies of the Warren Court, its landmark...

"Impeach Earl Warren" was a slogan for billboards, bumper stickers and even buttons some 50 years ago. It was a battle cry of a previous generation of conservative activists. The ruckus was all about the Chief Justice of the United States and his controversial court. A court that increased its own power and the power of the federal government in general, moving the nation to the left. To the left through banning of prayer in the Engel vs. Vitale case or through giving criminals "rights" in the Miranda vs. Arizona case. (I still remember seeing Jack Webb whipping out his...

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (Public Law 89-10) outlawed the requirement that would-be voters in the United States take literacy tests to qualify to register to vote, and it provided for federal registration of voters -- instead of state or local voter registration which had often been denied to minority and poor voters -- in areas that had less than 50% of eligible voters registered. The act also provided for DOJ oversight to registration, and the Department's approval for any change in voting law in districts whose populations were at least 5% African-American. It was signed into law by...

Alito Prefers Scalpel to Sledgehammer By JESS BRAVIN November 16, 2005; Page A4 Judge Samuel Alito may agree on many issues with conservative Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But President Bush's high-court nominee often has taken a different path toward similar legal conclusions, one that is more subtle and less dismissive of precedent. The administration hopes that tenor may ease his path to Senate confirmation, and, if confirmed, make him more effective in moving the law toward the right. The approach was evident in a 1975 article Judge Alito, fresh out of law school, wrote about then-recent...