Supreme Court
The U.S. Senate recently approved Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan 63-37.
President Barack Obama selected Kagan to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, and she became the fourth female justice in the court's history.
There was a time when the phrase getting “the third degree” was more than a metaphor. A time when a bad cop knew how to use a length of good rubber hose. A time when rogue detectives opened the doors to a confession by hanging a suspect over one—his hands cuffed behind him. That time officially ended forty-four years ago, in 1966.
I’ve written before about the U.S. Supreme Court delaying release of audiotapes of oral arguments it heard involving “salty” language.
Syndicated columnist Ruth Marcus writes the court deliberately prolongs posting those recordings. And she believes that should change.
The Supreme Court of the United States has decided that, practice and precedent to the contrary, the First Amendment gives corporations and unions the power to spend as much of their general treasuries as they care to influence candidate elections—just as long as always they do it independently of the candidates themselves. The conclusion may be good or bad, but it had little to do with the cause before it, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.
The confirmation of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor came with few surprises.
Everyone anticipated questions from Republicans about public statements Sotomayor made about her life influences, comments some interpreted to mean she could not rule on cases without bias.
The job description for U.S. Supreme Court justice does not include the ability to predict the future. Federal appeals court judges must rule on constitutionality, not probability.
But through the years, the “likelihood” of something occurring based on a law or an action under review by the court seems to have crept its way into rulings.
That may have merit, and it may not.
Depending upon your interpretation of the Second Amendment the United States Supreme Court is about to make America a more dangerous, or a safer, place.
Before the court are twenty-nine words and three commas: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” How you diagram the sentence determines the amendment’s meaning.
