Federal Judges Protect and Defend Precedent
A nominee for a seat on a U.S. Court of Appeals revealed exactly why we can’t count on federal judges to “protect and defend” the Constitution. Their commitment is to ...
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Neither Necessary nor Proper
It was sixteen years ago last month that the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of Gonzales v. Raich (2005), ruled that the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 801) did not exceed ...
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How One Landmark Case Shaped the Commerce Clause
By: Bob Fiedler In some ways, John Marshall’s opinion in Gibbons v. Ogden expanded federal power using expansive definitions of various words in the Commerce Clause. But future courts ignored an important limiting ...
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Three Supreme Court Cases that Twisted the Commerce Clause
By: Funky Euphemism Despite the words that make up the commerce clause and necessary and proper clause remaining constant over the past two centuries, the Supreme Court’s interpretation of their ...
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Constitutional Confusion Opens Door to Judicial Mischief
By: Mike Maharrey There’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the constitutional structure that opens the door to all kinds of mischief. I’m talking about the misguided notion that the Constitution “gives ...
Read more.The Supreme Court’s Dereliction of Duty on Qualified Immunity
by Jay Schweikert, CATO Institute Monday morning, the Supreme Court denied all of the major cert petitions raising the question of whether qualified immunity should be reconsidered. This is, to put it ...
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The Incorporation Doctrine and the Bill of Rights
By: Mike Maharrey In a previous Constitution 101 post, I established that the Bill of Rights was not originally intended to apply to the states. But lawyers and other supporters of ...
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Originalism, the Fourth Amendment, and New Technology
By: Michael Rappaport One of the important issues for originalism is whether it can be applied to new circumstances that were not envisioned at the time of the original Constitution. ...
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Original Meaning in the the Faithless Electors Case
By: Michael D. Ramsey Last week the Tenth Circuit held in Baca v. Colorado Department of State that Colorado could not remove and replace a presidential elector who failed to vote for ...
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The Marbury v Madison Myth
By: Michael Boldin Almost everything in modern “constitutional law” is based on a myth. “A long, long time ago — 1803, if the storyteller is trying to be precise — ...
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