Judicial Issues

Goodwin Liu, the controversial Berkeley law professor nominated for a spot on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, went before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday for the second time to explain his judicial philosophy and constitutional views.  Read more

As you probably already know, there are plenty of federal lawsuits out there challenging various aspects of the new federal health care law. Some judges have rendered decisions favorable to the law, and a couple judges have ruled against it. The most recent news centered on the federal lawsuit in Florida where Judge Vinson declared the entire law unconstitutional.  Read more

The editorial board of the New York Times can be relied on to advance outlandish claims against conservatives on most days, and they’ve risen to the occasion once again with their latest criticism of the recent judicial opinion by Judge Roger Vinson in the health care lawsuit brought by 26 states.  Read more

By now everyone’s read or heard about the grisly discovery in Philadelphia of the “house of horrors” run by abortionist Kermit Gosnell. So far 8 murder charges are pending. What has shocked many people is the news that apparently nobody has been inspecting abortion clinics in Pennsylvania for a very long time. According to the grand jury report:  Read more

The abortion-subsidizing health-care reform law known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law earlier this year by President Obama, suffered its first major setback this week via a federal district court decision involving a suit brought by the Commonwealth of Virginia. Judge Henry Hudson found the “individual mandate” provision of the health-care law unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause (Art. I, Sec. 8, clause 3). For more explanation on the “individual mandate” see here and here. The Virginia decision can be found here.  Read more

Several Prop 8 case watchers have taken note that ultra-liberal 9th Circuit Judge Stephen Reinhardt has been randomly selected as one of 3 judges to hear the Prop 8 oral arguments next week. See here, here and here. I’ve also chatted with Stuart Shepard about Reinhardt on the Citizenlink Report. So lots of people have accused the 1980 Carter appointee of being a liberal’s liberal. And his record on the court speaks for itself. But what does Reinhardt think about his record and his particular brand of judicial philosophy?  Read more

Good news: Hate crimes went down in 2009. Better news: It’s the lowest number of hate crimes since the FBI began reporting them.  Ironic news: In the same year that we now know was the lowest year on record for hate crimes, Congress passed the speech-chilling, religious-freedom-killing Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act of 2009.  Read more

Federalism – that constitutional balance between the states’ sphere of authority and the federal government’s – seems to have gained a new status of late as a discussion item, as the Tea Party began talking about the necessity to repeal the 17th Amendment, election ads condemned conservatives for endorsing the idea, and Washington took over the nation’s health care system using the Commerce Clause as a club.  Read more

In 2009 the Iowa Supreme Court discovered the right to same-sex marriage in the state constitution and imposed it upon the people of that state by a vote of 7-0 in the case of Varnum v. Brien.  Read more

In Judge Walker’s Prop 8 opinion, as in most arguments in support of same-sex marriage, the 1967 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia (striking down Virginia’s antimiscegenation law) is raised. It’s usually cited as an example of an unconstitutional “restriction” on marriage similar to Prop 8′s ban on anything but one man, one woman marriage. When the argument is all boiled down to its basics, same-sex marriage proponents claim their attempt to re-define marriage is akin to the civil rights struggle of American blacks. This attempt to claim kinship with the civil rights movement is overwhelmingly rejected by most African-Americans.  Read more