The Equal Rights Amendments and Its Possible Meanings
In the 1970s, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment passed both houses of Congress with the requisite two thirds supermajority and then went to the states for ratification. The proposed Amendment then...
View ArticleImplementing Obergefell: Who Decides the Scope of a Newly Minted Right?
The Supreme Court’s fractured decision in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) required states to recognize same-sex marriage. Obergefell came less than 30 years after Bowers v. Hardwick,[1] in which the court...
View ArticleThe Expressive Society and Masterpiece Cakeshop
Until my own wedding five years ago, I had never recognized how many modern craftsmen and craftswomen considered themselves artistes. Our wedding photographer labored over angles, like a film...
View ArticleConstitutional Federalism v. National Federalism
On Thursday I spoke at a panel at the Federalist Society’s National Convention entitled: Is Everyone for Federalism Now? The title is a backhanded tribute to the President. Finally, he is bringing us...
View ArticleIts Momentousness Is Baked in the Cake
Such is the state of American law and of American society that the decision of a single Colorado baker not to make a cake for a customer because of his religious objection to what the cake was for will...
View ArticleWhat the Abortion Debate Hath Wrought
The religious Right’s quiet decline is one of the more interesting political developments of the last decade. One struggles to believe that, as recently as 2004, the movement was deemed a kingmaker in...
View ArticleElite Constraints on Democracy Encourage Populism
Over the weekend the New York Times published another in its stream of op-eds about how democracy is endangered by President Trump in particular and populism in general. I am not a great fan of either...
View ArticleExplaining the New Illiberal Liberalism
A new form of illiberal liberalism first appeared in Europe. In 2004 the President of the EU Commission proposed a distinguished Italian academic, Rocco Buttiglione, as Justice Minister. But his...
View ArticleIf the Supreme Court Is Simply Partisan, Eliminate Judical Review
Journalists who are not lawyers intone about the partisanship of the Supreme Court at their peril. They simply presume the justices are politicians and don’t make any attempt to evaluate their...
View ArticleWedding Cake Wars Take an Interesting UK Turn
Two weeks ago, the UK Supreme Court issued an important ruling in a controversy American church-state lawyers will find familiar. In Lee v. Ashers Baking Company, the court ruled that a Belfast...
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