NewsTrust - U.S. Supreme Court - Most Recent Stories: Opinion (Mainstream)

Liberals put the squeeze to Justice Roberts

Sat, 26 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By George Will - May. 26 (Opinion) - In one of his characteristic conniptions about people who frustrated him, Theodore Roosevelt, progressivism’s first president, said of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, “I could carve out of a banana a judge with more backbone than that.” TR was as mistaken about Holmes’s spine as are various progressives today about Chief Justice John Roberts’s. They are waging an embarrassingly obvious campaign, hoping he will buckle beneath the pressure of their disapproval and declare Obamacare constitutional. The crucial question is whether Congress exceeded its enumerated power to regulate interstate commerce when it mandated that individuals engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance.

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Obamacare’s contract problem

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By George Will - Mar. 24 (Opinion) - On Monday the Supreme Court begins three days of oral arguments concerning possible — actually, probable and various — constitutional infirmities in Obamacare . The justices have received many amicus briefs, one of which merits special attention because of the elegant scholarship and logic with which it addresses an issue that has not been as central to the debate as it should be. ...

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Roberts Court Could Save Health Care Law

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Robert Barnes - Mar. 18 (Opinion) - When Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. takes his usual center seat on the Supreme Court bench on March 26, he will begin presiding over an extraordinary three days of arguments that will determine the fate of President's

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The Supreme Court closes the door to justice

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Erwin Chemerinsky - Jul. 06 (Opinion) - Has the Supreme Court lost faith in the American court system? That is a strange question to ask about the justices who sit at the top of the country's judicial hierarchy. But in case after case in the just-completed term, the court, usually in 5-4 decisions with the conservatives in the majority, denied access to the courts.

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Violent video games, California and the ambiguity of freedom

Tue, 28 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The Guardian - By Keith Stuart - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - The US Supreme Court has ruled that an attempt by California to ban the sale of violent games to children was unconstitutional. We look at the factors involved and why this isn't a clear-cut victory for free speech.

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TV review: Keith Olbermann comes out swinging on Current's new ‘Countdown'

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Mary McNamara - Jun. 21 (Review) - "In the briefest of special comments ... this is a newscast of contextualization, it is to be presented with a viewpoint, that the weakest citizen of this country is more important than the strongest corporation, that the nation is losing its independence through the malfeasance of one political party and the timidity of another and that even though you and I should not have to be the last line of defense, apparently we are so we damn well better start being it."

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Crime Victims United of California: A powerful voice in state politics

Sat, 04 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - By Joshua Page - Jun. 04 (Opinion) - If policymakers continue to follow the voices of expressly punitive victims rights advocates and ignore the opinions of those who promote alternative, less punitive conceptions of justice, California will not shrink its $9-billion prison system or alleviate its correctional crisis. The status quo will prevail. Let's hope this harrowing prediction doesn't come true.

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Matthew Snyder's mom: The right to freedom of speech is absolute

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Baltimore Sun - By Julie Francis - Mar. 14 (Comment) - Five years ago, my son's father asked me to join him in bringing a lawsuit against the Westboro Baptist Church. I declined for the following reasons.

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Clarence Thomas' dangerous conceit

Sun, 06 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Los Angeles Times - By Jonathan Turley - Mar. 06 (Opinion) - The Supreme Court justice argues that criticism of him is an attack on the court itself. But a single justice doesn't define the institution.

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On Health Care, Justice Will Prevail

Tue, 08 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Laurence H. Tribe - Feb. 08 (Opinion) - Given the clear case for the health care law’s constitutionality, it’s distressing that many assume its fate will be decided by a partisan, closely divided Supreme Court.

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Wisconsin attorney general: "Health care law is dead"

Wed, 02 Feb 2011 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Greg Sargent - Feb. 02 (Opinion) - Republican state officials around the country who are hostile to the law may now seize on Judge Vinson's decision yesterday to threaten to stop implementing it -- right now.

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The Revolution Next Time?

Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By By LINDA GREENHOUSE - Dec. 17 (Opinion) - In his zeal to deliver a fatal blow to the statute, Judge Hudson seriously over-read Lopez and Morrison and just as seriously discounted Supreme Court decisions that look in the opposite direction. The government’s lawyers will undoubtedly make this argument in the forthcoming appeal, and I will leave the brief-writing to them.

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Is the Hudson ruling good news for health reform?

Mon, 13 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Washington Post - By Ezra Klein - Dec. 13 (Opinion) - District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson, a George W. Bush appointee, has, as expected, ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional. So why are health reformers so unexpectedly pleased? There are two reasons, but first, let's put this into context. Hudson's ruling is the third from a district court so far. Previously, Judge Norman Moon found the mandate constitutional, and so too did Judge George Steeh. Both Steeh and Norman were Clinton appointees, which is to say that so far, the rulings are proceeding along predictably partisan lines.

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The murky business of electioneering

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Beth Wellington - Nov. 10 (Opinion) - Beth Wellington: The tragic irony of Russ Feingold losing in Wisconsin was that the very corporate funding he'd helped outlaw brought him down

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It's not Ginni Thomas who deserves an apology

Thu, 21 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Ruth Marcus - Oct. 21 (Opinion) - As a wife, I understand where Ginni Thomas is coming from. As a reporter who covered every sordid minute of the Thomas-Hill hearings, I don't.

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Predator's ball

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Katrina vanden Heuvel - Oct. 20 (Opinion) - "Apres nous, le deluge." Surely the reactionary gang of five on the Supreme Court should have cited Louis XV in their Citizens United decision overturning precedent to open the floodgates to corporate campaign spending. For all the fixation on Tea Partyers, what is most notable about this election is the rising tide of money that is lifting many Republican candidates -- and how it ultimately contradicts the message that GOP contenders are delivering to voters.

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Mountains of money on nasty ads: How the wealthy wage class war

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Seattle Times - By E. J. Dionne - Oct. 11 (Opinion) - An election-year spending spree (facilitated by the U.S. Supreme Court) has produced a strange development. While President Obama has been working overtime to save capitalism, corporations are pouring tens of millions of dollars into attack ads aimed almost exclusively at Democrats.

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Nine Justices and Ten Commandments

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

New York Times - By Linda Greenhouse - Aug. 27 (Opinion) - Will the limit on religious displays in the public square survive a challenge in Roberts court?

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Scalia Was Right

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Wall Street Journal - By James Taranto - Aug. 05 (Opinion) - For the first time, a federal judge has held that the Constitution mandates the legal redefinition of marriage. The California Supreme Court had reached a similar conclusion in 2008, and voters responded by amending the state constitution via a ballot measure known as Proposition 8. If yesterday's ruling is eventually upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, it would mandate same-sex marriage nationwide.

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Ready to work for political change you can count on?

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Christian Science Monitor - By Tom De Luca - Jul. 27 (Opinion) - The Christian Science Monitor - Two years ago, Barack Obama electrified the nation with a promise of "change we can believe in." That was the wrong pledge.

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Profiling's enabler: High court ruling underpins Arizona immigration law

Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By Gabriel J. Chin, Kevin R. Johnson - Jul. 13 (Opinion) - Supporters and opponents of S.B. 1070 assume that racial profiling is unconstitutional, largely because many Americans believe that it ought to be. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court has approved the racial profiling permitted -- indeed encouraged -- by S.B. 1070.

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Kagan Day 3: A Substantial Farce

Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Atlantic Monthly - By Garrett Epps - Jul. 01 (Opinion) - Democrats hogged the ball and passed it back and forth, running the set-piece "John Roberts is an activist doo-doo head" play. Republican strikers appeared to be setting up plays in front of goal, but then broke off each and brought the action to a halt. Kagan at times seemed like a disappointed Charlie Brown standing in an empty playing field.

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The Supreme Court gun decision moves us toward anarchy

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By David Ignatius - Jun. 29 (Opinion) - Perhaps Chief Justice Roberts and other enthusiasts for our newly created universal right to bear arms should take a trip to Beirut or Baghdad and see how this idea works out in practice.

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Whose court is it?

Mon, 28 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Washington Post - By E.J. Dionne Jr. - Jun. 28 (Opinion) - Democratic senators are planning to put the right of citizens to challenge corporate power at the center of their critique of activist conservative judging, offering a case that has not been fully aired since the days of the great Progressive Era Justice Louis Brandeis.

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Editorial: What Elena Kagan should be asked

Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0700

Los Angeles Times - Jun. 27 (Editorial) - On Monday the Senate Judiciary Committee begins confirmation hearings for President Obama's second Supreme Court nominee, Solicitor General Elena Kagan. Expectations are low. The conventional wisdom is that, when not bloviating about their pet causes or dissecting Kagan's memos as a staffer in the Clinton administration, senators will artlessly attempt to get the nominee to say how she would rule on same-sex marriage, the constitutionality of healthcare reform and other hot-button issues. Kagan, according to this view, not only will refuse to comment on particular cases, but will avoid enlightening senators in general about her views on broad constitutional issues.

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