Was Justice Ginsburg Wrong?
In a recent interview, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made no secret of her disdain for a certain presidential candidate: “I can’t imagine what this place would be—I can’t imagine what the country...
View ArticleThe Norms RBG Violated Don’t Matter
In a recent interview with Adam Liptak of The New York Times, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg left little doubt about her preferences in the 2016 presidential elections. She told Liptak that “I can’t...
View ArticleIt All Comes Down to the Courts
Hovering over the main debates of this election—immigration, health-care reform, race, criminal justice—is a meta-issue: the make-up of the federal courts. Rulings over the last few years leave no...
View ArticleJohn Roberts and the Shifting Politics of Race
From the department of looking on the bright side: Mother Jones reports that lower courts are finding ways to protect voting rights even in the wake of Shelby v. Holder, the Supreme Court’s recent blow...
View ArticleThe Huge Payoff For Killing Norms
Over at Pacific Standard, Seth Masket observes that Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court obstructionism has worked beautifully, and may even have helped deliver the White House to the Republicans....
View ArticleHow Bad Will Trump Be for Civil Rights?
Samuel Bagenstos’s comprehensive overview in The American Prospect is the best single article I have yet encountered on the disturbing changes that await the Civil Rights Division of the Department of...
View ArticleThe House That Ruth Built
My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg • Simon and Schuster • 2016 • 400 pages • $30 Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s first sex discrimination case came to her, improbably enough, from a man. The man who handed her...
View ArticleGerrymandering Goes to the Supreme Court
As an election that gave us a President with nearly three million fewer votes than his opponent should make clear, there are huge defects in the democratic quality of American institutions. One of the...
View ArticleNow We Know Why He Chose Gorsuch
In the wake of multiple lower court rulings preventing President Trump’s arbitrary travel bans against citizens from seven and then six countries, many liberals acted with relief at the apparent...
View ArticleLabor’s Janus-Faced Juncture
The name of the Supreme Court case that now poses an existential threat to organized labor seems fitting: Janus v. AFSCME. In ancient Rome, Janus was the god of passages and doorways, endings, and...
View ArticleScalia Was Wrong On Gun History, But That’s Not The Point
Here’s an intriguing item from The Washington Post: using text-search methods made possible by what we now call “Big Data,” a linguistics scholar claims to have demonstrated that Justice Scalia was...
View ArticleThe Right Against the Law
Five years ago, North Carolina’s Republican-dominated legislature declared war on the state’s judiciary. The courts, federal as well as state, had overturned a stream of measures passed by lawmakers...
View ArticleWhat the Kavanaugh Debacle Has Revealed
First things first: Good on Benjamin Wittes for admitting publicly that he misjudged Brett Kavanaugh. Every time a writer is willing to say “I was wrong,” the genre of opinionated political writing...
View ArticleLet’s Think About Court-Packing
Just two years ago, this would have been an extraordinarily radical essay. Its premise is that court-packing—increasing the number of seats on the Supreme Court to change its ideological makeup—is, in...
View ArticleSaving the Supreme Court
Two fundamental flaws in the Constitution’s appointment system must be fixed. First, there is no regularized system for Supreme Court appointments. Because presidents can appoint new justices only when...
View ArticleCorrupting the Judiciary
Efforts to hijack the judiciary for political ends are hardly new. We have seen them throughout American history, and especially since the 1980s—though always restrained by a deeply held appreciation...
View ArticleFiring the Inspectors General
President Trump has fired more inspectors general than any President. Several of the fired inspectors general have led investigations that were way too close to the President. These include most...
View ArticleThe Issue Is Pluralism
As the Republican majority in the Senate plows forward with President Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, conservative media commentators talk nonstop about Democrats and...
View ArticleWinning Without the Courts
For two decades, the principle of political equality and the conservative Supreme Court majority have been locked in a struggle over the foundational rules of American democracy. And the principle of...
View ArticleLife After (?) Roe
With Mississippi’s abortion ban being heard in front of the Supreme Court this term, something many expect to end in a tragic outcome for Roe v. Wade, Democracy decided to bring together some of the...
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