Supreme Court

From the Huffington Post:

"I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "They have done more to undermine our democracy with their Citizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They've opened the floodgates, and personally, I'm investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn't be a judicial activist, and he wouldn't overturn precedents."

Oral arguments will be heard today by the Supreme Court in Snyder v. Phelps. While I do not agree with the actions of Fred Phelps and Westboro Baptist Church, I believe a ruling in favor of the Snyder family would push us even farther and faster down a slippery slope toward extreme limits on our freedom of speech as protected by the First Amendment.

You probably know who Westboro Baptist Church is. They are the group that protests at many military funerals and are best known for their "God Hates Fags" signs. They also recently protested Comic-Con, which resulted in some pretty hilarious counter protests by conference attendees (video included below for your minute of laughter).

Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court earlier today according to the New York Times.

Of course, the Republicans are still griping about her lack of experience, even though they embraced the same lack of experience in Bush II's 2005 appointee Harriet Miers.

This appointment by Barack Obama won't really change the complexion of the Supreme Court. A silver lining for conservatives is that Justice Anthony Kennedy will be in control of who writes the more liberal majority opinions.

(I apologize for previously referring to the Privileges OR Immunities clause as "Privileges AND Immunities". I went to public-k skool. You'll see why I apologize later.)

Prior to the introduction of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights applied only to the Federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment brought about the idea of "incorporation" of the Bill of Rights against the States.

Purists, that is those who believe that the Fourteenth Amendment (and others) is an absurdity, argue that the Fourteenth Amendment itself is against the idea that the founding fathers had for our Constitution.

According to the McCarville Report, the City of Chicago's new gun ban is in defiance of the recent rulings in McDonald and Heller.

It permits people to have guns inside their homes but forbids them from taking their firearms outside, even onto the porch, into the yard or the garage.

It also calls for prospective gun owners to take a class and receive firearm training. Chicago residents must leave the city to buy guns because the ordinance prohibits gun sales in the city.

I have not read the ordinance, so I may change my position later.  But if these paragraphs from the post are true, then it does not necessarily defy the Supreme Court.

With the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens from the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy will be moving up in seniority  This means that the Justice who is usually the deciding factor in determining which way the Court goes in a 5-4 decision will get to choose more often who writes the opinion of the Court.

Considering that Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia are nearly always on the conservative side of a decision on an ideologically-driven case, that leaves Justice Kennedy as the likely senior Justice when such a decision swings 5-4 for the liberal wing of the Court.  There seems to be an unwritten rule that the senior Justice in the majority chooses who writes the opinion, so this means that the Court's most liberal Justices may not be writing as many opinions as some would expect (or like) them to.

In what is being hailed by many gun owners as a major victory, the Supreme Court ruled yesterday in McDonald v. Chicago that the Second Amendment applies to the state and local governments via the Fourteenth Amendment.  However, four of the Justices concurred that incorporation should be done via the Due Process Clause, while Justice Clarence Thomas thought it should be done via the Privileges or Immunities Clause.

The Privileges or Immunities Clause provides that "No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

It seems that Justice Sonia Sotomayor has quickly stepped away from the position she held during her confirmation hearing on the topic of the Supreme Court looking to foreign law for precedent.

Chuck Schumer asked, "What do you believe is the appropriate role of any foreign law in the U.S. courts?"  Sotomayor responded, "American law does not permit the use of foreign law or international law to interpret the Constitution" and "Foreign law cannot be used as a holding or precedent or to bind or to influence the outcome of a legal conclusion interpreting the Constitution" and "I will not use foreign law to interpret the Constitution."

Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a decision in United States v. Comstock that has the potential to be a precedent for an overly expanded view of the Necessary and Proper Clause. Comstock is about civilly committing sex offenders after their sentence for their crimes is served. In this decision, the Court determined that it is within the Necessary and Proper Clause that forcing sex offenders to basically serve more time than sentenced for their crimes is necessary.

It is cases like these that are sometimes difficult to predict. You have to wonder ahead of time if the Justices will take an objective point of view and rule only on the Constitutionality of a given law, or will they insert their subjective emotions and rule based on emotion and perception.

Isn't it funny how politicians change their tune depending on the circumstances?  The latest example comes from the Republican Party.

In 2005, Bush II nominated Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court.  At that time, many Republicans expressed how refreshing it would be to have someone with no judicial experience on the Court.

"One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers' qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court," Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said in 2005. "Because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives or academicians."

Now, Obama has nominated Elena Kagan.

"Ms. Kagan is ... a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience," Cornyn said Monday. "Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."