As the New York Times suggested last week, the fate of President Obama's Affordable Care Act in general and its mandate that Americans obtain health insurance in particular may hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy's notion of "liberty." While Solicitor General Donald Verilli posited "a profound connection" between health care and liberty, his opponent Paul Clement […]

After another bad day for the Affordable Care Act at the Supreme Court, voices across the political spectrum are already pondering life after death for health care reform. Conservative Ross Douthat and liberal James Carville agree that overturning the ACA will help President Obama get reelected. Meanwhile, statements by Mitch McConnell and Mitt Romney seemed […]

As the Supreme Court this week begins to consider the fate of the two-year old Affordable Care Act (ACA), ironies abound. For starters, while health care is worst in Republican red states, its improvement will be underwritten by blue state taxpayers. The virtually identical law in Massachusetts has been wildly successful and wildly popular. Meanwhile, […]

"Judicial activism" is in the eye of the beholder. Threatening judges is not. That explains why even Michael Mukasey and Alberto Gonzales, former Bush Attorneys General and ardent defenders of detainee torture and illicit domestic surveillance, denounced Newt Gingrich's assault on the federal bench as "dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the […]

On Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that federal judicial vacancies are reaching a "crisis point." As it turns out, when Republicans aren't turning to record-setting obstructionism to block President Obama's nominees to the federal bench, they are threatening the "umpires" of the law outright. Just weeks after the Tucson slaughter that claimed the life of […]

In one of the most condescending and paternalistic Supreme Court opinions in recent memory, Justice Anthony Kennedy in April 2007 upheld a federal late term abortion ban on the grounds that "some women come to regret their choice." 18 months later, an exhaustive study of 20 years of research concluded that there is no evidence […]

In the wake of his ruling overturning California's Prop 8 ban on same-sex marriage, one legal observer concluded Judge Vaughn Walker "is speaking to Justice Kennedy." Slate's Dahlia Lithwick went a step further, suggesting that while "Judge Vaughn R. Walker is not Anthony Kennedy," he "certainly knows how to write like him." If so, Judge […]

In December 2009, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales lamented not that President Bush had politicized the Justice Department, but that he didn't politicize it enough. But with its purge of U.S. attorneys, complicity in rubber-stamping detainee torture and blessing illegal domestic surveillance, the Bush administration's gutting of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division and the perversion […]

For years, retail giant Wal-Mart and its smiley face logo have lured American shoppers to its stores with a campaign to "rollback" prices. Now, as Kentucky GOP Senate candidate Rand Paul was just the latest to make clear this week, the Republican Party is waging a rollback campaign of its own. From health care, Social […]

With President Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan, some conservatives are lamenting the prospect of a United States Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice. But for Pat Buchanan, the corollary is that one religious group is being dangerously overrepresented on the nation's highest court. Given Buchanan's checkered past, including as it does periodic defenses of […]