Please enjoy the latest edition of Short Circuit, a weekly feature written by a bunch of people at the Institute for Justice. New cert petition: Midland County, Tex. hired a prosecutor to secretly moonlight as a paid law clerk for nearly two decades, helping judges decide his and his colleagues’ cases—an “utterly bonkers” due-process violation and […]
Did the Supreme Court err in its July 1 ruling in Trump v. United States that “the nature of Presidential power entitles a former President to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority”? That was the subject of this month’s Soho Forum debate. Law professor Elizabeth Price Foley […]
Since June 27, 2022 (three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade), Mississippi has prohibited nearly all abortions. According to the 2007 bill that resulted in that ban, “every human being, including those in utero, possesses a natural intrinsic right to live.” It is therefore hard to understand why Brandy Moore, a mother of […]
Among the 1,500 federal offenders whose home confinement sentences were commuted by President Joe Biden yesterday was a former judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to private juvenile detention centers. The Citizens’ Voice first reported that Biden had commuted the sentence of Michael Conahan, a former Pennsylvania judge who pleaded […]
According to a new investigation from The Marshall Project, hospitals are giving women drugs during labor and then reporting them to child welfare services when they later test positive for those same drugs. These cases are one of the more maddening side effects of an out-of-control drug war combined with strict mandatory reporting laws. “Hospital […]
How many people in Gaza have been killed by the Israel-Hamas war? For a long time, the only source of information was the Palestinian Ministry of Health. And the accuracy of their death rolls became the subject of a morbid political debate. Is it fair to call the ministry “Hamas-run“? Did they tell the truth […]
No one likes high grocery prices. One New York City mayoral candidate thinks the solution is to open city-owned and operated grocery stores. Earlier today, The New York Times reported on New York Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani’s campaign trail proposal to open one city-run supermarket in each of New York City’s five boroughs. “Everywhere I go, […]
The United States is likely to face a debt crisis within the next five years unless Congress undertakes serious fiscal reforms, says a former comptroller general who is urging lawmakers to treat the budget and deficit with the seriousness it deserves. “The federal government has grown too big, promised too much, subsidized too many, undercut […]
The Civitas Institute as the University of Texas at Austin has launched a new online journal called Civitas Outlook. The initial slate includes essays by co-blogger Jon Adler, Richard Epstein, and others. My entry is titled What is the Future of the Federalist Society? Here is an excerpt: Over the past four decades, the Federalist […]
Experiencing the violence: “This collective American experience, which is so twisted to have in the wealthiest nation in the world, all of that pain that people are experiencing is being concentrated on this event,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.) to reporters, commenting on the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, presumably at the hand […]