This week, the president of West Texas A&M University canceled a student group’s upcoming drag show. The move was unconstitutional—and he knew it. “I will not appear to condone the diminishment of any group at the expense of impertinent gestures toward another group for any reason, even when the law of the land appears to […]
Happy birthday to James Madison, who is, pound-for-pound, the most distinguished Founding Father. A driving force behind the drafting and ratification of the Constitution, Madison shepherded the young, fractious United States from confederacy to republic. And to make explicit the new government’s commitments to personal liberty, the Virginian authored the Bill of Rights. Madison’s ideal […]
Federal law prohibits the act of encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration for private financial gain. Later this month, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, United States v. Hansen, which asks whether that law should be struck down as an unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech. The law deserves to die […]
A new report from the American Bar Association (ABA) presents more evidence that the ubiquitous use of plea bargains distorts the justice system and puts defendants at a disadvantage. Roughly 98.3 percent of federal criminal convictions result from guilty pleas, as do roughly 95 percent of state convictions. “Some jurisdictions have not had a criminal […]
Can Congress give away its power of the purse to a regulatory agency? That’s the important constitutional question the Supreme Court decided it will take on earlier this week. Regrettably, the Court can’t answer the obvious follow-up question: Why would a legislature give away its own core authority? Congress created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau […]