We all remember when the pandemic first struck how municipal public health officials across the country echoed Dr. Anthony Fauci—if we all stay home, wear masks, and social distance for…
Case Summary Public lands should be for public use, right? According to environmentalists, that’s wrong. For many disabled Americans, including many veterans like the Trail Preservation Alliance’s Don Riggle,…
Case Summary Michael and Chantell Sackett own an undeveloped lot near Priest Lake in Bonner County, Idaho. The north and south sides of the property are bounded by roads, and…
Case Summary Emilee Carpenter is a professional photographer, based in New York, who has been photographing weddings since 2012. In 2019 she took a leap of faith and opened her…
— Coach Joseph Kennedy is a former U.S. Marine who coached football at Bremerton High School, in Bremerton, Washington, until 2015, when he was suspended from his job by the school district for defying an order to not public engage in a post-game prayer. Now, after a series of court setbacks, the U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to rule on whether Kennedy’s religious liberties were trampled when the district first forbid him from praying with his players, and then ordered him to pray in secret. At issue in this case is whether public employees can be legally prohibited from private and personal displays of religious faith on “Establishment Clause” grounds.
In the American constitutional order, Congress makes laws. The President and federal agencies are tasked with executing, enforcing and sometimes interpreting those laws, in cases where Congress used ambiguous language. But how much latitude and discretion does the executive branch have when it comes to the interpretative part of its mission, if the text of the law isn’t clear? On that question a lot depends, given the vast regulatory power the modern administrative state wields like a hammer.
Playing on popular misconceptions and fears, the State of Maryland bans what it deems “assault weapons”—a non-technical public relations term, used to demonize commonly owned and constitutionally protected firearms. A group of plaintiffs have sued Maryland’s attorney general, challenging this unconstitutional ban and seeking a full restoration of their natural right to self-defense—now they’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case.
This case raises the question of how property owners and businesses along the Missouri River should be compensated in response to government-caused flooding that destroyed crops, devalued their farmland and damaged their businesses. One Court already has ruled that they’re the victims of a government-caused taking. But Washington continues to resist paying the damaged parties just compensation for the harm that Washington did.
While it may seem obvious that scholastic achievements should be merit-based rather than race-based, that isn’t true at numerous American colleges and universities. Schools of higher education have for too long been permitted to legally discriminate against qualified student applicants in order to benefit less-qualified applicants of favored racial or ethnic groups.
Case Summary Americans have a natural, constitutionally protected right to choose the self-defense tools they deem necessary, whether that’s a firearm or some other form of weaponry. “Arms,” as in “to…