Talk about unfortunate timing. Just as conservatives in Congress shamelessly announced their latest "drill everywhere" energy plan on the steps of the Capitol yesterday, a major oil spill closed down part of the Mississippi River. The dissonance was probably easier because they weren't present in a...

The Obama campaign spent the last several weeks playing defense on the Supreme Court, siding with the Court's conservatives on gun rights and the availability of the death penalty for child rapists. While these positions raised eyebrows in some progressive circles, they were both legally defensible and politically smart.

Today, at a time when gas prices and oil company profits are record highs, the U.S. Supreme Court has taken $2 billion from 32,000 Americans who lost their livelihood in the worst oil spill in U.S history... and given it back to Exxon.

The Court's reduction of punitive damages...

Conventional wisdom posits that the Supreme Court's conservatives are originalists, who find conclusive arguments about constitutional history, while the Court's more liberal members are living constitutionalists, who discount history in favor of modern interpretations of our founding document.

These caricatures are getting less accurate every day, as is on vivid...

By Doug Kendall and Elizabeth Wydra

Conservatives love to decry result-oriented judging--except when they don't like the results compelled by the law.

In reacting to the Supreme Court's decision yesterday in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that Guantanamo detainees enjoy the protections of habeas corpus, President Bush responded that...

If the proper role of the judiciary is going to be one of "the defining issues of this presidential election," as John McCain asserted today, he should try to develop a coherent position on the topic.

At his speech in North Carolina, McCain expressed his opposition to judges who issue...

As Barack Obama tries to heal this country's racial wounds, Jeremiah Wright seems intent to pick off the scab.

This would not be so harmful to Obama if he didn't also have what lawyers like to call an "agency" problem. That's the upshot of Obama's decision to disassociate himself from...

Could Alabama bring back the whipping post or brand the skin of a thief with a scarlet T, and not run afoul of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment? Such a proposition may seem outlandish, but it is what opinions signed last week by Justices Antonin Scalia...

Read more reactions from Huffington Post bloggers to ABC's Pennsylvania Democratic debate

Of the many important topics that got left on the cutting room floor last night as Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos played gotcha, perhaps the most surprising victim was the Constitution itself.

After all, the debate...

A close look at John McCain's Senate voting record on judicial confirmations makes it painfully clear that progressives need to ignore the rantings of the Ann Coulter crowd and believe John McCain when he says he will listen to Sam Brownback and appoint judges like Samuel Alito and Antonin...

Anyone who thinks the battle for the Democratic nomination isn't heading for a train wreck hasn't looked closely at the results of Super Tuesday.

Paul Kane from the Washington Post has done the math:

There are 3,253 pledged delegates, those doled out based on actual voting in...

Democrats have been buoyed this election season with what's been dubbed the "intensity gap." Democrats are happy with their candidate field, united in their dislike of Bush Administration policies, and secure in the general direction they want to take the country (as illustrated in the difficulty Obama and Clinton have...

With John Edwards out of the race, Democratic voters must squarely confront a choice this election season every bit as stark as that facing millions of Americans each year as they replace their outdated computers: Mac or PC.

We have all seen the ads, we know the right thing to...

In an op-ed last week in Slate, I chronicled how the text of the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court precedent render "patently unconstitutional" a ploy by California Republicans to use a ballot initiative to change the method of appointing the state's 55 electors. The case is strong, and I...