Several years ago, the FBI obtained a search warrant authorizing it to review two days' worth of Fox News reporter James Rosen's emails after demonstrating to a judge it had probable cause to believe that Rosen had committed a crime by soliciting the disclosure of classified information from a government...

We've read a lot lately about the AP "scandal." In short, on May 7, 2012, the Associated Press released a story that disclosed classified details of a CIA operation in Yemen that prevented an airliner bombing around the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In an effort...

I had the honor of having a public "conversation" yesterday with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before a large audience at the University of Chicago Law School. The topic of the event was the 40th Anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Justice Ginsburg offered many interesting observations about the women's rights movement,...

We live in a world of ever-shrinking individual privacy. More and more can be learned about us by friends and strangers alike by a quick search on the Internet. Businesses track our searches and our transactions and sell that information to others who can readily piece together a profile of...

In a speech at the University of California this week, Justice Antonin Scalia, an advocate of the doctrine of "originalism," was asked by a student how an orginialist should apply the First Amendment's guarantee of "freedom of speech" to modern forms of communication. After all, television, radio, movies, email and...

After publishing a recent HuffPost blog post on the rights of gays and lesbians, I received an email from an activist opponent of same-sex marriage and proponent of the notion that homosexuals are defective people who must be "fixed." I have had exchanges with this person in the past. I...

It is always risky to predict what the Supreme Court will do in a case based on the oral argument. Justices ask questions of the lawyers for a variety of reasons and the questions do not always reveal what the justices are actually thinking. Some questions, for example, are genuinely...

In a recent column in the Washington Post ("What comes after 'I do'?", March 15, 2013), columnist George F. Will trumpets a brief submitted by the conservative "Institute for Marriage and Public Policy" in the pending same-sex marriage cases for the proposition that the Supreme Court should be skeptical of...

The Illinois Senate has approved legislation that will legalize marriage between same-sex couples in Illinois. The Illinois House Executive Committee has recommended passage of the legislation. Governor Quinn has said that he supports that legislation and will enthusiastically sign it into law. All that remains now is for the Illinois...

Bradley Manning has offered to plead guilty to charges that he unlawfully transferred classified information to persons (in this case, WikiLeaks) unauthorized to receive it. The maximum penalty for this offense is 10 years in prison. Manning also offered to plead guilty to nine other charges. For these 10 pleas...

Later this month the Supreme Court will hear argument in two cases involving the issue of equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. A central question in these cases is whether laws denying gays and lesbians the right to marry violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. That clause...

The following statement, which UCLA law professor Adam Winkler and I crafted, was signed by more than fifty of the nation's most distinguished constitutional law professors. The statement refutes unfounded claims that the Second Amendment precludes Congress from enacting legislation to reduce gun violence in the United States. Although these...

For most of the past four decades, "liberals" have been in retreat. In many quarters, the word "liberal" has become a pejorative. Part of the problem is that liberals have failed to define themselves and to state clearly what they believe.

As a liberal, I find that appalling. In...

Forty years ago, I had the privilege of serving as a law clerk to Justice William J. Brennan, Jr. during the Supreme Court's 1972-73 Term. It was the year of Roe v. Wade, which was decided forty years ago today. In what has come to be seen as a highly...

The Thomas More Society is a national public interest law firm that "exists to restore respect in law for life, marriage, and religious liberty." It fiercely opposes reproductive choice for women and marriage for same-sex couples. It recently sent a letter to all members of the Illinois General Assembly calling...

Opponents of laws regulating the sale, manufacture and use of guns fervently invoke the Second Amendment. In their view, the Second Amendment ("a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed") forbids the...

My recent post on gun control generated more than 1,500 comments. At least 80 percent of them were from people who oppose gun control. Some were pretty scary. The rest, as a group, made five arguments that deserve a response:

First: Gun homicides in the United States have...

In 1990, 78 percent of Americans thought we needed stricter gun laws. Today, only 44 percent of Americans think so. What has caused this dramatic shift in public opinion?

It is not because more people now own guns. In 1990, 48 percent of Americans had guns in their homes. Today,...

Although the Illinois Senate's Executive Committee voted 8 to 5 today to support a bill to legalize same-sex marriage in Illinois, the Senate adjourned without voting on the measure. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Senate's failure to take a final vote came after a furious lobbying campaign by the...

With the Illinois legislature poised to consider a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, Chicago's Cardinal Francis George officially entered the political fray by issuing a letter that urges Catholics to urge their representatives to oppose the legislation. The core of George's argument was straightforward: "Civil laws that establish 'same-sex marriage'...