What is it that we Americans stand for? What is it about our nation that makes us most proud? What is it that makes other nations of the world respect and admire and emulate us? It is our unparalleled commitment to personal freedom and to the dignity of the individual....

John McCain's May 6 statement on the role of judges in our constitutional system might very well qualify as one of the most ignorant statements ever made by a presidential candidate on this most important subject.

At one point, McCain complained that sitting judges and justices systematically "abuse" the federal...

Last week, the State of California avoided a possible constitutional confrontation over its requirement that all public employees sign an oath affirming that they will "support and defend" the United States and California Constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

A mathematics teacher named Marianne Kearney-Brown, who...

Why is everyone so upset with Bill Clinton? Sure, he made a few stridently negative comments about Barack Obama. Sure, some of those comments were half-truths, or worse. But this is politics. What's the big deal? Doesn't this come with the territory?

Historically, American presidential politics have been riddled...

In 1991, when Barack Obama was a third-year student at the Harvard Law School, I was serving as Dean of the University of Chicago Law School. I had heard through the grapevine that there was an extraordinarily talented African-American student at Harvard who was president of the Harvard Law Review...

Mitt Romney's recent reflections on the role of religion in American politics implicitly called to mind a disturbingly distorted version of history that has become part of the conventional wisdom of American politics in recent years.

That version of history suggests that the Founders intended to create a "Christian Nation,"...

In an op-ed in the New York Times on November 5, ("Uncle Sam on the Line"), former Attorney General John Ashcroft offers a seemingly reasonable case for Congress to grant immunity to the major telecommunications carriers accused of cooperating in allegedly unlawful government surveillance programs. In short, Ashcroft argues...

In previous posts in this "Supreme Imbalance" series, I examined and rejected three "conservative" approaches to constitutional law - judicial passivism, originalism, and conservative activism.

This brings me to the fourth approach I have discussed, which has variously been called "liberalism," or "judicial activism," or "not strict constructionism." In...

In earlier posts in this "Supreme Imbalance" series, I identified four approaches to constitutional interpretation - judicial passivism, originalism, conservative activism, and liberalism. In my last post, I considered and rejected one of those approaches - judicial passivism. In this post, I will evaluate (and reject) originalism and conservative activism.

In three prior "Supreme Imbalance" posts, I identified four distinct approaches to constitutional interpretation -- judicial passivism, originalism, conservative activism, and liberalism. I will next assess the relative wisdom of each of these approaches, beginning in this post with judicial passivism.

Judicial passivism: the approach that says courts should...

In an earlier post ("Supreme Imbalance: Of Liberals and Conservatives"), I argued that there are four types of Justices: liberals, passivists, originalists, and conservative activists. In this piece, I will illustrate more clearly what I mean by "conservative activism."

A good example is the approach adopted by Justices Rehnquist,...

In an earlier post ("Supreme Imbalance"), I explained that we currently have an extraordinarily "conservative" Supreme Court. In this post, I will explain what I mean by "liberal" and "conservative" in the context of the current Court.

When people think of a "liberal" Justice, they are usually thinking of...

We are now several weeks into the Supreme Court's 2007 Term. We should keep a watchful eye on the Court. With Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito now firmly ensconsed, we might be on the verge of a significant paradigm-shift within the Court. If their performance last Term is any...

Jack Goldsmith's The Terror Presidency is one of the most interesting and most insightful books yet to come out of the Bush White House.

In October 2003, President Bush appointed Goldsmith, a self-described conservative who proudly proclaims that he is not a civil libertarian, head of the Justice Department's Office...

In a recent post, ("Ahmadinejad and Columbia University," September 26, 2007) I argued that Columbia University did nothing "wrong" in inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak. To the contrary, its invitation to this allegedly "cruel and petty dictator" was well within Columbia's fundamental mission as a university, which is not to...

Why all the fuss about Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech at Columbia University? Critics of Columbia's decision to invite Mr. Ahmadinejad to speak maintain that, because he is a "cruel and petty dictator," in the words of Columbia President Lee Bollinger, Columbia should not have invited him to speak. In...

"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." Alberto Gonzales's sorry tenure in the Bush administration would seem to give credence to Shakespeare's oft-cited incitement against the legal profession.

The primary responsibility of the attorney general is to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States in...

On May 3, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007. The Senate will take up a companion bill, known as the Matthew Shepard Act, when it returns from its summer recess. If enacted, this law would authorize the Justice...

On August 5, President George W. Bush signed into law legislation that amended the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA). This new legislation authorises the electronic surveillance of international telephone conversations and e-mails, even if one of the participants is an American citizen on American soil, as long as the...

Last November, after my daughter Mollie informed me that she and Andrea had gotten engaged, I was moved to post an entry on this site ("Marriage: Scripture v. Morality (November 14, 2006). "Mollie and Andrea," I wrote "are deeply committed to one another. They want to spend their lives together....