Below The Beltway

Whether you agree or disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. FEC, this essay by University of Chicago Law School Professor M. Todd Henderson is must reading:
[I]t is not at all clear that this case will make things worse or that it favors one political party or the other. It is not [...]

Justice John Paul Stevens, who will turn 90 next month and has been on the Supreme Court since 1975, discussed his retirement plans, sort of, in the latest issue of The New Yorker:
How long will Stevens remain on the Court? Good genes (one of his older brothers practiced law until he was ninety-one), a happy [...]

Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times printed a story about Virginia Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and the fact that she is now heading a political advocacy organization related to the tea party movement:
As Virginia Thomas tells it in her soft-spoken, Midwestern cadence, the story of her involvement in the “tea [...]

In response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, several Democrats on Capitol Hill are advocating a Constitutional Amendment:
Democrats in Congress want to amend the U.S. Constitution to say free speech does not extend to corporations in response to the Supreme Court’s decision allowing freer corporate spending in political campaigns.
On Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers, [...]

Well, this could certainly make the run-up to the 2010 Elections interesting:
Lawyers for President Obama have been working behind the scenes to prepare for the possibility of one, and maybe two Supreme Court vacancies this spring.
Court watchers believe two of the more liberal members of the court, justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, [...]

By driving a stake through the heart of McCain-Feingold:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies [...]

Americans have long looked to the Supreme Court as the last bastion of their liberties and as the one institution that stands as a check against the encroachments of an Executive Branch eager to expand its power and and a Legislative Branch intent on satisfying the whims of a grasping majority. As Robert Levy and [...]

As I noted two weeks ago, the California lawsuit seeking to overturn Proposition 8 passed it’s first hurdle when the Federal Judge hearing the case denied the Motion to Dismiss filed by proponents of the gay marriage ban.
Today’s New York Times notes, however, that the ultimate outcome of the case is by no means [...]

Justice Antonin Scalia apparently thinks that too many smart people are wasting their time in the legal profession:
[T]wo chiefs ago, Chief Justice Burger, used to complain about the low quality of counsel. I used to have just the opposite reaction. I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country [...]

The Supreme Court has declined to review a case challenging a law requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance:
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal to review a Florida law that requires public school students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance each day unless they have their parents’ written permission excusing them.
The [...]