In a recent post, I briefly described the election contest now underway for the Texas Supreme Court seat currently held by incumbent Justice Debra Lehrmann, who is being challenged in the Republican primary by First Court of Appeals Justice Michael Massengale, who has collected a number of impres…
Month: November 2015
Millennial Country Music Bodes Ill for Civic Virtue
As John McGinnis explained in his recent series of posts regarding the Constitution’s design for creating civic virtue (here, here, and here), a free society depends on a responsible citizenry, strong families, and thriving civic associations that foster social cohesion. According to McGinnis,…
The Myth That ‘Diversity’ Improves Higher Education Should Finally Be Laid to Rest
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), Justice Lewis F. Powell introduced into constitutional law the well-intentioned canard that race-based affirmative action is permissible in higher education — despite race being a “suspect classification” under the Eq…
Larry Tribe’s (Belated) Mea Culpa
Prompted by Vice President Joe Biden’s recent announcement that he would not be a candidate for president in 2016, I was reminded of an episode from the past, when Biden chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987. Ronald Reagan was in the White House; Robert Bork had not yet been nominated …
Larry Tribe’s (Belated) Mea Culpa
Seeing the star of Vice President Biden finally begin to fade with his decision to not seek the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination reminded me of the rather sad spectacle that occurred during his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1987. When my friend, the late Bernard H.…
Anatomy of a Judicial Election: A Report from Texas
I have written elsewhere (here, here, and here) about the importance of sound state courts and the deleterious consequences when judges depart from the rule of law to obtain desired results. I practiced law in California for 30 years, navigating the often-perilous straits of judicial decisions is…
Doubling Down on Race at the University of Texas
I have previously written about the saga of Abigail Fisher’s challenge to the University of Texas at Austin’s race-conscious “holistic” admissions process, here and here. In a nutshell, after the Fifth Circuit banned UT from using race as a factor in admission decisions in the 1996 Hopwoo…
Lawless: The Obama Administration’s Unprecedented Assault on the Constitution and the Rule of Law
Many books have been written about the abuses of the Obama administration, and many remain to be written, but David Bernstein’s Lawless is just out, and available now on Amazon. It is an excellent summary, and has a terrific foreword by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. I review Lawless in a blog post…
Unconstitutional at Any Speed: Assessing the Legacy of Obama
The burgeoning literature on the Obama administration, one of the most lawless in U.S. history, includes Michelle Malkin’s Culture of Corruption (2009), Tom Fitton’s The Corruption Chronicles (2012), Gene Healy’s False Idol (2012), John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky’s Obama’s Enforcer: Er…