Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously remarked that “hard cases make bad law,” but sometimes easy cases also produce bad decisions. Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) is a perfect example. In his recent book, The Grasping Hand (2015), George Mason University law professor Ilya S…
Month: December 2015
“Public Use” Means Public Use
“Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” U.S. Constitution, Amendment V Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coined many pithy aphorisms, including the frequently-cited cliché that “hard cases make bad law.” Sometimes this may be true, but in reality …
Judicial Election Hijinks in Texas
For Place 5, will voters choose the flashy, untested show horse, or the reliable workhorse? All judges in Texas are selected by the voters, in partisan elections. I have reported previously (here and here) about the contest for Place 3 on the Texas Supreme Court, between incumbent Justice Debra L…
Texas Exes Apologizes for Smearing Justice Scalia
As I recounted in The American Spectator, and here, the University of Texas alumni organization (of which I am a Life Member) denounced Justice Scalia for a question he asked during the December 9 oral argument in Fisher v. UT, irresponsibly calling his remark “racist and offensive.” I prompt…
Silly Season at the University of Texas Over Scalia Comment
As everyone now knows, during the December 9 oral argument in Fisher v. University of Texas, Justice Scalia asked counsel for UT a question predicated on the “mismatch” theory cited in one of the briefs, which some partisan observers quickly (but erroneously) branded a “racist” comment. O…
The Left’s Unremitting War on the Truth
In the secular religion that passes as liberal orthodoxy, the need for affirmative action is a fundamental tenet. Accordingly, questioning the wisdom (or, even worse, the efficacy) of racial preferences in higher education is heresy — and you know what happens to heretics. Literally burning peo…
Race Discrimination in College Admissions Should Be Forbidden, Once and for All
Since Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court has viewed itself as the enlightened molder of social consensus, leading the recalcitrant political branches to reach progressive outcomes demanded by social justice. Sometimes (as with desegregation) the Court manages to get in fr…