Jerry Brown and the future of California’s highest court California’s Supreme Court was once the nation’s most respected and influential state judicial body. Its opinions were collected in textbooks and pored over in law schools from coast to coast. That iconic status began to erode in the …

The Golden State is looking increasingly leaden. Beginning in 1990, the Manhattan Institute’s estimable quarterly City Journalhelped restore safety and order to Dinkins-era New York. Many had given up on the Big Apple—recall its hopeless depiction in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities …

A former California chief justice’s memoir is both mean-spirited and self-serving. The Supreme Court of California has had some towering chief justices in its history: Stephen J. Field (1859–63) went on to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court for 34 years; Phil S. Gibson (1940–64) was a pioneer …

The liberal appellate court wisely overrules a lower court’s decision to boot the Boy Scouts from public land. The San Diego-Imperial Council of the Boy Scouts of America got an early (and unexpected) Christmas present from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Dec. 20. It came in the form …

As America battles over cultural issues, the Boy Scouts find themselves in the crossfire of the 2004 election season. In a number of communities where intolerant “progressives” hold sway, the Scouts are under siege because they won’t drop their commitment to God, country and traditional mor…