Last Thursday (Jun. 27) I posted a piece here titled “Poetic Justice for Justice Alito.  Maybe.”, that discussed the concerted and deeply successful effort begun in the mid-1980s by the Reagan-era appointees to the federal appellate bench and continuing unremittingly since then, to invite virulent abuse of litigants and lawyers by judges—the more overt and […]

As found on our Open Thread of June 28, 2013, jurisdebtor decided to leave a gem behind. Juris debtor can be found on his Blog J.URIS D.EBTOR, My Own Meanderings Through Economics, Law, and Policy Having been in the courts for the last decade, I find this to be a good interpretation of what one […]

U.C.-Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals was killed a couple years ago by Senate Republicans upon the pretext that Lui had trashed Alito to the Senate Judiciary Committee in testimony during Alito’s confirmation hearing.  Lui predicted that Alito as a justice would be exactly what Alito as a […]

Now the shoe is on the other foot, and it is time for the court to strike down a federal statute in order to advance a liberal policy goal rather than a conservative policy goal. Justice Scalia’s paean to the democratic process* in his dissent sounds a little hollow, coming in the wake of his votes to […]

OH. WOW.  I actually called this exactly right in my post yesterday—this being, well, this.  [Inadvertently-omitted link to court opinion inserted.  H/T Dan Crawford.]  Specifically: Roberts’ 5-4 opinion today in Shelby County, Ala. v. Holder, the Voting Rights Act case that I discussed, and predicted the outcome of, in that post yesterday. Regular AB readers […]

A longer-than-planned post on today’s Supreme Court opinion on state-college-admissions affirmative action programs.  (I’m up in Michigan’s Thumb region, sans cable and regular web service, and using my phone as a Wi Fi hotspot via the PdaNet app. I can attest that PdaNet is awesome.)  Here it is: The headline on Politico reads, “SCOTUS passes […]

Update: Link at Scotus blog http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/wednesday-round-up-187/. As prosecutors, police agencies and civil libertarians consider the ruling’s implications, Justice Scalia’s stark dissent — and the fact that President Obama’s two appointees to the court so far agreed with it — makes it worthy of scrutiny, even if he was on the losing side. His argument is […]

Scalia regularly bars video or voice recordings of his off-the-bench speeches, and in at least one fairly recent instance, the details of which I can’t recall, he employed a member of the U.S. Marshals Service to enforce his policy.  If I recall correctly, a member of his security detail confiscated a reporter’s or law student’s […]

After the tax agency was denounced in recent weeks by President Obama, lawmakers and critics for what they described as improper scrutiny of at least 100 groups seeking I.R.S. recognition, The New York Times examined more than a dozen of the organizations, most of them organized as 501(c)(4) “social welfare” groups under the tax code, […]

If you have a half-hour of free time and you’re interested, here it is.  Yes, yes, I originally said it was an hour long, but I never, ever, claimed here to be good at math.  Or at noticing how long a Web video lasts.