Author: Joshua Thompson PLF attorney Tim Sandefur shows us this excellent cartoon form 1869. He writes: "This 1869 political cartoon by the great Thomas Nast (click to enlarge) depicts an idealized American Thanksgiving table, where all are welcome regardless of race. Note the reference to the then-new Fifteenth Amendment in the drapery ...
Author: Joshua Thompson PLF President, Rob Rivett, appeared on the Hugh Hewitt Show recently discussing PLF's fight against the government's fish-before-people regulations, which are starving farms, businesses, and communities in the San Joaquin Valley of water. Mr. Hewitt devoted his entire 3-hour program to exposing the water restr ...
Author: R. S. Radford Ever wonder why there is a Statue of Liberty on an island in New York Harbor, rather than a Statue of Democracy? Many people apparently think the two terms are synonymous, and those who don't often seem embarrassed by references to the supposedly antiquated (or politically tainted) notion of liberty. The … ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur By now, the answer to the question “revolution or restoration?” should be clear. In 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court cut a hole in the Fourteenth Amendment, taking from it the most important of its provisions, and leaving judges and lawyers to find clever alternatives to enforce the purpose of that Amendment and ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur Since the Progressive Era (roughly the 1920s), it’s been fashionable for law professors and judges to attack the legal principle called “substantive due process.” This theory is said to be at the root of all sorts of problems in our national history, everything from slavery to abortion. It may be the only ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur Reason magazine's Damon Root has an excellent article here from February explaining the importance of the McDonald case for entrepreneurs and other working people. … ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur Here's the Cato Institute's post about our McDonald brief. David Kopel has some very kind words about PLF/Cato's amicus brief on The Volokh Conspiracy. Also, Josh Blackman has posted a podcast here about the brief. … ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur Today, we at the Pacific Legal Foundation are filing this friend of the court brief in the crucial gun rights case now pending before the United States Supreme Court. The brief, which was co-signed by our friends at the Cato Institute, asks the Supreme Court to overrule the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, a decis ...
Author: Timothy Sandefur (Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5) McDonald v. Chicago is mostly being discussed as a case involving gun rights, and that’s not surprising: the case is a challenge to Chicago ordinances that essentially make it illegal to possess firearms. Last year, the Supreme Court for the first time … ...