Articles

It's been nice to get some unanimous opinions lately. Given that we're near the end of the term, some especially vigorous disagreements are sure to arise. Discrimination is discrimination is discrimination Surprising no one, the Court unanimously held in Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services that members of "majority" groups can't be held t ...

Yesterday a federal judge rejected a joint motion to vacate a $105,000 fine paid by Pacific Legal Foundation client Townstone Financial in a settlement, even though the government admits the fine never should have been paid. Vacating the settlement would open a "Pandora's Box," the judge said, calling the government's reversal on the case "breatht ...

This month, Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, celebrates its 810th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, I recently made a pilgrimage to London's British Library to visit one of the few surviving original copies of the 1215 charter. While hordes of tourists huddled around framed scraps of handwritten Beatles lyrics and Jane Austen relics, I made ...

"To the end it may be a government of laws and not of men." This ideal comes from the part of the Massachusetts Constitution establishing the state's separation of powers between its three branches of government. The separation of powers is indispensable to the rule of law. Whether at the state or federal level, the separation of powers keeps the ...

Does adherence to the separation of powers risk nuclear war? The federal government seems to think so. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of International Trade last week struck down President Donald Trump's tariffs as unlawful in companion cases brought by small businesses and 12 states. But the litigation will continue, likely up to the U.S. Supre ...

In the new short film The SEC Disclosure Divide: The Cost of Compliance, The Federalist Society's Regulatory Transparency Project takes aim at a critical but overlooked question: Why are federal agencies making sweeping rules without Congress? The film explores how the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)—originally created to ensure tr ...

Nurse practitioners and certified nurse midwives are known as "advanced practice registered nurses" (APRNs). They're an essential category of medical professionals who work on the frontlines of patient care, especially in rural and underserved areas. But in many states, APRNs' ability to provide care is limited by collaborative practice agreements. ...

In a wide-ranging conversation—touching on tariffs, COVID-19, protectionism, and American individualism—Anastasia Boden, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, spoke with Carol Roth, entrepreneur and bestselling author of You Will Own Nothing and The War on Small Business. Here are a few highlights from the conversation. (You can scroll d ...

The Supreme Court just unanimously ruled that white, male, or other majority-group employees do not have to meet a higher legal burden to prove workplace discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The case, Ames v. Ohio Department of Youth Services, questioned the constitutionality of the "background circumstances rule," which imposes ...