Articles

Reparations Roundup : September 2024

September 17, 2024 | By ANDREW QUINIO

Lawmakers across the country are proposing reparations to black Americans for slavery and America’s history of racial discrimination. Proposals have included direct cash payments, grants, formal apologies from the government, and government programs with race-based eligibility.  Because certain reparations proposals would inevitably advantag ...

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Fighting for the Constitution is a family business

September 17, 2024 | By CALEB TROTTER

 Countless families tell stories about long-ago ancestors. Some are well documented, while others have been passed down and modified from generation to generation like a years-long game of telephone. That latter category often includes stories about those who came to the New World on the Mayflower or were a Cherokee Indian princess. Most of those ...

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National Review : Supreme Court should revisit racial equity in high-school admissions

September 13, 2024 | By CHRIS KIESER

Racial balancing in competitive high school admissions is heading back to the Supreme Court. Just months after the Court declined to take up a parent group’s challenge to the admissions overhaul at then-top-ranked Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology (TJ) in Fairfax, Virginia, another set of parents is waging a similar ba ...

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PLF wins North American Liberty Award for defeating home equity theft at the Supreme Court

September 13, 2024 | By NICOLE W.C. YEATMAN

Pacific Legal Foundation’s 2023 Supreme Court victory in Tyler v. Hennepin County changed lives—and is now being recognized for advancing freedom and human progress in America.   For years, local governments across the country manipulated tax forfeiture laws to steal from vulnerable Americans—most of them ill, elderly, jobless, immigra ...

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A single mother is asking the Michigan Supreme Court for the just compensation she is owed

September 12, 2024 | By BRITTANY HUNTER

In 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court affirmed that it was unconstitutional for counties to keep more than they’re owed when collecting property taxes through the foreclosure process. But that wasn’t necessarily the end of struggle for Michiganders. For some homeowners, the struggle to recover the just compensation they are owed is still ...

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Tornado forecasting was banned in the U.S. for 60 years. Why? 

September 12, 2024 | By NICOLE W.C. YEATMAN

Here’s a bizarre piece of American trivia: From 1887 to 1950, the U.S. government banned the word “tornado” from weather forecasts. Warning the public about possible tornadoes would cause panic, officials said. It was better to avoid the word altogether.  The ban applied to all weather forecasters in the government, but there was ...

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Discourse : In SEC v. Jarkesy, the Supreme Court Restored Core 7th Amendment Protections

September 05, 2024 | By OLIVER DUNFORD

It all began in 2013, when investment adviser George Jarkesy was accused by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) of securities fraud. But instead of proving its case against Jarkesy to an independent judge and jury, SEC lawyers turned to an SEC tribunal and an SEC-employed administrative law judge to prosecute the defendant. When that R ...

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Family-owned fishing company challenges unconstitutional Fishery Management Council

September 04, 2024 | By ADAM GRIFFIN

James and Dominick Russo are fishermen who earn their living off the Florida coast. But their livelihood is in jeopardy. James and Dominick have worked in the commercial fishing industry most of their lives. James, the older brother, has more than 30 years of experience under his belt. During the pandemic, the brothers moved to … ...

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Yuval Levin’s American Covenant and the goal of the Constitution

August 30, 2024 | By MOLLY NIXON

In the first chapter of Yuval Levin’s new book, American Covenant, he describes the U.S. Constitution as “a terse patchwork of compromises.” Not a promising start, for the United States or for this reader, who has devoted a good amount of time to thinking about and debating the meaning of that patchwork.   But American … ...