Articles

It’s only been a few hours since the Court announced its 7-1 opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas.  The Court upheld (for the time being) diversity in education as a legitimate goal that universities could pursue, but instructed the Fifth Circuit to apply a strict level of scrutiny to the way the University of … ...

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty once said, “it means just what I choose it to mean–neither more nor less.” Congress lacks that luxury because the judiciary judges the meaning of its words. However, in a venomous New York Times article, Paul Krugman says that judges who try to rely on the plain language of Ob ...

The Supreme Court will soon decide how much control federal agencies can exercise over Alaska’s lands and waters. A California-sized chunk of the state sits within federal “conservation system units.” These conservation areas include national parks, wildlife refuges, preserves, and so on. Such areas are subject to special fede ...

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a religious liberty case that may bear on the success of school choice across the country. The case doesn’t directly involve school choice. It’s about scrap tires and playgrounds. But its outcome may determine the extent to which states can use the excuse of church-state separation to bar religi ...

Earlier today, the Office of the Solicitor General for the United States filed its opening merits brief in U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., Inc. The government continues to argue that a land owner suffers no legal consequences when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers determines it has jurisdiction (by way of a “Jurisdictional &# ...

On Monday, March 14th, I will be participating in a discussion hosted by Cato Institute entitled “Do Landowners Have a Right to Challenge Federal Regulation of Their Property? A Preview of Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes on the Eve of Oral Argument.”  Professor Steven Eagle of George Mason University School of Law and Ilya Shapir ...

President Obama has promised to nominate someone relatively soon for a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court made vacant by Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing. President Obama hopes either to weaken the Senate majority’s resolve, which is to let the American voters decide who shall fill the vacancy, or to play politics with the issue. Alas, ...

Earlier today, the Federalist Society published a close look at the legal issue the Supreme Court of the United States will consider later this month in Pacific Legal Foundation‘s Hawkes case. The piece, written by PLF principal attorney Damien Schiff and yours truly, is called U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Co., Inc.: Wetlands Juri ...

As all Liberty Blog readers should know, PLF’s Reed Hopper will argue another landmark case tomorrow in the Supreme Court, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes Company. To help explain what is at stake in the case, Forbes.com just published an op-ed that Reed and I wrote. In its simplest terms, “Hawkes Company and its … ...