United States Supreme Court

First Amendment Friday 18 - Roth V US

September 18, 2009 by johne

Happy Friday and welcome to the 18th in the Dog's First Amendment Friday series. This series is following the syllabus for the class called The First Amendment and taught at Yale Law School by Professor Jack M. Balkin. As with the Friday Constitutional series this is a layman's look at the Law, specifically the Supreme Court opinions which have shaped the boundaries of our 1st Amendment Protections. If you are interested in the previous installments you can find them at the links below:
First Amendment Friday 1 - Abrams v US
First Amendment Friday 2 - Gitlow v New York
First Amendment Friday 3 - Whitney v California
First Amendment Friday 4 - Brandenbrug V Ohio

Obama, a closer examination...

September 12, 2008 by Blue Virginia

Let's ignore for a few moments the media's focus on imagined personality and pretend outrage and actually focus on some issues; like how the next president of the United States will impact every one of us.  The next president, should he or she last four full years in office, is likely to nominate two United States Supreme Court Justices.  That is not guaranteed, but it is statistically likely as several of the current justices are quite elderly.  Of all the issues before us, real and imagined, the president if the only elected official who gets to nominate replacement justices; so for all of us, whom a president is likely to nominate is one of the most important issues we should consider while casting our votes for the office of president.

This particular election, the issue of the supreme court nomination is more important than some elections because there are two likely nominations instead of one.  In fact, given the huge advantage any incumbent has in an election, the next president is likely to serve two terms and there could be four or five nominations!  At the moment, the current court is unbalanced and leans pretty far over in support of large corporate interests over equal rights and equal pay for women (Ledbetter v.