Legal Commentary

Free Plaxico Burress

Posted on December 04, 2008
Cato?s David Koppel has an interesting piece in today?s WSJ suggesting New York Giants star Plaxico Burress?s arrest for carrying a handgun into a New York nightclub violates his 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. For those of...

Third and Long for Philip Morris?

Posted on December 03, 2008
With great effort, I turned my focus off Alabama football and went up to the Supreme Court this morning for what turned out to be some pretty incredible arguments in a long-fought case involving a $79.5 million punitive damages award...

Believe

Posted on December 02, 2008
When I interviewed Dan Quayle over the summer, he started reflecting on his nomination as Vice President and how the media never gave him a break. He had been in Washington 12 years, having served in both the House and...

Ridiculous to Sublime in 60 Minutes

Posted on December 02, 2008
I know Nick Saban only gives his players 24 hours to celebrate before moving on to the next challenge, but before we start looking ahead to this Saturday?s slugfest with Florida, I have to revel just one more time in...

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Gitmo Detainees: Waiting for Obama?

Posted on November 24, 2008
It's been five months since the Supreme Court threw open the courthouse doors to hundreds of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, ruling they have a constitutional right to challenge their detention in federal court. This morning, a federal appeals court...

Mukasey "embarrassed"

Posted on November 21, 2008
Below is Attorney General Mukasey's heartfelt letter this afternoon to members of the Federalist Society. He says he is embarrassed by his collapse at the group's annual dinner, saying it detracted from the message he wanted to convey. Dear Friends,....

A Somber Mukasey, Taking on Critics

Posted on November 21, 2008
Attorney General Michael Mukasey, consistently described as a ?no-nonsense? man of integrity who brought a much-needed steady hand to a troubled Justice Department, last night delivered his most forceful statement yet on the administration?s legal policies in the War on...

Judge Orders Release of Five Terror Suspects

Posted on November 20, 2008
A federal judge has ordered the government to release five terror suspects detained at Guantanamo, saying it failed to prove the men planned to take up arms against the United States. Judge Richard Leon directed the government to "take all...

Clement Decides

Posted on November 20, 2008
It?s been the most buzzed about question in Washington legal circles all summer and fall: What law firm will land former Solicitor General Paul Clement, widely seen as one of the nation?s top Supreme Court advocates? Today, we get the...

The Greatest Rivalry of All

Posted on November 19, 2008
I was going to write about this really interesting case Orin Kerr came across the other day on whether X-Ray body scans violate the 4th Amendment. Apparently, a woman visiting her husband in a detention facility was subject to the...

Cheney, Gonzales Indicted in Texas

Posted on November 18, 2008
In the department of the Truly Bizarre, a Texas grand jury has indicted Vice President Cheney, former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, a few state court judges, a former U.S. attorney and some other folks. According to the Brownsville Herald, the...

Coffee, Skits and Complaints about the NYT

Posted on November 18, 2008
Journalists and researchers got their first look at some of the papers of William Rehnquist yesterday, when the Hoover Institution opened a small portion of the collection. The New York Times' Adam Liptak and Jonathan Glater have a nice summary...

Football, Deerhunting and Some Law

Posted on November 17, 2008
Justice Scalia is in Lubbock tonight for a talk at Texas Tech, after spending the weekend deer hunting on a nearby ranch with prominent plaintiffs lawyer Mark Lanier. Tony Mauro has the details here. Scalia, of course, is a dynamic...

Cuban: Jail, Cubs Unlikely

Posted on November 17, 2008
Mark Cuban, the maverick Dallas Mavericks owner, was hit today by the Securities and Exchange Commission with insider trading charges that could cost him millions in fines and legal fees. This could mean the final nail in his bid to...

Sonar Over Whales

Posted on November 12, 2008
In its first opinion of the term, the Supreme Court has rejected an environmental group's efforts to sharply limit Naval submarine training off the coast of California, saying national security issues strongly outweigh any alleged harm to marine mammals...

Rumors of Retirements

Posted on November 11, 2008
The conventional wisdom around Washington for the past year or so is that Barack Obama, if elected president, would nominate at least one or two justices to the Supreme Court. After all, John Paul Stevens is 88; Ruth Bader Ginsburg...

A Shortened Life, on Tape

Posted on November 10, 2008
The video of Sara Weir is deeply moving, with photographs and videos of her throughout her life, from infancy to 19. With her mother narrating and soft music playing in the background, Sara -- reserved, modest and shy -- is...

A President's Legacy: The Supreme Court

Posted on October 29, 2008
A Supreme Court nomination, as George Bush has made clear, can be a president's greatest and most lasting legacy. It took bruising battles, but Bush brought real change to the court, which he turned to the right with his successful...

More Delay for Uighurs

Posted on October 21, 2008
Seventeen former terror suspects who were recently ordered released from Guantanamo Bay and freed into the United States will instead stay imprisoned at the naval base while a federal appeals court panel considers their case. In a brief order filed...

Blame John Lewis

Posted on October 20, 2008
When John McCain was on the verge of announcing his VP pick, a couple Republican operatives suggested he would do it the day Barack Obama accepted the Democratic Party?s nomination for President. That would steal Obama?s thunder from the historic...

Just the Other Day

Posted on October 14, 2008
In the South, when you talk about something happening "the other day," you might mean it happened, oh, a decade or two ago. Time is fluid. Past is present. And no time in the region's past is as present as...

Rabies

Posted on October 10, 2008
Our friend David Brooks, writing in today's New York Times, expands on his remarks earlier this week that Sarah Palin is a "fatal cancer" for the GOP. In a typically thoughtful piece, Brooks traces the history of conservatism, which began...

Pandora's Box

Posted on October 09, 2008
For years now, the Supreme Court has been issuing a series of lofty opinions sternly reprimanding the Bush Administration for its handling of terror suspects in the wake of 9/11. These decisions, in response to sweeping assertions of executive power,...

Palin: "A Fatal Cancer" for GOP

Posted on October 08, 2008
Despite the beating conservative columnist Kathleen Parker took from the Right for her recent column skewering Sarah Palin and urging her to withdraw, another prominent conservative is donning a flak jacket and joining the anti-Palin brigade. David Brooks, the New...

"Terrorists" Among Us?

Posted on October 08, 2008
Expect a flurry of legal moves today over a federal judge?s unprecedented decision yesterday to order 17 former ?enemy combatants? at Guantanamo Bay released unsupervised into the Washington, D.C. area by Friday. Late last night, the Bush Administration asked the...

Coming to America

Posted on October 07, 2008
Delivering a sharp rebuke to the Bush Administration, federal Judge Ricardo Urbina today ordered the government to immediately release into the United States 17 former suspected ?enemy combatants? who have been imprisoned seven years at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...

They're Back

Posted on October 06, 2008
The justices returned from their summer break today, and, as always, it felt a whole lot like being back in school after a few carefree months off. You take your assigned seats, whisper hellos to your old pals (Like the...

Palin: Withdraw "for your country"

Posted on September 26, 2008
Syndicated conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who once described Sarah Palin's candidacy as a "bright light," now is calling on her to withdraw. She is the first prominent conservative to stake out that position--bringing to mind Bill Kristol's early pronouncement in...

Girltalk

Posted on September 09, 2008
After I got out of law school and was back in my old newspaper job, the Supreme Court beat opened up. It was a dream job, and I made a pitch for it to one of the paper?s top editors,...

A Voice for America?

Posted on September 04, 2008
John McCain?s campaign manager, Rick Davis, told the Washington Post this week that a ?very masculine? draft of the VP nominee?s speech had been written before McCain announced his bombshell of a pick in Sarah Palin. They obviously tossed that...

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