In 200-plus years of interpreting the free speech clause of the First Amendment, the courts have narrowed and expanded its scope. The Supreme Court employed a particularly narrow approach during much of the last century, through two world wars and then the Red Scare...
The Fourth Amendment protects all persons from warrantless government searches and seizures of their persons, houses, papers and effects. It requires that warrants be supported by probable cause of crime and specifically describe the place to be searched and the...
In a famous Supreme Court one-liner, reminding the legal community of the finality of the court’s rulings, the late Justice William J. Brennan Jr. is reputed to have said that the Constitution means whatever any five of us say it means. This reflects the basic math...
The makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. ... They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be...
Is personal freedom a reality or a myth? Does the government execute the will of the governed or the will of those who finance its officials? Does the Bill of Rights restrain the government? Are the levers of government power pulled by those the governed have elected...
“That God, which ever lives and loves,One God, one law, one element,And one far-off divine eventTo which the whole creation moves.” -- Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) When American colonists were oppressed by British monarchs, the word most frequently uttered in...
War is the most horrific series of events upon which any government can engage. It is systematic, industrialized, indiscriminate killing. It kills innocent adults and little girls. It often ruins the post-war lives of the killers. It is young men violently fighting...
Last week, the chair of the Federal Communications Commission threatened to rescind the broadcast licenses of media entities that do not relate events in Iran or Ukraine as the Trump administration would like them to be related. He also attacked The Wall Street...
During the first Trump administration, the FBI quietly spent $5 million on Pegasus, an Israeli-developed software product known generically as zero click. Zero click permits the user to download the contents of another mobile or desktop device without tricking the...
Over the past weekend, some apologists for President Donald Trump’s recently ordered attacks on Iran argued that because Trump's plans call for a quick strike, the attacks do not constitute a war. George Orwell is vindicated yet again. These apologists believe...
When President Donald Trump first announced that he had ordered the Pentagon to attack fishing boats and speedboats on the high seas which he said carried dangerous drugs destined for willing buyers in the United States, many of us who monitor the government for its...
“Freedom has more often been lost in small steps by progressive incrementalism, than it has been by catastrophic upheavals such as violence or war.” -- James Madison (1751-1836) Last week, the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which covers Louisiana,...
Last fall during the opening of the United Nations in New York City, I recognized the face of a federal officer from his days working in law enforcement in New Jersey and mine as a trial judge. We chatted and I asked him what he was doing. He told me he worked for...
Legal scholars have many lenses through which to examine the Constitution. Lawyers need to master about 150 Supreme Court decisions in order to have a sufficient understanding of the government. But most of what lawyers have studied is theory -- how the Constitution...
Last week, a half-dozen masked and unidentifiable Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents killed a 37-year-old federal employee, a nurse, by spraying pepper spray into his eyes, pushing him to the ground, stealing his lawfully owned and carried handgun, and then...
In recent days, the government in America has not only failed to protect the freedom of speech, it has attacked it. Like authoritarians throughout history, it has sought to silence the speech it hates and fears. But most authoritarians did not have a Constitution that...
In a scene in Robert Bolt’s famous play “A Man for All Seasons,” about the treason trial of St. Thomas More, More argues with the attorney general of Wales about the law. The attorney general says he’d cut down all the laws in England to get to the Devil. More...
The United States invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of Nicolas Maduro, the domestically recognized Venezuelan president, violated the US Constitution and international law. The Constitution makes clear that only Congress can authorize a foreign invasion. In the...
We all know that God works in mysterious ways. Recently, I was deeply moved at a theatrical production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” This is the famous and popular tale of the transformation and redemption of Ebenezer Scrooge from a rasping, grasping old...
Last week, Sen. Charles Schumer, the leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, introduced a resolution on behalf of himself and 40 other Senate Democrats that, if passed, would record the sense of the Senate as condemning the media superstar Tucker Carlson...
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