Lawyers, advocacy groups and think tanks are soliciting historians’ expertise on the history underlying certain Supreme Court cases. Yet this history-for-hire approach raises questions.
Major Supreme Court decisions and reversals last term are leaving some people, including this scholar on constitutional politics, wondering – what’s going on with the court?
Under the Sullivan standard, a public official has to prove that there was ‘actual malice’ in defamation cases. That could be challenged in the Supreme Court.
Special interests use the court as a public policy battleground. Here’s a rundown of how that works and which groups are likely to appear before a conservative court with Amy Coney Barrett on it.
Many Americans are surprised to learn that Electoral College members do not necessarily have to pick the candidate their state’s voters favored. Or do they?
William Blake, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Kavanaugh thinks judges ‘must be an umpire – a neutral and impartial arbiter.’ So does Chief Justice Roberts. But more liberal jurists believe that the application of the law is inherently subjective.