Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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William Howard Taft, the only man to serve as President of the United States and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, once observed that the Court was his idea of what Heaven must be like. This prompted Justice Felix Frankfurter to declare that “he had a very different notion of heaven than any I know anything about.” Taft reached “Heaven” in 1920 when President Warren G. Harding appointed him to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Harding asked Taft whether he “would accept a position on the Supreme Court.” Taft said he would accept only the...
“Brandeis: free speech critical to preservation of Democracy” In response to previous columns about the appointment, importance and influence of Justice Louis Brandeis, an enthusiastic reader has asked a most welcome question about the jurist’s contributions to the Supreme Court’s development of the law governing freedom of speech. In Whitney v. California (1927), Justice Brandeis penned what most scholars agree was one of the most eloquent and powerful defenses of freedom of expression in Anglo-American legal history. His opinion draws u...
Louis Brandeis, known by the nation at the time of his appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court as “The People’s Lawyer,” and years later affectionately nicknamed “Old Isaiah” by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was one of the greatest jurists and most innovative legal minds in our country’s history. Fearful of the concentration of power and committed to the principle that the Supreme Court has the authority and duty to protect American’s civil liberties, Brandeis forged new paths in the area of freedom of speech and the right to privacy that fede...
By the time President Woodrow Wilson nominated him for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916, Louis Brandeis, the nation’s first Jewish justice, had forged a reputation as a brilliant, innovative and influential attorney. He was an advocate to be feared. Judges at all levels acknowledged how much they learned from him. The Supreme Court embraced his novel legal arguments and approach to the law – “the Brandeis Brief” – which ushered in an era of “sociological jurisprudence” and enjoys enduring influence. On top of this, he was known as “the...
The emergence of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes as a dominant influence in the work of the Supreme Court began in 1905, just three years after his appointment to the High Bench, in a dissenting opinion in Lochner v. New York that many scholars hail as the most famous dissent ever written. The majority opinion in Lochner has been widely rebuked for the past century as an exercise in judicial activism, a notorious example of the imposition by judges of their own preferences and biases, in this case, the heavy-handed infliction of a laissez-faire...
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. once said, “If American law were to be represented by a single figure, skeptic and worshipper alike would agree without dispute that the figure could be one alone, and that one, John Marshall.” It has been justly observed that if American law were to be represented by a second figure, it would be Holmes himself, since he was more influential in shaping the agenda for the 20th century Supreme Court than any other legal figure. Dubbed the “Yankee from Olympus,” Holmes, who hailed from a prominent Boston family...
Former President Donald Trump’s invocation of the landmark Supreme Court ruling in the Scottsboro Boys cases (1931) as justification for delaying his trial on charges related to the subversion of the 2020 federal election, was sharply rejected by the federal court as inapt and by a retired state judge as “stunningly stupid.” Trump’s lawyer had urged U.S. Federal District Judge Tanya Chutkan to set the 45th president’s trial for April 2026. In a brief submitted to the court, it was argued that an earlier date would deny Trump’s defense team suff...
Justice Joseph Story stands as a giant among those who have held a seat on the Supreme Court. Story was one of the greatest legal figures in the 19th Century, in the upper echelon of everyone’s list of outstanding judges in American history and the most scholarly of scholarly Justices. Justice Story remains the youngest person ever named to the Supreme Court. He was just 32 when President James Madison nominated him to the High Bench in 1811. At that young age, he had already served in the U.S. House of Representatives, Speaker of the M...
Those Americans in the early years of the republic who idolized the elegant, regal and graceful bearing of English judges, could be forgiven their initial doubts about the potential of Chief Justice John Marshall to lead the Supreme Court. Although tall and erect, he was ungainly, awkward and slovenly. His hair was unkempt, his clothes frequently disheveled, especially his knee buckles, which were dangling. And there was the mud on his boots. His appearance was not indicative of a man impressed with the high station that he had achieved....
Two centuries after his service to the United States as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, virtually no one doubts John Marshall’s preeminent status in America law. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, widely regarded as deserving of a seat on a judicial Mount Olympus, observed, “If American law were to be represented by a single figure, skeptic and worshiper alike would agree without dispute that the figure could be one alone, and that one, John Marshall. "President John Adams, who nominated Marshall to be Chief Justice, reflected years later on...
It was altogether fitting that James Wilson, second in importance only to James Madison as an architect of the Constitution, would be nominated by President George Washington to the original Supreme Court. From this position, Justice James Wilson could defend the Constitution, which he had done so much to shape and define. As it turned out, Wilson’s leading role as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention was his greatest achievement, the high point of his life. Not that such influence is without cause for celebration. Hardly. It’s rather th...
John Jay: first Chief Justice, diplomat, founding era giant When the newly-elected President George Washington turned his attention to the historic opportunity of nominating citizens to fill seats on the first U.S. Supreme Court in 1789, he knew exactly whom he wanted to name the nation’s first Chief Justice: John Jay. Jay enjoyed Washington’s confidence in a way few of his contemporaries did. Apart from Chief Justice William Howard Taft, who was elected as the United States' 27th president before ascending to the High Bench, nobody has com...
Judicial profiles to better understand the Supreme Court We citizens know a lot about our presidents – their background, philosophy and character – and sometimes more than we care to know. The same is true of our congressional representatives. By comparison, we know relatively little about our Supreme Court Justices. This needs to change. A better, indeed, more fully-informed historic understanding of the views, experiences, temperament and character of the men and women that have served on the nation’s High Bench will, in the name of civic...
“Constitution does not shield presidents from defamation suits” The Justice Department’s announcement this week that the Constitution does not shield presidents from civil lawsuits stemming from a president’s defamatory remarks represents two important victories – one for constitutionally-limited government and the other for individuals who could be destroyed by the words of the nation’s chief executive. The DOJ’s declaration clarified its position on the broad question of immunity for former President Donald Trump against a lawsuit filed...
The Declaration of Independence – its words, elements and ramifications – remains profoundly relevant in America. As the founding document of the world’s longest running democracy, and the ultimate expression of the ideas, values and principles that culminated in the American Revolution, it certainly deserves a special place in our national consciousness, debates, policies and laws. The celebration of the Declaration, from coast to coast on July 4, unites the nation in civic idealism in a way that no other national holiday can. Students recit...
It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s repudiation of the “independent state legislature” theory in Harper v. Moore. The widely-admired conservative judge, J. Michael Luttig, called it “the most important case, since the founding, for American democracy.” Indeed, nothing less than the preservation of judicial review, checks and balances and the vital role of courts in defending the constitutional order were at stake in this case. In fine, the North Carolina legislature boldly asserted that its authority...
A reader’s question has captured the history-making nature of the forthcoming trial of former President Donald Trump. “What are the implications of the trial for the Constitution, presidential power and the rule of law?” The gravity of the nation’s first federal indictment of a former president cannot be overestimated. The rule of law, constitutional government, presidential power and, we should add, American Democracy, are on trial. Defenders of President Trump, like the former chief executive himself, decry the indictment as part of a long-...
“What are the implications of the trial of Donald Trump for the Constitution, presidential power and the rule of law?” a reader asks, adding another important question: “Did the Framers of the Constitution adequately limit presidential power?” These enormously important questions have been and will continue to be discussed and debated for months and years to come, and they require more than a single column to offer a summary explanation. We focus this week on the adequacy of constitutional limitations, turning next week to the questio...
Why Congress may impose ethics code on Supreme Court justices Rising calls for Congress to enact new ethical standards for the Supreme Court, sparked by recent revelations that Justice Clarence Thomas failed to disclose financial transactions, have generated a debate on whether the legislative branch possesses constitutional authority to impose a code of conduct on the judiciary. The divide is familiar. With some prominent exceptions, Republicans object to the creation of an ethics code, invoking separation of powers concerns and asserting...
A reader recently wrote to ask a question on the minds of many Americans: “If the courts check the other branches of government, who checks the courts?” The reader continued: “Since the Supreme Court enforces constitutional limits on the presidency and Congress through the exercise of judicial review, who can restrain the Court, particularly at a time when public opinion registers strong opposition to the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution?” This good question has been raised at other junctures in American history when the citizenry...
The continued revival of interest among state legislatures in posting the Ten Commandments in public schools may present to the U.S. Supreme Court an opportunity to reverse yet another decades- old, landmark precedent, this time one that prohibits such displays on grounds that they promote religion in violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. Although time expired in the legislative session before the Texas House of Representatives could approve a Senate bill to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms, the Longhorn State and seve...
“Presidential power, the 14th Amendment and the public debt” The debt ceiling standoff between President Joe Biden and House Republicans has illuminated the public debt clause of the 14th Amendment, one of the most obscure provisions in the Constitution and one seldom discussed since the Civil War. Its invocation may be the key to avoiding economic catastrophe. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment provides: “The validity of the public debt, authorized by law ... shall not be questioned.” Legal scholars and historians agree that the clause was des...
In 1977, in McDaniel v. Paty, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark ruling that held unconstitutional one of the last anticlerical remnants of the founding era, a 1796 Tennessee law that prohibited ministers and priests from holding public office. The statute, drafted at the dawn of the republic in the name of separation of church and state, reflected a widespread legal policy among the early states that sought to curb the outsized role that clergy played in English public affairs and the colonies, in which laws respecting establishments...
Delegates to the Constitutional Convention, as part of their commitment to separating church from state, unanimously adopted a clause in Article VI, declaring that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” In their adoption of the oath clause, the Framers demonstrated a liberality of spirit because all of delegates, except those from New York and Virginia, came from states that discriminated against some religious denominations by imposing some religious test as a req...
In February 1793, in Chisholm v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court, fully mindful of the evolving political and legal tensions surrounding the nature of the nation-state relationship, rendered its first important decision on the scope of state authority. Chisholm, a citizen of South Carolina, sued the state of Georgia for failure to pay him for goods delivered to the state. In short, Chisholm was trying to collect a debt. But the “great cause” in this suit, as Justice James Iredell characterized it, presented the critical issue of whether...
