With an insulated life, the nation’s politicians are rarely in the uncomfortable position Sen. Jeff Flake and his handlers were put in this morning after he said he’d vote to approve the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh as a U.S. Supreme Court justice.
Read more →
When’s the last time a T-shirt, a bumper sticker, or a lawn side influenced your vote? Read more →
About half of the nation’s non-union employers require employees to workers are employed under some sort of arbitration contract that requires them to face down their company one-on-one before an arbitrator. Today’s Supreme Court decision will drastically reduce the number of claims against them. Read more →
I’m not a great Supreme Court watcher, but when you see ‘(laughter)’ in the transcript during your arguments, it probably is not a good thing. Read more →
Only Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor sided with a state law
— similarly to one in 39 states — that explicitly bars state funds from going directly or indirectly to any religious sect or denomination. Read more →
We’re rather eating up the opportunity to hear behind-the-scenes stories afforded by the new book from Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The book is published by a division of CBS, so CBS News has gotten two days of exclusive interviews out of the deal.
Read more →
Key excerpts from the Supreme Court’s decision. Read more →
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, in a typical condescending dissent of the majority, nonetheless raises some good questions in his dissent today of the court’s decision to apply a ban on life terms for juveniles retroactively. Read more →
In his first years of life, Joshua DeShaney kept getting returned to his abusive father by a Wisconsin county’s child protection system. Again and again, a social worker noted likely child abuse, and again and again the county returned the boy to his father, who had gained custody in a divorce settlement. Read more →
Does having a state driver’s license mean Minnesotans give their implied OK to a blood alcohol test if they’re stopped on suspicion of DUI? The Minnesota Supreme Court says yes. Read more →
When the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional the practice of requiring people suspected of drunk driving to submit to blood testing without a warrant, it left an important question unanswered: What happens to people who were convicted prior to the ruling? Read more →
Thousands of government bodies all over the United States — including the Minnesota House and Senate — open their meetings and sessions with a prayer. Today the U.S. Supreme Court gave the practice its blessing. Read more →
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case of a New Mexico photographer who refused the job of photographing a same-sex commitment ceremony. You may recall in the Legislature’s debate about same-sex marriage, the mythical wedding photographer who would be forced to take pictures against her will was a common theme.
Elaine Huguenin is that photographer and her case is the first to reach the Supreme Court, which wanted nothing to do with it. It rejected the case without comment. Read more →
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act today, it noted that the doomed section of the Act is no longer constitutional partly because the method of determining which states should be subject to it is outdated. Here is the explanation in the opinion of Supreme Court Justice John Roberts: Read more →
Bob Collins
Paul Tosto