Tag archives for Constitution

V’s Legalese: Judiciary Antebellum

Federal courts have made a lot of news lately. Most of it is not good. We ask a lot of our courts, but life was better when America did not know the names of federal district judges like Jeb Boasberg, Tanya Chutkan, Amir Ali, Amy Berman Jackson, and so many others.  The present judicial landscape […]

V’s Legalese: The Missing Opinion in “Brown v. Board of Education”

Sometimes the Supreme Court makes mistakes. Sometimes it later fixes them. But it doesn’t always admit it. It can be a tricky thing for members of a respectable institution to admit that they or their predecessors on the same bench were wrong. Do it seldom; the Court loses credibility, especially when the overruling is plainly […]

V’s Legalese: Judicial Review as Obligation (with Apologies to Ben Shapiro)

The Supreme Court can tell us all no. That’s a good thing. Blasphemous as it may be to say on Twitter, I genuinely like Ben Shapiro. I have important disagreements with him, but I’m proud of how he’s become a household name. I admire him for his steadfast courage. And I think that in terms […]

V’s Legalese: An Introduction and Mission Statement

Dear Readers, Boy, the Supreme Court sure can be dull sometimes. If you’ve ever tried reading a judicial opinion, you probably got about four or five paragraphs in before seeing a citation for a case you’ve never heard of. It appears like an orange cone tossed into the middle of a NASCAR track. Suddenly you […]