What the Supreme Court’s surprise voting rights decision could mean for Alabama

  The Supreme Court surprised me. 

  You see, it’s become distressingly easy to predict how the nation’s high court will rule on issues. 

  The Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade? Horrifying. Insulting. Deadly to women. But we knew that this bench was going there. 

  I’ve spent way too many nights waiting for the Supreme Court to decide whether to allow an execution in Atmore to proceed. Whatever the merits of the condemned person’s appeal, they almost always allow the machinery of death to roll forward.

Trump’s politicization of the justice system

  Since the vast majority of Republican senators failed in their constitutional duty to be a check on serious government corruption, President Donald Trump has repeatedly exhibited his willingness to abuse the power of his office. But involving himself in the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ) recommended sentencing of Roger Stone, a convicted federal criminal—and Trump’s close political ally—was perhaps the most flagrant display of how little respect Trump’s administration has for American democracy.

Fighting an internal threat to our democracy

  In his recent testimony before Congress, Special Counsel Robert Mueller pointedly warned the nation about Russia’s ongoing attempts to meddle in our nation’s elections.

  All Americans, regardless of their political beliefs, should be gravely concerned about this threat from abroad. But we should be equally – perhaps even more – concerned about efforts to rig our elections from within.

  Since the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, partisan politicians at the state level have enacted a wave of voting restrictions that have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, of people.

2019 threats to First Amendment freedoms

  First Amendment threats and defenses have, for much of the past 100 years, largely focused on protecting individual speech — the rights of any one of us to express ourselves without interference or punishment by the government.

  Not to be too glib but, oh, those were the days! This glee is due, in no small part, to the degree that individual speech and press rights triumphed in that era. But looking into this new year, that situation — and those victories — may be more nostalgia than the norm. There is increasing danger to our core freedoms from what I’ll call “systemic” challenges, which often appear focused on other issues but which carry a First Amendment impact, if not a wallop.

Gene Policinski: Why protect speech we don’t want to hear? We need to hear it

  We periodically test and retest the limits of free speech — in effect, revisiting the legal and societal implications of that old childhood refrain, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”

  Recently, free speech has been winning…even when it hurts, as surely it sometimes does.

  Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court said a Seattle rock band called “The Slants” had a right to register its name over the objections of the Patent and Trademark Office.

Justice waits for a nine-member Supreme Court

  Within an hour of the news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s passing on February 13, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said the Senate should not consider any U.S. Supreme Court nominee until the next president is inaugurated in 2017. Since then, most Senate Republicans have signed on to Sen. McConnell’s obstructionist threat, including Judiciary Committee Chair Charles Grassley (R-IA). This dereliction of constitutional duty is unprecedented. The longest it has ever taken for a Supreme Court nominee to reach a confirmation vote is 125 days.

  In 2012, the American people re-elected President Barack Obama to do his job for another four years, and that job includes fulfilling his constitutional obligation to fill any vacancies on the Supreme Court. Likewise, the Senate must do its job and “advise and consent” on the nominee. The Constitution contains no exception to those obligations for presidential election years.

Charles C. Haynes: After gay marriage, can we move from battleground to common ground?

  In recent years, religious freedom — or, more precisely, religious freedom claims — have been front and center in the battle over same-sex marriage.

  From bitter debates in Arizona and Indiana to the grand compromise in Utah, proponents and opponents have shouted past one another about if and when to grant exemptions for conscientious objectors to same-sex marriage.

  The Supreme Court’s decision on June 26 in Obergefell v. Hodges recognizing gay marriage as a constitutional right will not end this debate. But it might, just might, move people of goodwill on both sides from battleground to common ground on how best to balance competing visions of equality and liberty.

Steve Flowers: Inside the Statehouse: Summer of SCOTUS

  During the summer the U.S. Supreme Court rendered two significant rulings. They were quite different philosophically.

  The high tribunal, in a far-reaching landmark decision, rendered same sex marriage legal in America. By granting all legal rights to same sex marriage they gave credence and official sanction to these unions. Their decisions are the law of the land. This is a significant verdict. The Supreme Court is omnipotent. Therefore, when it comes to federal benefits, such as Social Security, state laws like Alabama’s that prohibit same sex marriage are irrelevant. If a gay couple that was married in Connecticut moves to Alabama they are officially married.

Ian M. MacIsaac:The Supreme Court rules on health care, with logic (evidently) too complicated for television

  The sprawling crowd mulled nervously in the square, most of them facing the great columned facade of the Supreme Court building. Clusters of protesters with colorful hats and signs representing all conceivable sides of the issue at hand were flanked by numerous visiting public figures and celebrities, all surrounded by the press, cameras and recorders in hand.

  It was 10 am Thursday, June 28, across 1st Street Northeast from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Briefs containing the Supreme Court's ruling on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act--the president's health care bill centered around an individual mandate--were being brought down from within the depths of the huge building in stapled sheafs to be handed out to the members of the press waiting eagerly outside.

  At the White House, in the area immediately outside the Oval Office traditionally termed the 'Outer Oval,' President Obama stood amid a mini-control room of televisions that White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew had tuned to show four separate news channels.