On Monday, in response to a complaint from the United States Department of Justice alleging that Governor Milorad “Rod” Blagojevich had solicited bribes and engaged in a massive conspiracy to commit fraud, the Illinois House voted 113-0 to begin impeachment proceedings. Blagojevich has not yet been indicted. On December 10th, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid [...]

Tomorrow, the Cathedral of Saint Matthew the Apostle will host the 55th Red Mass. Tradition holds that, on the Sunday before the opening of the Court’s October term, the Catholic Church hosts a mass to bring wisdom and guidance to the Justices of the high court. Although the current Court is a 5-4 majority of [...]

The Supreme Court’s landmark public use decision Kelo v. City of New London was handed down three years ago today. On June 23, 2005, Justices Stevens handed down an opinion that held that “there is no basis for exempting economic development from our traditionally broad understanding of public purpose.” Justices Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, and Ginsburg [...]

Ever since I located a glorious set of old books at a friends hosue, I’ve been hankering to purchase a particular antiquarian book. I’ve been on the search for a version of Giles Duncombe’s Tryals Per Pais (1655.) I’d prefer an early edition, but I found a 4th edition printed in 1702 for $850 (here). [...]

I found a neat article over at the New York Times Archives entitled “Ideas % Trends; Scalia Speaks Up, Quite Clearly, At Bar Convention from 1987. According to the article, Justice Scalia was the most talkative person on the bench even in the late 80′s when he was a relative newcomer to the Court. The [...]

From now until the start of October Term 2007 on October 1, I’ll be counting down the things that I’m looking forward to in the upcoming term of the Court. Today I’ll take a look at the Court’s power struggle with its co-equal branches. Supreme Court Justices have always been considered a body of intellectuals [...]

Ann Althouse has a rather interesting article about Justice Steven’s recent speech at the Ninth Circuit’s Judicial Conference in Honolulu, Hawaii. Its obvious from the location of this judicial conference that congressmen aren’t the only ones who take junkets. Regardless, this is the most interesting part of her recap: I think, after all — he’s [...]

…I doubt it, but history suggests that Justices who were out of touch with their contemporaries periodically appear rather favorably to future generations. I was culling through my old copy of “The Supreme Court in US History” for some other posts (here and here) when I discovered this interesting passage about the great Chief Justice [...]

I admit that I made a slight mistake in yesterday’s post about Snarlin’ Arlen and his attack on judicial independence- I asserted, without clarifiying, that there was nothing “a Senator can do to a Supreme Court Justice save for pushing for impeachment.” Some very intelligent people have been arguing that Congress can reign in these [...]

As I was doing research for a post about the latest Court-packing plan (suggestion?) and I stumbled across a rather interesting set of events. Here are the facts that I know: In March of 1937, the Democratic President Andrew Jackson was wrapping up his wildly divisive, eight-year Presidency. His hand picked successor, Martin Van Buren, [...]