The Federalist Blog

voting rights

Georgia vs. U.S. Department of Injustice
ByP.A. Madison October 30, 2008April 22, 2012
2 Comments

Voting rights groups in Georgia were successful in stopping State election officials from using Social Security numbers and driver’s license data to check voters’ immigration status. Advocacy groups had told a federal three-judge panel that using the data to verify whether voters are citizens amounts to a “systematic purging” of voting rolls that must be approved by the Justice Department. Why does the State of Georgia need approval by the Justice Department? The answer, according to the Department of Justice, is because…

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1st amendment

Original Meaning: Freedom of Speech or of the Press
ByP.A. Madison October 18, 2008May 14, 2015
38 Comments

Summary: Freedom of Speech or the Press is the freedom from government officials making speech or writings they find too critical of their affairs a seditious crime. Under common law, people had to be careful of any criticism they wrote or said about government policy, laws or official conduct out of fear of being charged with a seditious crime where truth would be of no defense. Before discussing the meaning of the words “freedom of speech, or of the press” as established…

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Bingham

Q: Did Marshall and Bingham Share the same Constitutional Philosophy?
ByP.A. Madison September 2, 2008July 23, 2011

A reader would like to know what ideological differences there might had been between two influential individuals of constitutional law: Chief Justice John Marshall and John A. Bingham. While John Bingham spoke cordially of C.J. Marshall, the two sat at opposite poles of each other. Here is a quick illustration of their differences: Mr. Bingham was a self-proclaimed “state rights” man; Marshall on the other hand was a Nationalist to the left of George Washington. Mr. Bingham viewed the Alien and Sedition…

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2nd amendment

D.C. v. Heller: Was Scalia Honest with the Facts?
ByP.A. Madison July 16, 2008September 3, 2011
23 Comments

“[T]here is no need to deceive ourselves as to what the original Second Amendment said and meant. Of course, properly understood, it is no limitation upon arms control by the states.” –Antoin Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law (1997) The recent Supreme Court ruling in District of Columbia v. Heller caught me by surprise by how far the majority, lead by Justice Antoin Scalia, were willing to go to make a case for a broad individual right under…

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education | equal protection

Supreme Fraud: Plyler v. Doe
ByP.A. Madison March 25, 2008June 3, 2017
11 Comments

I do not think there is any other single Supreme Court case in which I am asked to comment on more than the case of Plyler v. Doe – especially now with more press attention being devoted to school overcrowding and the costs associated with teaching non-bona fide resident children belonging to citizens of other nations. I have not devoted any lengthy commentary on this case for the simple reason the four dissenting justices (O’Conner, Burger, Rehnquist and White) thoroughly highlighted the…

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voting rights

Does Indiana’s Photo ID Law Violate the Constitution?
ByP.A. Madison November 21, 2007August 23, 2017
5 Comments

Following the steps of other third parties, Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), with Rep. Robert Brady (D-Pa.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) have recently filed an amicus curiae brief with the U.S. Supreme Court over Indiana’s photo-identification requirements for federal elections. The brief asserts Indiana State law is inconsistent with, and preempted by, the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. The Federal statute mandates certain identification requirements only for first-time voters who register to vote by mail. The Federal identification requirements can be satisfied…

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8th amendment

Death Penalty for Child Rape Unconstitutional?
ByP.A. Madison October 18, 2007August 31, 2011
18 Comments

Lawyers for Patrick Kennedy, a Louisiana man who received a death sentence for raping a child has petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to have his case heard before the justices. Kennedy’s legal team wants the court to declare Louisiana’s law allowing the death penalty for child rape unconstitutional. The petition asks the court to consider whether the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment clause permits a state to impose the death penalty for child rape – a punishment usually reserved for those…

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citizenship

What ‘Subject to the Jurisdiction Thereof’ Really Means
ByP.A. Madison September 22, 2007August 26, 2025
157 Comments

Because the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment’s first section was to end the denial of those fundamental rights that belong to all United States citizens by their citizenship under Article IV, Section II of the U.S. Constitution, it was imperative to first define who was a United States citizen. Otherwise, a state could refuse to recognize newly emancipated slaves as citizens by withholding the right to sue, make contracts, due process, purchase property, etc., in any state they ventured into. Therefore, the…

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commerce clause

Penalizing the Commerce Clause
ByP.A. Madison March 16, 2007
2 Comments

Note: I cannot believe I neglected finishing this post until now (9/13/07). A California woman whose doctor says marijuana is the only medicine keeping her alive can face federal prosecution on drug charges, a federal appeals court ruled. The ruling Wednesday was the latest legal defeat for Angel Raich, a mother of two from Oakland suffering from scoliosis, a brain tumor, chronic nausea and other ailments who sued the federal government pre-emptively to avoid being arrested for using the drug. On her…

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1st amendment

SCOTUS Only ‘Assumes’ You Have 1st Amendment Rights via 14th Amendment
ByP.A. Madison March 5, 2007
1 Comment

I was reading today about a federal case (Morse v. Frederick, aka “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case) winding its way through the courts, and was thinking how bizarre current federal jurisprudence has really become. On March 19, the United States Supreme Court will hear oral arguments over the limits of freedom of speech in public schools. “I wanted to know more precisely the boundaries of my freedom,” Joe Frederick said when reporters asked why he’d raised the “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner….

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