equal protection

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    California’s Same Sex Marriage Ruling Flawed

    ByP.A. Madison
    68 Comments

    Yesterday in the case of Perry v. Schwarzenegger, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker enjoined California’s Proposition 8 from being enforced on the grounds California has a “constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis.” Judge Walker finds California’s anti-SSM law violates both the Due Process and the Equal Protection clauses under the Fourteenth Amendment. Here are some of my quick preliminary thoughts on the ruling. One difficulty with the Due Process route is that it requires treating marriage as a fundamental…

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    Historical Meaning Behind ‘Equal Protection of the Laws’

    ByP.A. Madison
    14 Comments

    Equal Protection of the Laws simply means all persons shall be tried and punished equally before courts of law as it did under Common Law. The clause has no application outside of criminal law which explains why the Fifteenth and Nineteenth Amendments were needed. Justice Scalia speaking of the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause (EPC) to students at UC Hastings College of the Law in September 2010 remarked, “nobody thought it was directed against sex discrimination.” Scalia could have added nobody thought…

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    Supreme Fraud: Plyler v. Doe

    ByP.A. Madison
    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…

  • Supreme Absurdity: Scott v. Harris

    ByP.A. Madison

    Updated 3/1/07 Just when I thought I had seen and heard it all, comes the case Scott v. Harris. The case involves Coweta County Deputy Sheriff Timothy Scott’s decision in 2001 to end a wild, high-speed chase over dark and wet Georgia highways by finally ramming the back of Victor Harris’ Cadillac, sending him down an embankment and flipping his car. Harris, then 19, was left a quadriplegic and has sued, claiming it was a violation of his constitutional rights for Scott…