Archive for the 'USH: Constitution & Early Years' Category
Sunday, December 25th, 2011
GPS monitors can track your every movement. Brain scans can now see lies forming in your brain. And advancements in genetic engineering may soon allow parents to engineer what their children will look and be like.
These new technologies are “challenging our Constitutional categories in really dramatic ways,” says George Washington University law professor Jeffrey Rosen. “And what’s so striking is that none of the existing amendments give clear answers to the most basic questions we’re having today.”
Listen to this episode of Fresh Air, where Rosen, the co-editor of the Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change, details how technological changes that were unimaginable at the time of the Founding Fathers are challenging our notions of things like personal vs. private space, freedom of speech and our own individual autonomy.
Posted in US GOV: Constitution Primer, USH: Constitution & Early Years, USH: Post AP Ideas | No Comments »
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
“Respondents are two establishments in South Bend, Indiana, that wish to provide totally nude dancing as entertainment, and individual dancers who are employed at these establishments. They claim that the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of expression prevents the State of Indiana from enforcing its public indecency law to prevent this form of dancing. We reject their claim.”
Read this Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice Rehnquist.
Posted in USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Sunday, September 18th, 2011
In 1789, the United States sought to make the union more perfect, drawing up 10 amendments to the Constitution now known as the Bill of Rights. In this series of ten short videos, TIME brings to life the words of the Founding Fathers and explores how these deeply felt ideas about liberty and property have evolved into the amendments as we interpret them today.
Posted in USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Thursday, June 30th, 2011
The US Supreme Court is rendering rulings on the cases from this year’s docket. There are several interesting cases.
Here are all of the slip opinions.
Here is some top-notch editorializing on the rulings from Slate’s Dalia Lithwick who, in my humble opinion, offers remarkably insightful yet accessible court journalism.
Posted in US GOV: The Judiciary, USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Sunday, February 6th, 2011
Members of the Tea Party are really into the Constitution. We know this because on Thursday, House Republicans propose to read the document from start to finish on the House floor, and they also propose to pass a rule requiring that every piece of new legislation identify the source of its constitutional authority. Even Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute agrees that these are largely symbolic measures, noting in the Wall Street Journal that as a legal matter, “at least since Marbury v. Madison in 1803, the Supreme Court has had the last word on what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do.”
More on the new constitutional “crisis” from Dalia Lithwick at Slate.
Posted in USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Thursday, December 9th, 2010
Slate’s Dalia Lithwick offers some insights into the Tea Party’s proposal to amend the “divinely inspired” Constitution.
Posted in US GOV: Constitution Primer, USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Thursday, October 21st, 2010
n Making Our Democracy Work: A Judge’s View, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer outlines his ideas about the Constitution and about the way the United States legal system works.
Breyer, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Clinton in 1994, explains that he interprets the Constitution as a living document, in opposition to some of his colleagues — including Justice Antonin Scalia — who see it as a static and literal set of rules that do not change over time.
Breyer argues that the framers knew that the interpretation of the document would continue to change as America evolved — and that members of the Supreme Court should apply the Constitution’s values to modern circumstances.
Breyer Interview
Posted in US GOV: The Judiciary, USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Monday, May 24th, 2010
In Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, Leo Damrosch, who teaches literature at Harvard, has seized an opportune moment to scratch the polished surface and explore what lay behind the oracular pronouncements. At a time when generalizations about the American soul seem risky at best, it is somehow reassuring to learn that even the great Tocqueville was often winging it—and that some of his direst fears have not come to pass…
Read on from Slate
Posted in USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Saturday, February 13th, 2010
If high-school government class taught us anything, it’s that getting bills passed through Congress is a game of numbers: The bill with the most votes wins.
Turns out it’s not that simple. These days, the polarized state of American politics means that major bills need at least 60 votes to avoid an inevitable filibuster by the opposition.
Political scientist Gregory Koger’s new book, Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate, addresses the institutionalization of the filibuster — and describes congressional loopholes by way of which fast thinking and hard work can beat the numbers. Koger teaches American politics at the University of Miami. He joins host Terry Gross for a conversation about what has happened to simple majority rule.
Listen to Koger discuss the filibuster in an interview with Terry Gross
Posted in US GOV: Constitution Primer, US GOV: The Judiciary, USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »
Monday, October 12th, 2009
Witness the American deputy solicitor general in his natural habitat—the Supreme Court. As Neal Katyal roams softly across the cool marble chamber, he has no idea what awaits him. He is here to protect his tribe—the U.S. government—which, in 1999, passed a statute making it a crime to create, sell, or possess “any visual or auditory depiction” of “animal cruelty” if the act of cruelty is itself illegal under either federal law or the law of the state in which the depiction occurred.
Read on from Slate
Posted in US GOV: The Judiciary, USH: Constitution & Early Years | No Comments »