Having just been stripped of her endorsement by the national Democratic Socialists for not hating Israel enough, AOC has introduced Articles of Impeachment against Justice Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito.

Justice Thomas and Alito’s repeated failure over decades to disclose that they received millions of dollars in gifts from individuals with business before the court is explicitly against the law. And their refusal to recuse from the specific matters and cases before the court in which their benefactors and spouses are implicated represents nothing less than a constitutional crisis. These failures alone would amount to a deep transgression worthy of standard removal in any lower court, and would disqualify any nominee to the highest court from confirmation in the first place.

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In the mix of decisions of arguably greater consequence, the Supreme Court decided another matter, Grants Pass v. Johnson, that deserved greater attention. The decision has been characterized as criminalizing the status of being homeless, which the Court, by 6-3 split, held did not violate the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment prohibited by the Eighth Amendment. But was that the holding?

The case in question is City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case about the small town of Grants Pass, Oregon, that enacted a “camping ban” that prohibited sleeping on public property with “bedding”—i.e., sleeping bags, blankets, or even rolled up clothing—“for the purpose of maintaining a temporary place to live.” It also prohibited sleeping overnight in a vehicle. The extensive record showed that the town’s lawmakers enacted these ordinances for the express purpose of targeting the homeless population and attempting to drive them out. Gloria Johnson, a homeless woman living in Grants Pass, sued, arguing the ban was a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s cruel and unusual punishments clause. The Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority ruled in favor of Grants Pass, declaring that its “camping ban” was not unconstitutional.

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President Biden has insisted that he’s running. He’s insisted that he will not withdraw. He’s insisted that he can beat Trump. And he’s daring his own party, anyone who would want his job, to do something about it.

“I am not going anywhere,” Mr. Biden told the donors.

The moves amounted to a show of defiance that the Biden operation hoped would earn him some deference, as uneasy Democratic lawmakers trickled back to Capitol Hill after a holiday break. At the same time, the Biden team was trying to reframe the pressure campaign to get him to step aside as one hatched by the elite party establishment rather than a genuine reflection of grass-roots voter fears about the 81-year-old commander in chief’s age and acuity.

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Basic law courses like Con Law and Admin Law are still being taught in law school, alongside courses like Equity Law and Law and Nietzsche, making the job of law professor even more interesting than usual this summer. You see, with the Supreme Court decisions in Loper Bright and Trump v. United States, they’ve got some decisions to make. This comes on the heels of Bruen and Dobbs, where the ink on their updated syllabi is barely dry. Won’t anyone think of the law profs?

After overturning the 40-year-old Chevron deference last week, the justices threw law curricula for another major loop on Monday with their earth-shaking ruling on presidential immunity — all this just two years after Roe v. Wade was struck down after 50 years on the books. Continue reading →

My first thought was to write about a shocking paragraph written by an old friend who at one time was a stalwart libertarian, and who (like the ACLU) continues to cruise on a legacy that’s largely dead.

The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States is its worst decision of my lifetime. John Roberts’s sloppy, arrogant, contradictory majority opinion provides license for any future president to lie, cheat, steal, suppress dissent, and — if they have the stomach for it — assassinate. It obliterates a guardrail for executive power that’s fundamental to a functioning democracy. So fundamental, in fact, that until the country elected an aspiring autocrat brazen enough to engage in open-air corruption, it was a guardrail few thought necessary to actually define. Of course the president can be prosecuted for actual crimes.

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I couldn’t help but remember Chris Wallace interviewing Trump in July 2020, about his state of dementia.

“I’ll bet you couldn’t even answer the last five questions.” Now he has revealed the most difficult of these questions.

“The last questions are much more difficult,” he said. “Like a memory question. It’s, uh, like you’ll go, ‘Person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ So they say, ‘Could you repeat that?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ So it’s ‘person, woman, man, camera, TV.’ ‘Okay, that’s very good.’” Continue reading →

Let me preface this by making clear that nothing, but nothing, here suggests that Trump is a viable or better alternative to any person, living or dead. That said, the job of president doesn’t start at 10 am and end at 8 pm. The job of president isn’t done by committee. The job of president requires someone capable of being woken up at 2 am after a couple of international trips to be told of incoming ICBMs and make the decision of what to do about it. I don’t make the rules.

All of this raises the next question, which must first be decided before any argument about the nuts and bolts of how to accomplish it: If not Biden, then who? Apparently, the decision-makers have already made their decision without asking those of us who want two things, someone who can beat Trump and someone who can be trusted with the presidency. Continue reading →

It might seem as if we’ve hit the wall, two people running for president with the backing of the two major political parties whom the majority of Americans do not, and cannot, support. Does this spell the end of the American experiment? So many young people believe we’re doomed and see nothing ahead of us but misery. They criticize and condemn America at every turn. They find horrors no matter what we do or don’t do, as if the nation is so inherently corrupt and evil that there is no path that doesn’t lead to perdition. Continue reading →

In her dissent in Trump v. United States, there’s a strong possibility that Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s rhetoric didn’t make her new friends. But her statement on the denial of cert  in Price v. Montgomery County not only makes some excellent and valuable points, but could well be a precursor to a significant shift in the Court’s position. While the majority provided limited absolutely immunity for a president in the performance of core executive functions, is a prosecutor, of which there are a great many, similarly entitled to the same deference?

The case involved a Kentucky man named Nickie Miller, who spent two years in jail awaiting trial on a murder charge. Continue reading →

It’s unclear whether the reaction to the decision is the most inflamed ever, but it’s certainly close enough that it would not be hyperbolic to say the 5-1-3 decision in Trump v. United States has revealed a depth of outrage both in the Court’s minority dissenters and the anti-Trump public that is rarely seen. Stoking this outrage, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Jackson joined, “with fear for our democracy,” wrote:

The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.

Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Continue reading →