One of the sociopolitical issues where public opinion in the United States has significantly changed in the last couple of decades is marijuana legalization, as more and more Americans have realized the pointlessness of statutes that criminalize consumpti ...
A Comparison Between Scalia and Thomas: Part I—Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (2004)
Dissimilarities Between Scalia and Thomas In the post-Ronald Reagan era of the Supreme Court of the United States, two of the most preeminent jurists of conservative persuasion have been the Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Scalia ...
First Amendment Rights of Judges And Other Public Employees (Part IV out of IV)
Now, we look at our final case of this four-part series, a 2015 SCOTUS case, where notably a government regulation passed strict scrutiny. Thus, even though a law may infringe on a fundamental right, the strict scrutiny standard can be used to hold the la ...
First Amendment Rights Of Judges And Other Public Employees (Part III out of IV): Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. (2009)
A case that affirmed stricter regulations on the actions of a judge was Caperton v. A.T. Massey Coal Co. The ruling from this case emphasized that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires judges to recuse themselves not only when actual ...
First Amendment Rights of Judges and other Public Employees (Part II of IV): Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002)
Judges are meant to be nonpartisan parts of the government, as has been emphatically mentioned by Chief Justice Roberts. Although Supreme Court justices can themselves pretend that the position of federal justices is completely devoid of partisan taint, ...
First Amendment Rights of Judges and other Public Employees (Part I of IV): Rutan v. Republican Party of Illinois (1990)
What extent do judges, or public employees in general, have freedom of speech under the First Amendment? What kind of speech, expression or even association in groups, could disqualify a person from seeking such public office, to ensure that defendants h ...