Court Cases
Federal Courts Aren’t Always Better: Cell-Phone Search Warrant Edition
Conventional wisdom tells us federal courts will protect our rights better than state courts. This is why virtually everything is turned into a federal case. But two recent cases relating to cell phone search warrants reveal this isn’t always the case. In Riley...
Another Shot at the Insular Cases
Concurring in United States v. Vaello Madero last Spring, Justice Gorsuch on originalist grounds called for overruling the Insular Cases, the series of early twentieth-century decisions that concluded the Constitution doesn’t fully apply in overseas U.S....
An Originalist Defense of the Major Questions Doctrine
I was initially skeptical of the major questions doctrine (MQD), as deployed by the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA – basically for the reasons expressed by Chad Squitieri, Tom Merrill and Jonathan Adler. But with everyone ganging up on the MQD, my contrarian...
Bad History at the Supreme Court?
Many law professors and other authorities have claimed in popular commentary that the Supreme Court majorities in the June opinions used flawed, even dishonest, history. I haven’t seen much yet that proves the claim. For example, there’s this piece by...