The Latest Breaking News from Scalia

No, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit's initial standing rulings were not faithful applications of Supreme Court precedent.

I appreciate the replies from Orin, Will, and Sam. We have very different conceptions on what role a scholar should play and what role a judge should play. My writings in this area are both retrospective and prospective. I look backwards to see what qualifications a judge had at the…

Justice Thomas demonstrates why Justice Scalia erred in his letter to Tillman.

One of my favorite Scalia lines came in Clinton v. City of New York. In dissent, Justice Scalia would have upheld the constitutionality of the Line-Item Veto Act. He explains that the law in fact does not give the President the ability to veto individual lines of a budget--a power…

If the government exercises a power it lacks for a long time, it can keep exercising that power. But if a government does not exercise a power it has, it loses that power.

In November, I wrote that the Fifth Circuit's Rahimi decision "was a faithful application of Bruen." Seven months later, now having read the Supreme Court's Rahimi decision, I stand by what I wrote. After Justice Thomas's dissent, the most intellectually honest opinion in Rahimi was Justice Jackson's concurrence. Jackson explained…

In April 2009, a law student at American University asked Justice Scalia how a student from her school could become "outrageously successful" without "connections and elite degrees." (The clip begins around 52:00.) Scalia laughed out loud. He answered, "Just work hard and be very good." But then he digressed to…

"Though at times the two seem more like in-laws than soulmates."

On Monday, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Murthy v. Missouri. Justices Kavanaugh and Kagan--who both worked in the White House--stated that it was fairly common for government officials to "berate" the press. Justice Kavanaugh observed that "experienced government press people throughout the federal government . . .. regularly…

I was revising a paper on the relationship between equity and property, and I had occasion to look up this classic line from Justice Scalia: I am not so naive (nor do I think our forebears were) as to be unaware that judges in a real sense "make" law. But…

Earlier in the Constitutional Convention, the legislature had the power to appoint judges, ambassadors, and the treasurer. But that power was later stripped.