Current News & Opinion | Class Video
Resources
1. Index of Supreme Court Justices
2. Oyez Project Oral Arguments, votes, and more in Supreme Court cases dating back more than 70 years. You can take a visual tour of the Supreme Court as well.
3. Great set of interviews with major scholars in field of law and society including one of my mentors Richard Schwartz
Many cover topics we cover in this course. Each interview is about an hour (click here)
4. Scotus Blog Cases, commentary on cases as they move through the system, e.g. what was seen at oral argument and statistics on each term of the Court covering a large set of variables like agreement between justices, workloads among others. I am proud that one of the founders of the blog and the chief of statistics is Kedar Bhatia, Emory Law ’13 now a successful lawyer in New York.
He took 3 of my courses while at U.T. and we filed an Amicus Brief together in a Supreme Court case. (click here)
5. Findlaw Searchable Supreme Court Database (Make sure you get the precise case name you are looking for) (click here)
6. Fantastic website with materials such as descriptions, chronologies, pictures, and transcripts of famous trials from Socrates to Enron. There are 78 famous trials including Aaron Burr, O J Simpson, The Rosenbergs, The Chicago Black Sox, Bill Clinton, Joan of Arc and the Amistad to name just a few. I came across it recently looking for a lost link to the Nuremberg trials. (click here)
What a treasure. Dont have time to look at each trial. While these are important historical trials, always be a bit skeptical that the documents presented about the trial are complete and give a true picture of the various parties. For instance, the materials for the George Zimmerman trials show a picture of Trayvon Martin which may not be how he looked when the killing happened. While Zimmerman was acquitted many still think he was guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
For instance, the Alger Hiss trial materials include a document discovered 40 or so years ago when a KGB agent switched sides. It shows with a high level of certainty Hiss was a spy well into the mid 40’s when he was Secretary of State. This is often not what is taught about him. The materials on the Clinton Impeachment and the Trial of Aaron Burr look very complete and seem to present all sides as I peruse them.
Current News & Opinion(Highlights)
| Washington Post Harvard Poll on how Americans think the Constitution should be interpreted(click here) |
| New Yorker gets into Constitutional Act with an interesting article entitled: The Commandments: The Constitution and Its Worshippers(click here) |
| Another case of expert scientific fraud(click here) Some thing such fraud should be prosecuted(click here) |
| Is there something behaviorally different between those who think the government should redistribute income and those who don’t, or in other words those for limited government versus those for expansive government?(click here) |
| The rocky course of defending Obamacare(click here) |
| John Fund on FCC takeover of internet with is net neutrality decree(click here) |
| Social Contract and Constitutional Republics(click here) |
| New York Times and its own exploitation of eminent domain(click here) |
| The Hooverville that wasn’t. Takes the foreign press, the Economist Magazine to uncover another American media scam (click here) |
| Justice Ginzburg interview including comments on foreign law.(click here) |
| Good piece on lawful and unlawful combatants Will be relevant to Hamdi and other cases at end of course.(click here) |
| In case you thought Obama and his administration were about something other than $$$, note this article from The Politico. In good Clintonian fashion the info is released on a weekend to get minimal coverage. Note also who the people are and who they aren’t. As always, follow the money. (click here) So much for change and hope!!Perhaps, the only institution in Washington where you do not need to follow the money is the Supreme Court. |
| George Will on possible unconstitutionality of Bailout Bill(click here) |
| Karl Rove on Obama campaign for his budget including getting even with recalcitrant Democrats. Similar activities of Roosevelt shown in class videos(click here) |
| Discussion among public law and law Professors about constitutionality of 90% tax on AIG bonuses. I have taken out contact info and left in some of the names. (click here) |
| Finally the explanation as to main stream media sounded the same on montage’s played in class about Bush, Geitner and so on.(click here) |
| Fewer jobs under stimulus because of Davis Bacon Act, similar to Roosevelt era. High paying jobs for favored union members, unemployment for the averageJoes. Consider in light of NLRB v. Jones Laughlin(click here) |
| Law Professor Ronald Rotunda on the unconstitutionality of the recent stimulus bill. HE discusses the bill’s attempts to override state sovereignty in a way it has never been done before.(click here) Another law professor thinks South Carolina should take the money and the Governor bypass provision is probably unconstitutional. He title his article, “Even Economic Fools Have Constitutional Rights”(click here) |
| The limits of Court labels. Recent Washington Post article about whether Roberts Court is pro-business. Read this carefully as we do more and more classification of cases, e.g. uphold/strikedown, activist/restraint, conservative/liberal etc. (Click here) |
| How a media outlet that takes their job seriously operates(click here) An example of how the drive-by media fails. This story was not covered eventhough the turnout exceeded most anti-Israel and other liberal activities and demonstrations that do get covered(click here) Nouriel Roubini aka Dr. Doom favors bank nationalization in the short run. This article about him makes some points at the end about the failure of the media to adequately cover the economy in the past 8 years(click here) |
| Professor John Yoo defends adminstration memo and positions on approaches to handling post 9-11 domestic terror attack scenarios by radical muslims. (click here) |
| Here is a summary of the various cases that are testing or have tried to test Obama’s citizenship(click here). The “political question” doctrine generally keeps these cases out of the various courts so far. |
| What ‘s In The Stimulus Pork Package?(click here) |
| Fox News: Obama and Roberts Faceoff On Judicial Cases (click here) |
| Do government stimulus packages work? For one view (click here) For a law professor’s review of a book that punches holes in the Roosevelt recovery myth (click here) |
| “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana. This is one reason why this course has considerable historical content. See fine piece by Amir Taheri, long time T.V.news commentator, Iranian born journalist, and author, on Obama’s “pathetic” speech and erroneous comments in his Al Arabiya T.V. talk about state of U.S.-Muslim relations 20 and 30 years ago. (click here) |
| George Will on Judicial Activism, Natural Law and California Proposition Against Gay Marriage(click here) |
| What Justices won’t say in public eventhough they are now appearing on major media much more often than in the past (Click here) |
| Interesting perspective on Justice Thomas and I pretty much agree with it. (Click here) |
| Rush Limbaugh comments on Bears Saints concerning most people do not know how much more they have to give–In case you missed Dr. Sager’s similar comments on the 1st Day of Class (click here) |
| Joel Grossman: Important Concepts About Marbury(click here) |
| Jefferson on Marbury(click here) |
| Are consevatives demented? And is the campus diverse? 2 articles (Click here) |
| Making a federal case out of everything. (click here} |
| This is an interesting article on taxes and the ownership society with context being provided by theories of protecting property rights which in turn relate to Fletcher, Dartmouth College and Charles River Bridge(click here) |
| Why Dr. Sager should not be teaching. An unliberal view by someone who claims to be a liberal along with some further student comments(click here) |
| This brief article about changes may provide some historical perspective on many of the cases we read. As we move though the semester see how many cases can be reasonably related to something in this article.(click here) |
| Obama removes “creator from Declaration of Independence(click here) |