Its been a few years since I have actively written about the Supreme Court, but at the encouragement of a friend who found my twitter activities inadequate from time to time, I have decided to relaunch this. If I have more to say about an activity at the Court, or public policy I feel knowledgeable enough to write about, I will do it here.
I am a Free Speech absolutist. I read the constitution quite literally, and I attribute my intellectual heritage to Justice Hugo Black and a lesser extent Justice Douglas. This, more often then I would certainly like, leaves me holding more conservative legal opinions than my preferred public policy outcome. I am, above all else, a civil libertarian, and a liberal second. I truly think the Constitution often times dictates outcomes which expand individual liberty. This is all to say that when the First Amendment restrains the legislature by commanding that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances," it quite literally mean that Congress lacks the authority to legislate under any of those domains. Not sometimes, not when necessary for some noble cause, not rarely, or maybe-just-this-once. And that is why this blog is dedicated to that simple command that has all too often been broken in our nations short history.
I left the former Congress Shall Make No Law to die, and this may very well be destine to share the same fate. We shall see.
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