The Last Time Filibusters Threatened A Constitutional Meltdown

By Lyle Denniston

The Republicans’ frustration with Democratic filibusters of Bush nominees to appeals courts reached a new level in May 2005. The Republican Senate leaders announced that, if the filibusters continued, they would attempt a drastic procedure – one that soon would be called the “nuclear option” for its capacity to destroy the capacity of the Senate to work together at all.

Read the full article here.

Featured Guest Blogger: Lyle Denniston

Of “Standing” and “Injury” and Something Called “Ashwander Doctrine”

Peering Through the Looking-glass at the Constitutional Challenges to “Obama-care”

When Americans join in a hearty fight over a major public policy, they usually prove that Alexis de Toqueville was right. The shrewd French observer of life in America wrote in 1831: "Scarcely any political question arises in the United States that is not resolved, sooner or later, into a judicial question." With the sweeping new federal law on health care, that happened sooner: within moments after President Obama signed the measure into law, its constitutionality was challenged in federal courts in Michigan, Virginia and Florida.

Featured Guest Blogger: Lyle Denniston

Court to Face Question of Anonymity in Public Advocacy

When Americans engaged in perhaps their most important-ever political debate – whether to ratify the new Constitution drafted in 1787 – most of the leading advocates on each side wrote and spoke behind a shroud of anonymity. There was “Publius,” the three anonymous Founders who together wrote the highly influential Federalist Papers. On the other side, the Anti-Federalists, making compelling arguments against the new document, penned their views under such names as “Cato,” “Brutus,” “the Federal Farmer,” and others. Today, we know who they were (or have good guesses about it – especially, about the identities of the Anti-Federalists).

Featured Guest Blogger: Lyle Denniston

Constitutional Cloning: How the Court Came to View the Corporation as a “Person”

Congress, it seems obvious, had real people in mind when, in 1866, it drafted what would become the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, assuring protection for the rights of “persons.” As matters have turned out, that would be only partly right. A corporation, usually thought of as an “artificial being,” not a human being, is a “person” in the constitutional sense, and it has constitutional rights.

Featured Guest Blogger: Lyle Denniston

The Mind’s War Wounds…and the Constitution

In the annals of crime in America, the murders that George Porter, Jr., committed in Florida in October 23 years ago were tragically commonplace. A stormy relationship between a man and his live-in girlfriend, spiraling downward into threats, the man departs then returns to stalk the woman, his mood darkens, he steals a gun, spends a night drinking, and then he murders, twice. First, the former girlfriend is shot dead, then her new boyfriend is gunned down. The killer is tried and convicted of both killings and gets the death penalty for one, life in prison for the other.