Michael M. Uhlmann

Dispelling the Myths of Abortion History by Joseph W. Dellapenna Carolina Academic Press, 1,300 pages, $95 History has not been kind to Justice Harry Blackmun’s opinion for the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade , and for good reason. It studiously avoided rudimentary facts of human biology and . . . . Continue Reading »

Concerning yesterday’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart , a few preliminary observations based on a very quick reading:The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence remains a singular embarrassment. That fact is well known by, and infuriating to, Roe ‘s sophisticated supporters and . . . . Continue Reading »

This year’s Supreme Court term was, all things considered, a fairly mild affair”if by mild is meant no declarations of freshly minted constitutional rights or sudden detours into unexplored legal territory of the sort we have come to expect in recent years. A narrow majority did declare . . . . Continue Reading »

The Supreme Court Rules:  2004by Michael M. Uhlmann For those old enough to remember the way things used to be, the media hoopla that now attends the conclusion of almost every Supreme Court term can seem, well, a bit unseemly. The old order, to be sure, had its dramatic moments when national . . . . Continue Reading »

Not so very long ago, defenders of judicial activism felt it necessary to justify how an unelected body of lifetime appointees could become the definitive voice of constitutional authority in a democratic society. One thinks, for example, of Professor Alexander Bickel of Yale Law School, who . . . . Continue Reading »

Several months on, we can begin to appreciate the full importance of the Supreme Court’s June 27, 2002 decision upholding the Cleveland school voucher program (Zelman v. Simmons-Harris). Anxious parents and children in Cleveland now possess a constitutionally sanctioned means to escape the . . . . Continue Reading »

Next to the exponential growth of government itself, the most noteworthy feature of American political institutions in the past half-century has been the rise and acceptance of judicial supremacy. The Supreme Court is widely viewed today not only as the principal guarantor of the people’s . . . . Continue Reading »

“God save the United States and this Honorable Court!” From the beginning, every session of the Supreme Court has opened with that prayerful injunction. Now that five Justices have given their constitutional blessing to partial“birth abortion, we’d clearly be better off if the . . . . Continue Reading »

Ever since Professor Woodrow Wilson laid it down as an article of Progressive faith that the (original) Constitution was inadequate to the tasks of modern governance, academic scriveners have leveled whole forests to conform its provisions with what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once called the . . . . Continue Reading »

American society may soon embark upon the most important constitutional debate since the early nineteenth century. Then the issue was slavery, and the question was whether one human being may own property in another; now the issue is assisted suicide, and the question is whether one human being may . . . . Continue Reading »