In its final brief in the Obamacare saga, PLF has joined forces with several other pro-freedom groups in challenging the constitutionality of the Individual Mandate provision of Obamacare. This is our eleventh brief challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare. You can read it here. In it, we argue that the Mandate exceeds Congress’ constitutional authority to [...]
The February issue of Cato Unbound focuses on substantive due process. The opening essay, by me, is adapted from my article, In Defense of Substantive Due Process. Responses will be coming soon from Professors Gary Lawson, Lawrence Rosenthal, and Ryan Williams.
The greatest lawyer in the Anglo-American common law tradition would have been 460 today, had he lived.
When it comes to free speech rights, the Supreme Court typically applies the rule of “strict scrutiny,” which holds that a government restriction on free speech is presumed unconstitutional, until the government proves otherwise. The reason is that, given the importance of freedom of speech, courts should “not presume acquiescence in the [...]
K.C. Johnson has an insightful blog post on the collapse of serious American history scholarship, due in large part to the influence of politically correct fads in the academy. Johnson notes that the recent Montana Supreme Court decision regarding campaign finance restrictions relied heavily on scholarship about Montana history, yet the court [...]
Today Pacific Legal Foundation filed this motion in the case of St. Louis entrepreneur Michael Munie, asking the court to strike down a Missouri state law that essentially forbids anyone from going into the moving business without first getting permission from the existing moving companies. To be more precise, it’s illegal to [...]
A lot of conservatives, and some libertarians, have made a point of attacking or ridiculing the legal theory of substantive due process. I think a lot of these criticisms are misleading, unfair, or misinformed—and I think that substantive due process is a valid legal theory, and one that is central to our [...]
One of the stranger legacies of modern “constitutional law” is the separation of liberty concepts and government-structure concepts—that is, the notion that we can speak on one hand of arguments about federal authority, and on the other about the rights that are protected in the Bill of Rights or other constitutional provisions. [...]
Pacific Legal Foundation today filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the justices to review a Los Angeles City ordinance that deprives grocery store owners of the right to choose their own workforce. On behalf of the California Grocers Association—a trade group that represents some 600 grocery store owners in [...]
This morning, Pacific Legal Foundation—joined again by our friends at Americans for Free Choice in Medicine, the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, and our client Matt Sissel—filed this brief in the U.S. Supreme Court urging it to review Virginia’s lawsuit against the Obama Administration’s health care law. This is the second brief PLF filed this week [...]