Daily Archive: June 28, 2012

The League Of Ordinary Electors

In a post, and then in a comment thread about the Electoral College, Ryan Noonan develops the idea that the original intent of the Electoral College was for informed, educated people of diverse backgrounds,...

Open Thread: How do you discover a right?

In this post, my esteemed colleague Jason Kuznicki says: Rights claims are generalized moral claims about how humans should treat one another, whether in this society or any other. They are discovered, not created....

On Roberts: Not a Fan of the Butterfly Effect

The Atlantic‘s Andrew Cohen pulls out some choice quotes from today’s SCOTUS opinion penned by Chief Justice Roberts: “The individual mandate, however, does not regulate existing commercial activity. It instead compels individuals to become active in...

Prognostication: A Flashback

Below is a repost of something I posted on December 16, 2009, several months before PPACA was finally enacted.  As you will note, the post predicts the following: 1. Whether the mandate would be...

Big Thursday Announcements

United States v. Alvarez — Ninth Circuit affirmed, the Stolen Valor Act is unconstitutional. Breakdown is Concurrence plurality by Kennedy, joined by Roberts, Ginsburg. Breyer and Kagan suggest that statute could be re-written to comply with...

Arguments FOR The Electoral College?

I’m reading Akhil Reed Amar’s book, America’s Constitution: A Biography (on a blog recommendation from Peter Sagal), and it’s really excellent, like most everything Amar writes, says, or does. I just got to the part...