By: Mark Joseph Stern, Slate Magazine Originally published on April 9, 2015 One key problem with originalism—the theory that the Constitution should be interpreted as its drafters understood it—is that the men who wrote our constitution had some pretty barbaric views about humanity. The author of the Bill of Rights, James Madison, owned hundreds of

Nearly two dozen major corporations, including Walmart, Nordstrom, and Safeway, are bankrolling a quiet, multistate lobbying effort to make it harder for workers hurt on the job to access lost wages and medical care—the benefits collectively known as workers’ compensation. The companies have financed a lobbying group, the Association for Responsible Alternatives to Workers’ Compensation

John Roberts is entering the stretch run of his tenth term as chief justice of the United States. In-depth assessments will come, but the preliminary results are plain. The man who vowed to act as a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes has led a Court in which racial and religious minorities, women, workers and

A former Louisiana prosecutor who helped send a now-exonerated inmate to death row in 1984 is condemning the capital punishment process and apologizing for his role in the conviction. In a letter to the editor of the Times of Shreveport, former prosecutor A.M. “Marty” Stroud III said there was no exculpatory evidence in his possession,

By: Richard Hasen, SCOTUS blog Originally published on March 25, 2015 It is easy to read the Supreme Court’s five-to-four decision in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama and Alabama Democratic Conference v. Alabama as a mostly inconsequential case giving a small, and perhaps only temporary, victory for minority voters in a dispute over the redrawing of Alabama’s

Employees group By: Eliot Kleinberg, Palm Beach Post Originally published on March 18, 2015 The group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility says it’s filed a complaintarguing a state employee was reprimanded for speaking about climate change at an official meeting and keeping notes on the subject in official minutes. The complaint says that on March 9, Barton