This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a very fractured majority of eight, upheld a federal law that disarms domestic abusers, deeming it sufficiently rooted in “history and tradition.” Roberts painstakingly explained that while the court’s conservative justices are still very much gun nuts, …
This is part of Opinionpalooza, Slate’s coverage of the major decisions from the Supreme Court this June. What’s remarkable is who seized on this squabble over intellectual property to launch a scathing salvo against the conservative majority’s “laser-like focus” on “supposed history and tradition”: Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who presented as a true believer in originalism when joining …
This is part of How Originalism Ate the Law, a Slate series about the legal theory that ruined everything. As another example, hardcore originalist Justice Clarence Thomas says that the Constitution’s “equal protection” does not apply to gay marriage. For instance, former Justice Antonin Scalia famously said that the 14th Amendment’s original meaning doesn’t apply to “discrimination on the basis …
