Posts Tagged ‘Fourteenth Amendment’

Same-Sex Marriage: The Fight to Shape “the Next Shoe”

Judge Feldman tried to draw comfort from the fact that Windsor did not employ the magic phrases “intermediate scrutiny” or “heightened scrutiny.” I would liken that comfort to saying that it’s anybody’s game with two out at the bottom of the ninth inning when the score is 20-0.

Missing from the Awlaki memo: Almost everything that really matters

Due process is flexible, in light of the circumstances. But what kind of meaningful trial could U.S. citizen and terror suspect Anwar Awlaki have received if the government were allowed to kill him first, and try him afterwards? Once you concede Awlaki had a due process interest in his life – and one always has a due process interest in one’s life – then a post-deprivation trial must by definition have failed the due process test. That test never yields a result where the amount of due process owed to the private citizen is zero, both before and after deprivation of the due process interest. That’s why death penalty appeals are so long and tortuous: if you don’t get it right before you execute the defendant, there is no opportunity to correct it.

Two Things About Jersey City

But if trying a case in highly diverse Jersey City has taught me anything, it’s that those multi-colored young diners sitting in that McDonald’s, swigging (yes) Coke, are really our kids, our heirs and our successors. And our system won’t change much as they come into their inheritance. Nothing to fear.

Normandy, Four Kinds of Soldiers, and the Draft: Some Thoughts

With good leadership, with Eisenhowers and Roosevelts, young men and women will predictably enlist in acceptable numbers. With bad leadership, the discipline of the enlistment market will act as a check. It would be both foolhardy and morally wrong to remove that check.