News & Commentary

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who announced his retirement on Wednesday after more than 30 years on the Supreme Court, was a Republican appointee who over time became the swing vote on many of the court’s most controversial decisions. Especially after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor retired in 2006, as Kennedy went, so went constitutional law. Sometimes he swung right, other times left. But whichever way he went, more often than not, his was the deciding vote. We’ve called it the Roberts Court, after Chief Justice John Roberts, but it’s been the Kennedy Court in all but name.  Kennedy was a conservative. One study identified him as the 10th

As the public defender for Glynn County, Georgia, Reid Zeh is entrusted with advocating for the most vulnerable members of his community when they come up against the criminal justice system.  Rather than do his job, however, Zeh routinely ignores his clients or worse — extorts them to enrich himself. That’s what happened when Robert Cox and his 75-year-old mother, Barbara Hamilton, came to Z

Antwon Rose Jr. was a Black 17-year-old honors student at Woodland Hills High School near Pittsburgh. He died last week because an East Pittsburgh police officer shot him three times from behind. Rose’s story is at once terrifying and all too familiar, in a nation where hundreds of people of color die from police violence every year and where even 10-year old Black children are so afraid of police that their first reaction is to run even if they have done nothing wrong.  On the day he died, Rose was one of two passengers in a “

Tuesday is a dark day for American jurisprudence and the values we hold dear as a nation. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Under the false guise of protecting national security, the justices sanctioned a policy that targets people because of their religion. The ruling is an example of what happens when the government b

Agonized screams of immigrant children begging for their forcibly separated parents are now our most direct experience of horrors perpetrated by the Trump-Sessions-Nielsen family separations policy. Amidst the kids’ unforgettably sad, piercing cries on the recording, something else stands out: a Border Patrol agent’s Spanish commentary. “Well, we have an orchestra here,” he jokes. “What’s missing is a conductor.”  Agents are also verbally

A Virginia restaurant’s decision over the weekend to refuse to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders has many conservatives rightly riled up. To turn away a paying customer because she is Donald Trump’s press secretary flouts not only rules of civility, but an essential premise of an open society: that public spaces and public businesses should be open to all. But being uncivil or rude is not illegal. And those objecting to the Red Hen’s treatment of Sanders, many of them conservatives who identify with her and feel her pain, should consider the implications of their reactions for the much more common, harmful, and illegal phenomenon of businesses refusing to serve gay and lesbian couples seeking cakes and other services to celebrate their weddings. Public-accommodation laws are designed to ensure that everyone has equal status in the public sphere. A democratic soci

In a pair of religious freedom rulings this month, the Supreme Court took dramatically different approaches to a basic constitutional question: When does anti-religious hostility by government officials violate the religious liberty guarantees of the First Amendment? The wildly divergent results in those two high-profile cases —

The Supreme Court today rejected the challenge to President Trump’s Muslim Ban. In its 5-to-4 decision, the court failed to make good on principles at the heart of our constitutional system — including the absolute prohibition on official disfavor of a particular religion. The fight against the ban will continue, but the court’s decision is devastating. History will not be kind to the court’s approval of an unfounded and blatantly anti-Muslim order.  By now the story of this shameful policy is familiar. During his campaign, Trump issued a statement calling

The ACLU’s class action lawsuit to end family separation and immediately reunite children and parents has reached a pivotal point, following a June 22 status conference where the government was unable to articulate a plan to reunite thousands of children in its custody with their parents. The lack of foresight and planning is galling. For each day the government stalls, thous