Category Archive

Last month the Washington Post published my response to an op-ed written by one of its columnists, Michael Gerson, on felon voting.  Here’s what I wrote: “If you’re not willing to follow the law yourself, then you should not have a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do, directly or indirectly, when you vote.  Mr. Gerson implied that Florida’s law was racially motivated, but a federal court of appeals ruled [[11-1] in 2005 that it was not.  “We have certain minimum, objective standards of responsibility and commitment to our laws that we require before entrusting …

“My only agenda is to be a good judge.” –Antonin Scalia, in his 1986 Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing I wrote this article for The Weekly Standard in 2006 and am republishing it here this week in light of the fact that we have a new Justice—Brett Kavanaugh—and he is a jurist who has echoed Scalia’s aspiration, that of being a good judge. Forgive the length of this piece, but it does cover many things about Scalia that are worth knowing: what the judicial power is, what originalism and textualism are, what the Living Constitution is, and why we should …

Two items in the news recently highlight the creepiness of racial preferences. First, do you think it’s a good idea for medical schools to consider race, instead of simply who’s the best qualified, in deciding whom to admit?  To put it another way, would you like it if you knew your doctor might have been admitted in part for some reason other than his or her likely ability to become a good doctor? I explained to a reporter why such preferential treatment is a bad idea, and am quoted in this article.   Here’s the full response I emailed to …

The government says there is evidence strongly suggesting that Harvard may be engaging in ‘racial balancing.’  The lawsuit claiming that Harvard College discriminates on the basis of race is scheduled to be heard starting on October 15. I wrote the piece below for The Weekly Standard, praising the Justice Department for filing a Statement of Interest in the case. As the date approaches the department may add to its filing. There is a lot to be tried, as I point out in the article. If it reaches the Supreme Court, the case could generate a landmark decision. The Justice Department …

A few weeks ago on National Review Online, where I’m a contributing editor, there was a good exchange among David French, Reihan Salam, and yours truly, begun by David’s post, “There’s a Need for More Constructive Conservatism on Race.”  Below are my responses, first to David, and then to Reihan, who had replied to me. *          *          * Thanks for your post, David. I’d offer a few thoughts. First, the principal reason for the stubbornness of racial disparities in this country is family structure — i.e., out-of-wedlock birthrates. About seven out of ten African Americans are born out-of-wedlock, more than …

Next week, on September 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill retired Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court.  One item that has drawn some attention, and will doubtless draw additional attention at the hearings, is a brief the Mr. Kavanaugh helped author for the Center for Equal Opportunity and other clients before the Supreme Court in 1999.  You can read that brief here. We thought that, as a CEO supporter, you might be interested in the Washington Post article excerpted below, which discusses that brief and what it …

“Charlottesville” was one year ago.  That is, this time last August the “Unite the Right” march took place there (featuring Nazis and other white-power advocates), along with counterprotests, and finally a death when one of the counterprotestors was deliberately hit by a car.   The anniversary has been much in the news, and so I happened to re-read what I sent to Center for Equal Opportunity supporters a year ago, and thought it has stood up pretty well.  So I’m sending it around again.  Note that the Harvard subplot remains in the news, and that CEO is very much involved in …

That’s the question conservatives will quit asking within the next five years, as we should have an answer by then. If the answer is that Brett Kavanaugh has not proved to be a judicial conservative, that will be keenly disappointing—especially given his views about judging (he’s an originalist and a textualist) and also his actual judging in cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (he showed no activist inclinations). In a piece published last month in The Weekly Standard, I took a look at the long-running effort to have sitting a conservative majority (at least five …

The brief:  A few weeks ago I wrote about the Center for Equal Opportunity’s amicus brief in Hand v. Scott; see this link.  The basic claim there is that it the State of Florida’s system of restoring the right to vote to felons on a case-by-case basis is too “discretionary” and not mechanical enough; as we pointed out, however, it’s hard to see how it can be mechanically determined if a felon has turned over a new leaf, and besides this an odd argument from the side of the aisle that opposes, for example, sentencing guidelines because they do not …

I wrote the piece below (published in The Weekly Standard) when Justice Kennedy stepped down. I discussed (briefly) the Justice’s record over his 30 years on the Supreme Court. Here I would add that on race-based affirmative action in admissions, an issue we closely follow here at CEO, Kennedy could disappoint even while providing reasons to be optimistic. Consider his opinion for the Court two years ago in the University of Texas case upholding a racial admissions policy that should have been struck down. The ruling, however, was narrow and may have little precedential value. And Kennedy was clear about …