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Dissenting Justice: Westboro Ruling Goes Too Far
By Joseph Schuman - AOL NewsWhere should the nation draw the line on free speech? For Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the defense of First Amendment rights expressed by today's majority ruling in the Westboro Baptist Church case goes too far. The 8-1 decision found that the fringe church's hate-filled picketing at the funeral of a Marine corporal killed in Iraq qualified as public discourse protected by the First Amendment. Church members claim soldiers' deaths are God's punishment for U.S. tolerance of homosexuality. Kris Connor, Getty Images Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr. was the lone ...
Westboro Court Decision Pits Free Speech Against Common Decency
By Andrea Stone - AOL NewsWASHINGTON -- Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church may have won their case in the U.S. Supreme Court today, but not even the most ardent advocates of free speech are rejoicing. "On a personal level, I can't imagine a single person in this country who doesn't feel the pain of this father" whose Marine son's funeral was picketed by the hate-spewing church, said Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center. "But a free and open marketplace of ideas requires us to hear positions and views that we don't like and which deeply offend us." The Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that ...
Supreme Court Sides With Westboro Baptist Church; Twitter Reluctantly Agrees
By Torie Bosch - AOL NewsWho ever said that free speech would be easy? Today, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the controversial Westboro Baptist Church, a small group, made up mostly of members of the Phelps family, that stages protests at military funerals (and other places). The case, Snyder v. Phelps, was filed by the father of a fallen soldier, whose funeral was protested by Westboro. "Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and -- as it did here -- inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker," ...
Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Military Funeral Protesters
By not in system - AOL NewsWASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment protects fundamentalist church members who mount anti-gay protests outside military funerals, despite the pain they cause grieving families. The court voted 8-1 in favor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan. The decision upheld an appeals court ruling that threw out a $5 million judgment to the father of a dead Marine who sued church members after they picketed his son's funeral. Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images Members of the Westboro Baptist Church, a Kansas church known for its vehement anti-gay ...
Elena Kagan Says Learning the Ropes at Supreme Court Has Been a 'Whirlwind'
By Tom Kavanagh - Politics DailyIn her first interview since joining the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan tells C-SPAN that she uses a Kindle for the "endless reading" of briefs, has "extraordinary respect" for Chief Justice John Roberts' penetrating exploration of issues before the court, and that acclimating to the highest court in the land is "like drinking out of a fire hose. . . . It's always something new, something different, a lot to learn." The interview, conducted last month, will air on Sunday, Dec. 19, at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m., and 12:30 a.m. Dec. 20. In excerpts released by C-SPAN, the former dean of the ...
Are U.S. Immigration Laws Biased Against Unmarried Dads?
By Bonnie Erbé - Politics DailyFederal law banned gender discrimination in the workplace in the 1970s, and for most purposes, it's illegal outside the workplace, too. But a case that came before the Supreme Court this week shows gender discrimination still exists in immigration law in terms of residency requirements for unmarried fathers versus mothers. The Sacramento Bee describes the case as follows: "The issue came before the court in the case of a deported drug dealer who was born in Tijuana, Mexico, in 1974 of a Mexican mother, but raised in San Diego by his American father. When Ruben Flores-Villar was about be ...
Bachmann Caucus to Start Offering Classes
By Andrea Stone - AOL News
WASHINGTON (Nov. 10) -- Is Glenn Beck University opening a satellite campus on Capitol Hill? If tea party darling Michele Bachmann gets her way, conservative broadcaster Sean Hannity, Fox legal analyst Andrew Napolitano and David Barton, a Christian evangelist who has said church-state separation is "a myth," will make up the faculty roster when the first classes of her new constitutional conservative caucus convene in the next Congress. The Minnesota Republican recently spoke on Beck's radio show about a new academic counterpart to the tea party caucus she founded earlier this year. Role ...
Kagan's First Vote Not Enough to Stop Execution
By David Knowles - AOL News
(Oct. 27)--Welcome to the U.S. Supreme Court, where decisions are final. Elena Kagan cast her first vote Tuesday night as the newest member of the court. Unfortunately for convicted killer Jeffrey Landrigan, Kagan cast her vote with the minority of justices, who failed to stay Landrigan's execution by lethal injection. The 5-4 ruling -- which was not signed, but received backing from Justices John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito -- overturned decisions by a Phoenix judge and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to stay ...
Elena Kagan's First Day: Fast Start, Early Out
By David Knowles - AOL News
(Oct. 4) -- The Kagan has been released! Elena Kagan, the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court, waited approximately 15 minutes into her first case as an active jurist today before asking a question. The case, Ransom v. MBNA, involves bankruptcy law and marks Kagan's entry onto the ideologically divided Supreme Court bench. Following questions from Justices Samuel Alito, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer, Kagan waded into her new career by asking a lawyer for Jason Ransom why his client, who owed $82,000 in credit card debt, should be allowed to shield his monthly ...
New Supreme Court Set to Start New Term
By not in system - AOL News
WASHINGTON (Oct. 4) -- The Supreme Court is starting its new term with a new justice, Elena Kagan, and bad news for hundreds of parties trying to get their cases heard at the nation's highest court. The justices are expected to start work Monday by denying many of the nearly 2,000 appeals that piled up in recent months. The court also is hearing argument in a bankruptcy dispute and an appeal by criminal defendants seeking shorter prison terms. Supreme Court of the United States Elena Kagan, here with President Barack Obama, begins her first term on the Supreme Court on Monday. During the ...
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