Blog Posts

The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to two men in 1901: Henry Dunant, the founder of the Red Cross, and an international pacifist named Frederic Passy. The Nobel committee ought to award the prize to Wikileaks. It would reward sunshine in government, and be a fitting acknowledgement of...

"Having recognized religious doctrines as illusions, we are at once faced by a further question: may not other cultural assets of which we hold a high opinion and by which we let our lives be ruled be of a similar nature? Must not the assumptions that determine our political regulations be called...

A year or so ago, I actually flirted with the idea of becoming a judge. I was encouraged by someone with more power than sense. My ego warmed to the topic, and I spent a couple of months working the telephone seeing what would be involved and whether I would have the support necessary to make the...

Just how badly do federal prosecutors want to prosecute Waterbury State's Attorney John Connelly? Pretty badly; the vision of Connelly in handcuffs haunts the heartless corridors of the New Haven office of the Justice Department. It's the sort of vision that makes FBI agents do crazy and...

I wish I knew why motorists stopped to gawk at every bit of roadside carnage. We are drawn almost against our will to stare at the sorrow of others. I suspect the same impulse is at work in the trial of Steven Hayes. We cannot get enough of the horror of it all. It's a slasher film made real....

I've attended seminars at which Erwin Chemerinsky has spoken three or maybe four times. The first time, I was persuaded he was a genius. The second time I was a little uneasy. He speaks typically for an hour without notes of any sort, dissecting recent Supreme Court decisions with a chipper sense...

There’s something funky about the Justice Department’s lawsuit to invalidate Arizona’s immigration legislation. I keep thinking about Roe v. Wade and the right to abortion. Could it be that federalism is in its death throes? Arizona’s immigration law requires lawmen to...

In yesterday's Supreme Court opinion ruling that juveniles may not be sentenced to life without possibility of parole in non-homicide cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted that life sentences for juveniles have been rejected "the world over." Kennedy wrote that the nations of the world find such...

You could be forgiven the view that the federal government was one of limited powers. That was the framer's intent, after all. Those powers not expressly given to the federal government were retained either by the people or the state. A significant portion of our history has been a sustained...

You could be forgiven the view that the federal government was one of limited powers. That was the framer's intent, after all. Those powers not expressly given to the federal government were retained either by the people or the state. A significant portion of our history has been a sustained...