American law has moved in a leftward direction over the last 20 years, steadily restricting use of the death penalty and criminal sentencing, and expanding lawsuits against businesses, thanks largely to the Supreme Court.

But to some left-leaning journalists who write about the Supreme Court, none of this has ever happened, and the Supreme Court, which is responsible for many of these liberal changes, remains a conservative boogeyman.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, America’s most famous Supreme Court reporter, writes today that in the Supreme…

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Your host Richard Morrison brings you Episode 51 of the LibertyWeek podcast, along with special guest co-host Jeremy Lott and Fellow in Regulatory Studies Ryan Young. We start with Judge Sotomayor in the Senate hot seat, a privacy threat from “smart” passports and why Rep. Dan Lipinski has decided your suitcase is too big. The discussion continues with Rep. John Murtha’s expanding corruption scandal, beer news from the Beaver State and the arrival of Wal-Mart in India. We wrap up with…

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Obama is firing an inspector general, Gerald Walpin, who uncovered wrongdoing by a prominent Obama supporter and opposed letting him off the hook.

Ironically, when Obama recently nominated a liberal judge to the Supreme Court, his Administration trumpeted Walpin’s support for her.

Walpin is the Inspector General for the Americorps program, which is riddled with waste, fraud, and ideological misuse of taxpayer funds. Walpin “has been doing a good job” and he has “identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent,” notes Senator…

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The full Supreme Court just vacated the stay that Justice Ginsburg earlier entered that had temporarily blocked the government’s plan for Chrysler. Why it did so is mysterious, since it noted that it was not ruling on the merits of the legal and constitutional challenges to the government’s actions, and cautioned that “a denial of a stay is not a decision on the merits of the underlying legal issues.”

Justice Ginsburg yesterday granted a stay temporarily blocking the government’s plan for Chrysler, which…

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg yesterday granted a stay temporarily blocking the government’s plan for Chrysler, which would give effectively give most of the company to the UAW union, while paving the way for a dubious merger with Fiat. The stay was sought by pension funds that were (along with taxpayers) ripped off by the government’s plan.

The pension funds deserve to win, since the government has trampled on federal bankruptcy laws, the federal TARP bailout statute, and the Constitution in forcing its plan…

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Richard Morrison and Cord Blomquist team up with special guest co-host Jeremy Lott to bring you Episode 41. We begin with a farewell to famed quarterback, Republican Congressman and former CEI Distinguished Fellow Jack Kemp. We then move on to China’s flu-related roundup of Mexican nationals, the race to replace Justice Souter and the new opportunity to SuperPoke the President of the United States. We round out the show with Andrew Cuomo’s allegations of scandal and a modest helping of Olympic News.

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Liberal Supreme Court Justice David Souter is retiring. On social issues, this makes little difference: whoever replaces him will satisfy liberal litmus tests, like supporting racial preferences and partial-birth abortion the way Souter did.

But on economics, where Souter was more moderate, it will matter a lot: Souter was willing to occasionally overturn excessive punitive damage awards, and overturn state regulations that were preempted by federal law (like in Watters v. Wachovia (2007), where I filed a brief on behalf of economists and law professors). Some…

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I certainly take Alex’s point that libertarians can disagree about the appropriateness of federal preemption of state tort law. Indeed, Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion lays out a strong textual case against implied preemption of state law in all cases. However, there are a few points I was not able to make in yesterday’s post that better elucidate why preemption is better policy given the narrow facts presented in Wyeth v. Levine. And, Justice Alito’s dissenting opinion — after pointing out a few…

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The Supreme Court handed down its decision this morning in the Wyeth v. Levine federal preemption case, holding, by a 6-3 majority, that “Federal law does not pre-empt [plaintiff Diana] Levine’s claim that [the Wyeth drug] Phenergan’s label did not contain an adequate warning about the IV-push method of administration.” Justice Stevens wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyr, and with Justice Thomas concurring in the judgment. Justice Alito wrote a compelling dissenting opinion, joined by…

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