Reasonable people can disagree as to whether cameras should be allowed in the courtroom.  I personally think they should not, because cameras tend to make people do stupid things like wear Star Trek uniforms to court.  But I am willing to suspend that opinion for purposes of any oral argument that...

(See here for Part I, background on the oral arguments.) Today's oral arguments were fascinating. A few thoughts: Retroactive nullification looks dead. No one seemed to be buying Ken Starr's semantic argument that it's not really retroactive, and his stab at primary versus secondary retroactivity di...

Eureka! We’d been looking for much of the day for a good piece to gear you up, LB Readers, for tomorrow’s Prop 8 arguments, taking place out in San Francisco at the California Supreme Court (pictured). This piece, from the San Francisco Chronicle, is really as good as any we’ve see...

Loyal LB readers should already have their Tivos set to the California Channel this Thursday for the California Supreme Court arguments over Proposition 8, the legislation that passed in November banning same-sex marriage. But for those on the fence, here’s another reason to tune in: to check ...

Corky Ra, the founder of Summum, stands next to a mummified version of his dog, Butch, a Doberman, finished in gold leaf, in Salt Lake City in 1995. (AP) May governments decide what to display in a public park without running afoul of the First Amendment? The Supreme Court answered a rather emphatic...

Getty Images President Lyndon B Johnson discusses the Voting Rights Act with civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King Jr. The act, part of President Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ program trebled the number of black voters in the south. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images) Last mont...

Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs AB 1179 into law, Oct. 7, 2005. The bill restricts the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. (AP) The video game industry has a voluntary rating system that, among other things, assigns each game one of roughly thirty content descriptors, including...

SLAW has had some recent posts on the availability of the works of Charles Darwin being available online (here and here), presumably as a result of tomorrow being the 200th anniversary of his birth. Likely because of that anniversary, PBS in Buffalo/Toronto broadcast last night a documentary called ...

A three-judge panel of the Eleventh Circuit has today overturned an injunction blocking the Miami-Dade School Board from removing a children’s book ¡Vamos a Cuba! from elementary and middle school libraries. The case below was ACLU of Fla, Inc. v. Miami-Dade County Sch. Bd., 439 F. Supp....

Professor Rick Hasen has a piece up at Slate on the D.C. Voting Rights bill. He says that the bill—which would give D.C. residents a voting member of the House of Representatives—is "probably unconstitutional," but that "Congress should pass it" anyway. That's what the Washington Post editorial ...