Scholarly surveys, discussions and polls have consistently revealed a clear consensus: the leadership capacity of the founding generation — Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton and Madison — is unrivaled by any subsequent coterie of American statesman. It is true that these same academic conversations reflect agreement that Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt stand atop the list of America’s greatest presidents, with founding chief executives such as Washington and Jefferson closely on their heels, but there is, it seems, no generation of political leaders across 250 years that is comparable to those who launched the American Revolution, drafted the Declaration of Independence and wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
(Carolina Journal) – The newest member of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used a North Carolina case Wednesday to discuss the potential legal impact of shifting attitudes about marijuana.
(The Center Square) – A conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice once again called the court’s decision to hear an appeal of a three-judge panel’s ruling on the state’s congressional maps an “activist court” doing the “bidding of its political masters.”
(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision on Thursday, said private companies do not have an automatic right to sue over unlawful contracts.
The evolution in America of rationales for the cascading growth of presidential power, which began in earnest in the post-war world and followed a trajectory through the expression of the Imperial Presidency before reaching new heights in President Donald Trump’s authoritarian pretensions, has long found traction in the misappropriation and misuse of Justice Robert H. Jackson’s famous aphorism, “the Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
(The Center Square) – A conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court justice called the courts’ decision to hear a case challenging the state’s congressional maps doing the “bidding of its political masters” rather than a proper decision.
(The Center Square) — The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear a case over whether a federal prisoner can petition to expedite a prison sentence under federal law.
One of the grave consequences for American constitutionalism of the untrammeled concentration of power in the hands of President Donald Trump — the putative goal of Project 2025 — is his total control over the Department of Justice. There is no separation between President Trump and his Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former criminal defense lawyer, no independence between the White House and the DOJ. What Trump wants, Trump gets — the governing principle of authoritarianism.
(The Center Square) - The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision on Thursday, ruled in favor of an Black man convicted of capital murder in Mississippi, who said the jury that convicted him was racially biased.
North Carolina’s highest court has sided with Currituck County in an occupancy tax dispute, upheld convictions in two criminal cases involving marijuana odor, affirmed 2023 Duke Energy rate hikes challenged by the state attorney general, censured a Wake County judge, and ruled that a convicted murderer loses his right of direct appeal to the high court once he’s off death row.
