The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the Framers understood that prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would be the very opposite of freedom.

I wonder if there's just a sense that we have nothing to learn from any Supreme Court justice, including the great Chief Justice John Marshall.

A lot of conservative writers have twisted that argument in the conversation around Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel and said this is identity politics as played by liberals. And that I think what they're trying to say is that progressives are the first to say.

Over the past few years, the Supreme Court was six times more likely to accept cases from an elite group of 66 lawyers than it was from more than 99 percent of those who petitioned the court. That's the finding of a recent Reuters special report called "The Echo Chamber." It illustrates how almost half the appeals accepted by the court over a nine-year period came from this cadre of elite lawyers--many of whom have personal connections to the nine justices.

The Constitution created a framework, not a Ouija board, precisely because the Framers understood that prospect of a nation ruled for centuries by dead prophets would be the very opposite of freedom.

The First Aphorism of Religion Cases: Only the religious convictions of other people are weird. Yours are perfectly rational.

Pulling a crystalline, cogent rule out of the murk of the court's First Amendment, public forum, and Establishment Clause doctrine is an act of creation too complicated for mere mortals.