January 2006
UNC Should Pay Closer Attention to the First Amendment
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson wrote in the landmark case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) that “if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.” His words were a ringing affirmation of the freedoms of conscience and expression that are central to American liberty.
May 2004
Half a century after Brown
The flimsy and cavalier reasoning used by the Supreme Court, set a pattern of judicial activism that has put American law in disarray on all sorts of issues that extend far beyond racial cases.
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