Happy Father’s Day to all the dads out there. My dad died over a quarter of a century ago, and I’m thinking about him today and some of the lessons he taught me. Dad taught me about equality. So many parents teach their children “the Golden Rule,” but for too many, it’s just words. With…
Search Results for: Westboro
Their Own Private Hell
Dahlia Lithwick writes about the recent Supreme Court decision in Snyder v. Phelps, the Westboro Baptist Church First Amendment case: Neither Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion in the case nor Justice Samuel Alito’s angry lone dissent, adds much to existing doctrine or precedent. What makes both opinions interesting is what they leave out. The…
Justice Samuel Alito, the Supreme Court’s privacy cop
GWU law professor Jeffrey Rosen writes: Justice Samuel Alito has become America’s privacy cop. By an 8 to 1 vote this past week, the Supreme Court upheld the First Amendment right of Kansas’s Westboro Baptist Church to engage in hateful protests at military funerals. The lone dissenter was Alito, who insisted that the grieving relatives…
Recommended reading: What Does Snyder v. Phelps Mean for Privacy Law?
Jack Balkin has a very thought-provoking piece on Balkinization today. It begins: The result in Snyder v. Phelps was not unexpected. But the Court’s decision, written by Chief Justice Roberts, has important implications for informational privacy law that many people, focusing on the antics of the Westboro Baptist Church, may have missed. In his majority opinion, Roberts…