Category Archives: National Journal

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Opening Argument – How to Rebut Clarke Without Slinging Mud

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

It is said that every country has the government it deserves. Do we really deserve to have Republican and Democratic administrations alike meet their critics less with factual refutation than with indiscriminate, often mendacious attacks on the critics’ credibility, character, and motivations? Are the American people so averse to what Learned Hand called "the intolerable labor of thought" that the surest way to win their votes is to resort to crude character assassination? Or have our leaders let the transitory joys of mudslinging blind them to the strategic advantage of showing some class?

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Opening Argument – How Spain Could Bring Bush and Kerry Together

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The apparent success of terrorists in scaring the Spanish electorate into replacing one of President Bush’s closest allies with a strident Bush critic is not merely a disaster for Bush. It is a disaster for the United States, and for whoever wins the presidency in November. Terrorists may seek to use similar massacres to swing our own elections, although that might be more likely to elect Bush than John Kerry. And the rising tide of European appeasement of Al Qaeda and its ilk will threaten to isolate America for years to come.

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Opening Argument – Bush Has The Wrong Remedy to Court-Imposed Gay Marriage

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"Because of the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution (which makes every state accept ‘the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State’), gay marriage can be imposed on the entire country by a bare majority of the state supreme court of but one state…. The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act? Nonsense. It pretends to allow the states to reject marriage licenses issued in other states. But there is not a chance in hell that the Supreme Court will uphold it."

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Opening Argument – Should Foreign Law Be Used to Interpret Our Constitution?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Practitioners of the loosey-goosey approach to constitutional interpretation that maddens original-meaning conservatives such as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia are increasingly looking to a virtually unlimited source of new raw material: foreign law, including international human-rights conventions, Zimbabwe Supreme Court rulings, and whatever else might come in handy. Indeed, two of the more internationalist justices, Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have confidently predicted that (in O’Connor’s words) the justices "will find ourselves looking more frequently to the decisions of other constitutional courts."

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Opening Argument – ‘Enemy Combatants’: Inching Toward Due Process

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

The perception that the Bush administration has systematically denied due process to the more than 650 alleged "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay has both shocked Americans who care about the rule of law, me included, and done America enormous damage in world opinion. But the system may be starting to work. Indeed, it may have been working for some time better than I had thought.

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Opening Argument – John Edwards: The Lawsuit Industry Puts Its Best Face Forward

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, the charismatic personal-injury lawyer who would be president — or, perhaps, vice president — has done wonders for the image of the lawsuit industry. In more than a decade as his state’s most talented trial lawyer, Edwards won an estimated $150 million in jury awards and settlements for powerless people who had been horribly injured by reckless and negligent (and, perhaps, not so negligent) corporations and doctors. He cared passionately for his clients, believed deeply in his cases, and was apparently untainted by the ethical sleaze exhibited by some of the lawyers who have so lavishly financed his campaign. And his extraordinary ability to connect with ordinary Americans works magic on the campaign trail as well as in the courtroom.

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Opening Argument – Reporters and Sources: Look to Politics, Not Law, for Protection

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"The reporter’s constitutional right to a confidential relationship with his source stems from the broad societal interest in a full and free flow of information to the public. It is this basic concern that underlies the Constitution’s protection of a free press, … because the guarantee is not for the benefit of the press so much as for the benefit of all of us."

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Opening Argument – Did Bush, Cheney, and Powell Deliberately Mislead Us?

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Democrats are in full cry about what Los Angeles Times columnist Robert Scheer calls President Bush’s "egregious deception in leading us to war on phony intelligence." Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts asserted in October: "Before the war, week after week after week after week, we were told lie after lie after lie after lie." Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who voted to authorize the war, says, more cautiously, that Americans were "misled," especially by Vice President Cheney.

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Opening Argument – Ted Kennedy’s Excellent Idea: Disclosing Admissions Preferences

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts and other Democrats want to require universities that take federal money to disclose detailed statistics on the economic status and race of the alumni relatives they admit. The purpose is to dramatize that affluent whites are the main beneficiaries of "legacy" preferences and pressure universities to end them.

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Opening Argument – Ashcroft and Congress Are Pandering to Punitive Instincts

by Stuart Taylor, Jr.

National Journal

"When the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life," President Bush said in his State of the Union address. In proposing a $300 million program to help the 600,000 inmates released from prison each year re-enter society, he called America "the land of the second chance."