Testimony before the Subcommittee on the Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law, Committee on the Judiciary, United States… Read more
Nullification Is Unconstitutional The Nullification Temptation: In order to challenge the federal government’s unconstitutional actions, states… Read more
Abstract: Are maple syrup felons sufficiently heinous that they should be imprisoned for perhaps as long as 45 years? Some members of the U.S. Senate seem to believe the answer is yes: How else to explain the provisions of the Maple Agriculture Protection and… Read more
On this week’s Scribecast, Rob Bluey and Lachlan Markay interview Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Damien Schiff, who will argue a case on behalf of Mike and Chantell Sackett at the U.S. Supreme Court. Schiff discusses the facts behind Sackett v. EPA and why the federal… Read more
Testimony before the Subcommittee on the Constitution,Committee on the Judiciary,United States House of Representatives December 14, 2011 My name is Andrew Grossman. I am a Visiting Legal Fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. The views I express in this testimony are… Read more
Abstract: The past 75 years in America have witnessed an avalanche of new criminal laws, the result of which is a problem known as “overcriminalization.” This phenomenon is likely to lead to a variety of problems for a public trying to comply with the law in good faith. While many… Read more
This week, the House of Representatives is expected to vote on legislation to reform the way federal regulations are made. The Regulatory Accountability Act (RAA), sponsored by Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), would require all federal agencies to examine more thoroughly proposed rules before they are adopted while increasing the ability… Read more
Federal law prohibits state colleges and universities from providing in-state tuition rates to illegal aliens “on the basis of residence within the State”—unless the same in-state rates are offered to all citizens of the United States. Today, 12 states are circumventing this federal law,… Read more
James Carafano discusses deportation rules. … Read more
It's become a common tactic for President Obama and his appointees: When the data shows how inept you are or how dangerous your policies are, cook the books and create new data. They did it with the stimulus package, Obamacare and the debt ceiling. Now they're… Read more
Abstract: Why has the Obama Administration, as part of its lawsuit against the Arizona statute that attempts to help enforce national immigration laws, not claimed that the state law requires or allows illegal racial profiling? The answer is surprisingly simple: Arizona state law actually… Read more
Currently, two of the PATRIOT Act’s key provisions are up for reauthorization by Congress. As the deadline draws nearer, it is important to re-engage on the importance of the PATRIOT Act and explain how the law helps authorities to track down terror leads and dismantle plots before the public is… Read more
Too Many Laws, Too Little Oversight Too Many New Laws: Federal criminal law has… Read more
Abstract: Just before Christmas 2009, 11-year-old Sarah Haley Foxwell was brutally raped and murdered by a convicted high-risk sex offender, Thomas J. Leggs. Although Leggs was classified as a high-risk offender in Delaware, because of inconsistencies in sex offender classification between states, Maryland identified… Read more
Editor's Note: Between various presidential nominations now bottled up in the U.S. Senate, and now the intense focus on a nomination to the United States Supreme Court, there have been numerous musings about presidential nominations, the advice and consent of the Senate, and the appointment of judges of the Supreme Court and other officers of the… Read more
Willful blindness is not knowledge; and judges should not broaden a legislative proscription by analogy. —Justice Anthony Kennedy, May 31, 2011[1] A recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in a patent lawsuit may, somewhat surprisingly,… Read more
The rapid expansion of federal criminal law, beyond almost all prudential and constitutional limits, may not be the first thing to leap to mind when one thinks of key problems with American criminal law. But the existence now of over 4,450 federal criminal offenses is itself a problem that implicates… Read more
Abstract: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is not so much a set of norms to regulate conduct as an authorization to administrators to produce norms to regulate conduct. Implementation of the Act will require many years and literally thousands of administrative… Read more
Abstract: Although it is readily apparent that conservatism is united in its principled hostility to modern Progressive Liberalism, it is often more difficult to pin down just what the movement stands for. Johnathan O’Neill suggests that a focus… Read more
Abstract: The three anti-terrorism tools scheduled to sunset on May 27, 2011—the authority to conduct “roving” wiretaps of terrorist suspects, to obtain “business records” relating to terrorism investigations, and to conduct surveillance… Read more
Abstract: In asserting that the Boeing Company is engaging in unfair labor practices by establishing a new aircraft assembly facility in South Carolina, a right-to-work state, instead of Washington State, which is heavily unionized, the National Labor Relations… Read more
Google is growing up. That was the message company representatives shared at Heritage this week on the Silicon Valley...… Read more
The House of Representatives is poised to pass legislation today that prohibits the National Labor Relations Board from...… Read more
Just imagine if a President announced that his administration would not be prosecuting anyone for violating the...… Read more
This week the State Department has placed some 64 Russian officials on a visa blacklist that would prevent them from...… Read more
A bill introduced in the Russian Duma last Tuesday would allow the Foreign Ministry to blacklist foreigners believed to...… Read more
This week, Judge Roger Vinson of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Florida became the...… Read more
Heads of state and global leaders gathered at the U.N. this week to bemoan a lack of progress on meeting many of the...… Read more
As everyone knows, Arizona, chafed by the Federal government’s inability to control the flow of illegal immigrants into...… Read more
A seemingly uneventful transition of power will take place today in the small Central American country of Honduras as...… Read more
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood at the Lincoln Memorial and admonished America to return to its First...… Read more
Director, Rule of Law Programs and Senior Legal Fellow