By Kenneth J. Bartschi, Partner
- Jun 8, 2018
Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission and the Long Game
For a while on the morning of June 4th, my Facebook newsfeed suggested the sky was falling because the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a baker who refused to make a custom wedding cake for a same-sex couple. The sky did have the potential to fall because a broad ruling that personal religious beliefs trumped neutral antidiscrimination laws had the potential to open Pandora’s Box. But that is not what SCOTUS did. By now, we know that the Court ruled narrowly in 7-2 decision
By Scott T. Garosshen
- Jun 1, 2018
In Defense of Unprincipled Decisions
In 1959, Herbert Wechsler rocked the legal world with the radical proposition that judges should do things for reasons. Herbert Wechsler, Toward Neutral Principles of Constitutional Law, 73 Harv. L. Rev. 1 (1959). More specifically, he argued that constitutional decisions should be based on generally applicable neutral principles; not on the result in individual cases, and not on vague mumbo jumbo. Wechsler held up Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), the land
