Hans A. von Spakovsky is a legal scholar and senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, specializing in election law, voting rights, and judicial issues. He previously served in the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division. He contributed articles to The Weekly Standard in 2008–2009, covering judicial nominations, legal opinions, and the intersection of law and politics.
Last week, the West Virginia Supreme Court issued a well-deserved slap in the face to a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, which all too often makes up the law out of whole cloth to meet its latest view of what is socially and politically correct.
In our political system, the best check on lawmakers is that they must run for office. In many states and localities the same thing is true for judges. Unfortunately, a recent Supreme Court decision may effectively neuter this traditional protection.
A seemingly innocuous letter sent to the Clerk of the House of Representatives last Thursday by President Obama's Secretary of Labor nominee Hilda Solis raises serious and troubling legal questions about her nomination and apparent violation of House ethics rules. Not only was she involved with a…
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT INSPECTOR GENERAL Glenn Fine, himself a political appointee in the Clinton administration, has released his report on the supposed "illegal" political hiring at the Civil Rights Division of George W. Bush's Department of Justice. [Full disclosure: I served four years as a career…
Sometime early next year, the six commissioners who run the Federal Election Commission will face an interesting dilemma--whether to approve a "for cause" audit of the presidential campaign of a sitting president, Barack Obama.
IN THE EXCITEMENT over the Supreme Court's decision in the D.C. gun ban case, almost overlooked was a second decision that struck another blow against the McCain-Feingold federal campaign finance law. In Davis v. FEC, a 5-4 majority found the "Millionaire's Amendment" to be unconstitutional,…