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Michael Stokes Paulsen

Michael Stokes Paulsen

Michael Stokes Paulsen is Distinguished University Chair & Professor of Law, at the University of St. Thomas, in Minneapolis. He is co-author, with Luke Paulsen, of The Constitution: An Introduction, published by Basic Books.

Public Discourse

The Right to Life and the Irrelevance of Rape

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Rape is tragic, awful, horrible, gut-wrenching—an unspeakable crime of great emotional harm—but rape is essentially irrelevant to the morality of abortion.
Public Discourse

The Power to Destroy

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The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the Affordable Care Act is constitutionally correct. This doesn’t prevent us from seeing the individual mandate as a tax on freedom—an exercise of Congress’s constitutional power to tax so as to destroy personal and institutional freedom with respect to health insurance.
Public Discourse

Casey: Enduring, Entrenched, Intentionally Evil Egregious Error

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Casey is not a sound exposition of the Constitution, and its authority should be repudiated by all other actors in our constitutional system The second in a two-part series on the deadly significance of Planned Parenthood v. Casey
Public Discourse

Planned Parenthood v. Casey at Twenty: The Worst Constitutional Decision of All Time

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In its effects, methodology, substantive doctrine, conception of the judicial role and of judicial authority, and conception of what constitutes the rule of law, Casey is terribly significant and terribly wrong. The first in a two-part series on the deadly significance of Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
Public Discourse

The Unprecedented, Extraordinary, Anti-democratic, Activist Power of Judicial Review

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President Obama’s recent quips about “judicial activism” do not amount to arguments. They are shallow sloganeering.
Public Discourse

Vanderbilt’s Right to Despise Christianity

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Vanderbilt University has decided that campus student religious groups may not require that their leaders accept the core beliefs of the religious group they would lead. Ironically, Vanderbilt’s right to do so rests on the same freedom it denies to these groups—a group’s freedom to define what it stands for and the views it expresses.
Public Discourse

Obama’s Contraception Cram-down: The Pork Precedent

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An ancient example of resistance to a tyrant’s attempt to coerce violations of religious conscience provides an interesting perspective on resistance to the Obama administration’s recent healthcare coverage mandate.
Public Discourse

The Unbearable Wrongness of Roe

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39 years ago, the Supreme Court delivered a radical, legally untenable, immoral decision. It has forfeited its entitlement to have its decisions respected, and followed, by the other branches of government, by the states, and by the people.
Public Discourse

Hosanna in the Highest!

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In a recent decision, the Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides additional and independent rights to religious organizations, beyond those to which non-religious groups are entitled.
Public Discourse

The Most Important Religious Liberty Case of the Past Thirty Years

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Freedom of religion means the right of religious persons, groups, and ideas to participate fully and equally in the life of the community and in the marketplace of ideas.
Public Discourse

It’s a Girl

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The Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence appears to protect a right to abortion even for reasons of sex selection. Yet this gruesome reality might provide an opening for a frontal assault on the premises of Roe v. Wade.
Public Discourse

Declaration of War: Ten Years Later

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Under the Constitution, the Constitution prevails over international law. The Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), signed into law ten years ago this week, prescribed no time limitation or geographical limitation. It was, potentially, a world war of unlimited duration. And yet, our involvement in Libya is unconstitutional.
Public Discourse

Where in the Constitution is “Separation of Church and State”?

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Misleading talk of "separation of church and state" obscures the true meaning of the First Amendment.
Public Discourse

Exporting Death to Kenya

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America’s abortion laws may inspire a dangerous provision in Kenya’s new constitution.
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