Word: v
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Supreme Court ended its 2007-2008 term by handing down a flurry of big decisions the last few days, most notably granting a constitutional protection for individuals to own guns (District of Columbia v. Heller) and banning the death penalty as punishment for the rape of a child (Kennedy v. Louisiana). These two particular cases resulted in closely contested 5-4 decisions, with justices falling lockstep into the predictable conservative and liberal factions and Justice Anthony Kennedy playing his expected role as the swing vote. But ideological blocs such as these have been a much rarer occurrence this season, belying...
...split (Roberts, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Alito versus John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Stephen Breyer) with the conservatives winning 13 and the liberals getting six. Says Lazarus, "The only really big case the liberals won 5-4 last term was the global warming case, Massachusetts v. EPA." This term, by contrast, was much more unpredictable and harder to define...
...issue in the present case, District of Columbia v. Heller, was the city's ban prohibiting ownership of handguns that were unregistered as of 1976 - a statute that, by effectively nullifying possession, ranks among the nation's stiffest. Dick Anthony Heller, a security guard, filed suit against the district after it denied him permission to register, and thereby keep, a handgun intended for self-defense within his home. A D.C. federal appeals court supported Heller on the grounds that the city's ban violated his Second Amendment rights. (See pictures of an ammunition plant...
...Nigerian Archbishop Peter Akinola, the meeting's prime mover. Cheered on by several influential U.S. churchmen, Akinola has ridden high for several years as the point man for the ambitions of Anglicanism's populous, conservative "Global South" movement and for widespread outrage at the consecration of openly gay bishop V. Gene Robinson by the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A...
...problem for Democrats is that most voters don't sit through phone calls with pollsters walking them through the respective positions of the two nominees. That sets up a messaging battle, and it's one Republicans enter from a position of strength. In the 35 years since the Roe v. Wade decision was handed down, abortion has reigned as the single most controversial issue in American politics. Nevertheless, G.O.P. presidential candidates have demonstrated a remarkable ability to strike a politically successful balance, quietly reassuring their conservative base of their anti-abortion commitment while publicly hewing to language that appeals...