GianCarlo Canaparo
Heritage Foundation
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Past articles by GianCarlo:
The Chief Justice at His Best and Worst
Sometimes Chief Justice John Roberts writes beautifully. When he does, his writing is understated; he eschews Justice Elena Kagan’s flashiness and Justice Samuel Alito’s wit. And yet, Roberts’s writing can be even more effective than theirs. → Read More
SCOTUS 101: Originalism 101
Late last week, the Court issued a report about its investigation into the Dobbs leak. Your hosts discuss the report and share their thoughts about the Marshal's investigation. GianCarlo then gives a preview of some of the Court's new cases and explains what a "DIG" is, and Zack discusses the first opinion of the term. → Read More
How Government Race Preferences Discriminate Against Interracial Couples, Business Partners
Government programs that give preferences to businesses owned by racial and ethnic minorities are popular tools among liberal politicians and bureaucrats. Their proponents defend them as necessary to advance “racial equity” and “social justice,” though they are morally wrong. → Read More
SCOTUS 101: “Learned in the Law”
The Court is back from its break, adding new cases to its docket, and hearing oral arguments. In this episode, GianCarlo previews the newly granted cases and explains the oral arguments in a rare professional ethics case, and Zack discusses the oral arguments in a case that will decide whether and to what extent Puerto Rico has sovereign immunity. Zack then interviews John Bash, a former clerk… → Read More
Nanny State Throws Kitchen Sink, Aiming for Stove
To some, our public schools are the “nurseries of democracy.” It would be just as accurate to describe the administrative state as the nursery of despotism. Not the cruel “blood and iron” despotism of silly-saluting dictators and their drab-is-fab troopers, but the semi-saccharine, overweening despotism that turns adult citizens into infants compliantly awaiting the next round of transfer… → Read More
Pharmaceutical Trials: When Left’s Obsession With Race Kills
One of the last things Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, did before retiring was to pressure Moderna into delaying the release of its COVID-19 vaccine because he wanted more minorities in its clinical trials. → Read More
Democratic vs. Undemocratic
Going into the midterm elections we heard the constant refrain that “democracy is at stake.” Democracy, of course, was not at stake. Democrats’ unified control of government was. This has echoed a theme of theirs, repeated for example in criticisms of the Electoral College and the Supreme Court, that more democracy is always better and that undemocratic institutions are bad. If, before they put… → Read More
Federal Court Blocks Biden’s Student Loan Bailout. Will the Opinion Stand?
A federal district judge blocked President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout, holding that it is “an unconstitutional exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated.” → Read More
2 States That Should Be Able to Sue Over Biden’s Student Loan Bailout
President Joe Biden’s student loan bailout is illegal. That’s not a hard call, but before a court can consider the merits of Biden’s scheme, a plaintiff must have what the law refers to as “standing.” Standing is a doctrine that says that a court doesn’t have jurisdiction to hear a case unless the plaintiff has suffered a concrete injury caused by the defendant that a court has the power to fix. → Read More
The Real Dispute at Heart of Affirmative Action Cases Now Before High Court
The Supreme Court is again examining whether universities may consider race when trying to build diverse student bodies, reviewing admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. “Can a court be blind to what must be necessarily known to every intelligent person in the state?” So wrote Judge Lorenzo Sawyer 136 years ago in a case challenging a San Francisco… → Read More
Better Late Than Never: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Unaccountable Funding Scheme Ruled Unconstitutional
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is “completely off the separation of powers books.” So wrote the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in a decision last week holding that the bureau’s independent funding mechanism was unconstitutional because it violated Congress’ exclusive power to appropriate federal funds. → Read More
SCOTUS 101: An Interview With V.P. Mike Pence
In this special episode, former Vice President Mike Pence joins your hosts to share some inside-baseball about the judicial selection and confirmation process. He also shares his thoughts about the role of the Court in our constitutional system, how Justice Thomas came to administer his oath of office, and his particular admiration for Justice Barrett. → Read More
Unaccountable Bureaucrats, Experts Interfere With Popular Sovereignty
America today is ruled principally by bureaucrats and government experts operating at the president’s direction. For a long time, the United States has largely accepted this arrangement. Woodrow Wilson’s view that wise, apolitical and altruistic experts could govern better than the people has dominated the last 90 years or so of American governance. But recent experience, especially the… → Read More
SCOTUS 101: The Bacon Wars?
It was a quiet week for orders, but a very exciting week for oral arguments. Your hosts discuss the copyright fight between the Andy Warhol Foundation and legendary rock-and-roll photographer Lynn Goldsmith, and the ideologically unpredictable Bacon Case, which might spark economic warfare between the states. GianCarlo then interviews Braden Boucek of the Southeastern Legal Foundation, and the… → Read More
Restoring the Constrained Judicial Vision
Thank you for inviting me to talk to you about the Supreme Court and the Constitution at this present moment. I thought the best place to begin discussing that topic is at the very beginning. And so, back to 1788 we go. → Read More
SCOTUS 101: Justice Jackson’s First Day
The Justices are back in their marble palace, and their newest member has joined the fray of oral argument. Your hosts, Zack and GianCarlo, share the latest SCOTUS news, discuss new cases, and chat about Justice Jackson's oral argument style. Zack interviews Judge Stephen Vaden of the Court of International Trade who talks about his early years working on a farm, to his days at Yale law, and his… → Read More
Biden’s Ever-Shifting Position on COVID-19 “Emergency,” Exploited Purely for Political Gain
Is COVID-19 still an emergency? If you want a straight answer, don’t ask President Joe Biden. His answer changes as it suits his political agenda. COVID-19 infections and deaths are low, vaccination rates are high, and treatments are widely available. In other words, we’re in a much different place than we were in March 2020, when then-President Donald Trump declared a national emergency. → Read More
What Adam Liptak Doesn’t Know About Brown v. Board and Originalism
Adam Liptak, the New York Times’ Supreme Court reporter, recently published an article in which he claims that Brown v. Board of Education, the case that held that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits racial segregation in public schools, is “problematic for originalists.” He goes a step further, claiming that “originalists hate talking about Brown.” → Read More
Getting Originalism Wrong
The dean of Georgetown University Law Center, William Treanor, fresh from his embarrassing handling of the Ilya Shapiro debacle, has an op-ed in Slate in which he claims that the Framers “believed that courts should defer to precedent” rather than the Constitution’s original public meaning. On this basis he criticizes the conservative the justices as “flawed” originalists because they have the… → Read More
Will Lower Courts Duly Follow the Supreme Court’s Lead in Abortion Cases?
The general has sounded the retreat. Will the soldiers follow? That is the question raised by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, where the Supreme Court declared that the federal courts should retreat from their invasion of the democratic provinces of legislatures on the issue of abortion. But will the lower courts obey? → Read More