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The New York Times reports that Border Patrol agents routinely board buses and trains near the Canadian border (but not on routes that actually cross it) to grill passengers about their native countries and immigration status. Unlike the inquiries mandated by Arizona’s controversial immigration law , which apply to people whom police come across while investigating other offenses, these approaches do not require a legal pretext. Agents question whoever attracts their attention, while the passengers are theoretically free to remain silent during what the government calls a “consensual and nonintrusive conversation.” But how many people, upon being awakened on a train or bus by an armed, uniformed government agent shining a flashlight into their eyes (yes, that really happens), will perceive the encounter as voluntary

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‘Papers, Please,’ Northern Edition

The Legal Times ’ Tony Mauro contrasts Canada and the U.S. when it comes to the issue of cameras in each nation’s highest court: U.S. Supreme Court justices still talk about television cameras as if they were deeply mysterious, brain-draining devices not to be approached with anything shorter than a 40-foot pole

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Cameras in the Courtroom, Canadian Edition

Writing in The Wall Street Journal , Northwestern law professor John McGinnis reviews conservative legal scholar Hadley Arkes’ new book Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths: The Touchstone of Natural Law . One passage in particular jumped right out: One of the many virtues of “Constitutional Illusions & Anchoring Truths” is that Mr. Arkes applies his ideas to particular cases, avoiding the airiness of mere theory and arriving at pleasingly contrarian positions

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Natural Law and Economic Liberty

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), one of the authors of ObamaCare, says he didn’t bother to read the entire bill, either. “I don’t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the health care bill

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And by Experts He Means Lobbyists

The Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate commerce . . .

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Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful

The Commerce Clause of the U.S.

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Wheat, Weed, and ObamaCare: How the Commerce Clause Made Congress All-Powerful

In a Time essay, Adam Cohen notes a circuit split on the question of whether police need a warrant to “put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go.” Last January a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit unanimously ruled that DEA agents did not violate the Fourth Amendment rights of a suspected marijuana grower by electronically tracking his Jeep, even when they snuck onto his property in the middle of the night to plant a GPS device on the bottom of the car

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Do Police Need a Warrant for GPS Tracking?

The National Law Journal ’s Marcia Coyle has a very interesting story on why so many upcoming Supreme Court cases originated in Arizona: The three cases include challenges to Arizona’s immigration requirements for employers, a state school choice program and the state’s clean elections law. Also looming on the horizon is the Obama administration’s challenge to the state’s controversial law that gives police broad powers to stop those they suspect are in the country illegally…

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“Arizona is taking the concept of states being the laboratories of democracy very seriously on multiple fronts.”

Today the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit stayed U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker’s injunction barring enforcement of Proposition 8, California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

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Appeals Court Stays Proposition 8 Injunction