So Much for Stare Decisis: The Klan Court Takes a Stand on Race

Alito Champions Business Causes in First Full High-Court Term

A common thread in those rulings was an unwillingness to let cases go before a jury, said Jeffrey Robert White, a lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Litigation, a Washington group that challenges laws it believes impede access to justice. White filed a brief at the court on behalf of a trial-lawyer trade group in the shareholder case.

The court is saying, ``we'll trust the executive branch, we'll trust Congress a little bit, but we really don't trust the American people to do what's right when they sit in the jury box,'' White said.

Joke of a Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Bush Constitutional Violations

By a 5-4 vote, the high court's conservative majority sided with the Bush administration by ruling that a Wisconsin group called the Freedom from Religion Foundation and three of its members had no legal right to bring the lawsuit in the first place. The ruling only addressed whether taxpayers can bring such challenges, not whether the program itself violated the U.S. Constitution's requirement on the separation of church and state. The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito, who was appointed to the high court by President George W. Bush, overturned a lower-court ruling that allowed the lawsuit to proceed.