Constitutional Rights
Government can be freedom’s best friend when it protects citizens’ constitutional rights. Here’s how the Goldwater Institute is ensuring your rights are protected.
As often happens during election season, the media has been up in arms about “secret funds” being spent by independent groups on messages meant to support or oppose candidates.
by Art Thomason, Arizona Republic
The Mesa City Council denied two tattoo artists the constitutional protections of free speech by rejecting their efforts to open a business two years ago, the Arizona Court of Appeals said Thursday.
The decision - a first by any Arizona court on the issue of free speech protections for tattoo artists - reversed a Maricopa County Superior Court ruling that sided with the city.
“The key provision of the Affordable Care Act is the implementation of State-run Health Insurance Exchanges.”
This month marks Justice Clarence Thomas’ 20th anniversary on the U.S. Supreme Court. Emerging from one of the most tumultuous confirmation battles in history, Justice Thomas has become one of the greatest Supreme Court justices in the Court's history.
Imagine you live in a world where all your votes are public knowledge – no voter privacy, no voting booths, and no mail-in ballots. What if you could be approached in public and asked to cast your vote on the spot?
If a silver lining exists to the explosive growth of national power over the past several years, it is that Americans are turning to their federal and state constitutions, reading them, understanding them, and invoking them to protect their rights.
The federal health care law gives states an option: Either establish insurance exchanges by January 1, 2014, or the Secretary of Health and Human Services will establish one for them. An “exchange” is essentially a bureaucracy where federally-mandated and regulated health insurance may be bought and sold. Amazingly, some states that otherwise oppose the federal health care law, including some who have joined the Florida lawsuit that is on its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, are choosing to implement these exchanges.
This case does not involve a mere clash between state and federal law. It involves the federal government’s effort to quash an exercise of state sovereignty that directly serves the structural purpose of federalism in our compound republic—the protection of individual liberty guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Such federal overreaching must be rejected if the vertical separation of powers established by the letter and spirit of our Constitution means anything. Read the documents below:
This brief addresses the government’s failure of principle and logic in this case. The United States’ brief argues correctly that the Second Amendment protects a fundamental personal right to keep and bear arms, but then fails to acknowledge and advocate the simple and necessary conclusions that follow from that premise.
The U.S. Constitution and state constitutions guarantee certain rights. Too often, government violates those rights instead of protecting them. The Goldwater Institute is committed to constitutional rule of law and focuses on property rights, campaign finance, legislative terms, balance of power among levels of government, processes of judicial appointment, and state sovereignty, among others.