Nation Topics - Society | The Nation

Right now, what hurts labor, day to day, is the wins and losses in the lower courts.

The future of the Supreme Court is the most important issue in the most important election year since 1932. Progressive Americans should treat it that way. The radical right does.

At stake is whether the twenty-first-century First Amendment will be a protector of the powerful or a resource for the weak and disfranchised.

The current Supreme Court is so divided on fundamental questions of separation of church and state. that the appointment of one or two conservative Justices could well tip the balance and jettison key historical principles.

The Rehnquist Court's paeans of praise for state government are belied by reality.

I still think third-party politics is mostly a crock, but then, so is two-party politics.

Selma, Alabama, a touchstone in the civil rights movement, is frozen in
a way that confounds onlookers.

"The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from
religion," Senator Joseph Lieberman told a rapturous audience at a black
church a few Sundays ago, just after being chosen as

First, the obvious part.

Research support: the Investigative
Fund of the Nation Institute. Additional reporting: Edmundo
Cruz.