Cato Institute

One of our oldest laws, the Alien Tort Statute (1789), grants federal courts jurisdiction over lawsuits brought by aliens for actions “in violation of the law of nations.” Courts have differed in their method of…more

If the First Amendment means anything, it is that school officials may not prohibit students from handing out gifts with Christmas messages due to the religious content of those messages. Nonetheless, the Fifth Circuit held en…more

Cato's second Supreme Court amicus brief in the Obamacare litigation concerns the issue of whether the health care law's Medicaid expansion is a proper exercise of the Constitution's Spending Clause. That is, states must now…more

The Obamacare litigation has arrived on the big stage: the Supreme Court. The first opportunity for those opposing the legislation to weigh in comes on the issue that will be the last one the Court considers, "severability."…more

Over the past decade, more than a dozen states have forced independent contractors who are paid through Medicaid to join public-sector unions. In 2003, Illinois unionized home healthcare workers and imbued the Service Employees…more

The federal Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful "[t]o refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer ... or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex,…more

The decennial redrawing of electoral districts consistently produces extensive litigation. The most notable cases this cycle come, as they often have, from Texas. A number of activist groups challenged the Texas legislature's…more

Since the foundational administrative law case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (1984), courts have given significant deference to executive agency interpretations of federal law. United States v. Home Concrete &…more

The Arkansas Game & Fish Commission owns and operates 23,000 acres of land as a wildlife refuge and recreational preserve; the preserve's trees are essential to its use for these purposes. Clearwater Dam, a federal flood control…more

This case is quite similar to the occupational licensing case of Locke v. Shore, in which Cato also filed a brief, except that the speech-licensing regulation here concerns not artistic expression but rather the dissemination of…more

Challenges to Florida's unconstitutional drug law scheme continue to gain momentum. Following a successful federal district court challenge to the constitutionality of laws lacking a mens rea (mental culpability, rather than,…more

Rent control is literally a textbook example of bad economic policy. Economics textbooks often use it as an example of how price ceilings create shortages, poor quality goods, and under-the-table dealings. A 1992 survey revealed…more

Who controls the content of TV and radio broadcasts, parents or the FCC? In the 1978 case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, the Supreme Court held that, because over-the-air broadcast media is like an "unwanted intruder" in the…more

Florida is so zealous in pursuing the war on drugs that its laws classify the possession, sale, and delivery of controlled substances as offenses not requiring the state to prove that the defendant knew he had possessed, sold,…more

As protestors across America condemn Wall Street for its greed and corruption, the Supreme Court has an opportunity to examine a ruling that holds some of Wall Street's biggest regulators immune from suit. In 2006, the National…more