courts

Plus, why you should always read the story.

Will the Texans finally get healthy and become favorites? Plus: "Packing" the court, and packing as much action into an episode of "24" as creatively possible.

Will the Texans finally get healthy and become favorites? Plus: "Packing" the court, and packing as much action into an episode of "24" as creatively possible.

Why the success of the Federalist Society is unlikely to be replicated.

Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement triggered alarm among left-wing lawmakers and activists by giving Donald Trump his second Supreme Court nominee in less than two years. It also inspired some to revive the idea of "packing the court" with additional Democratic appointees as soon as circumstances…

Former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele used to be Mr. Chatty when it came to the allegations of Russia-Trump collusion he had assembled. In the months before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Steele talked with the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, Yahoo News,…

I don’t know the book acquisition budget of the public library in the town of St. Michaels, a quaint little tourist trap on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I hope it’s large enough to buy several copies of Ryan T. Anderson’s new book, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment.…

Since Donald Trump became president, Democrats have been engaged in an astonishing display of judicial obstruction. “Senate Democrats have indiscriminately forced the Senate to take 47 cloture votes on judicial and executive nominations since Trump took office,” notes Carrie Severino in National…

The New Jersey judge in Sen. Bob Menendez’s federal corruption trial sent the jury home to “clear their heads” Monday after jurors informed him they were deadlocked on a verdict.

In November 2014, a female member of Brown University’s debate team had oral sex with a male colleague while they watched a movie. Eleven months later, she filed a complaint with Brown, accusing him of sexual assault.

Unaccountable judges sometimes mistake their own policy preferences for the proper rule of decision. And that’s no less true for those who purport to judge the judges—namely, the American Bar Association, in passing judgment on a president’s judicial nominations. The ABA’s own version of “judicial…

My guess is that up until two weeks ago, the name of Harvey Weinstein meant little if anything to most people, including readers of this magazine.

My guess is that up until two weeks ago, the name of Harvey Weinstein meant little if anything to most people, including readers of this magazine.

American liberals dominate this country’s cultural life. Universities, the news media, the entertainment industry, our cultural institutions—these are populated and run mainly, and in many cases exclusively, by liberals. What liberals, the vast majority of whom identify as Democrats, don’t dominate…

"I want them to hate him," a federal prosecutor said quietly on the evening of October 2 as his colleagues packed up. It had been a long first day in the trial of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the man charged with instigating the tragic 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

"I want them to hate him," a federal prosecutor said quietly on the evening of October 2 as his colleagues packed up. It had been a long first day in the trial of Ahmed Abu Khatallah, the man charged with instigating the tragic 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on September 22 formally rescinded the Obama administration’s commands that universities use unfair rules in sexual-misconduct investigations—rules that had the effect of finding more students guilty of sexual assault. And she appears also to be preparing for far…

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on September 22 formally rescinded the Obama administration’s commands that universities use unfair rules in sexual-misconduct investigations—rules that had the effect of finding more students guilty of sexual assault. And she appears also to be preparing for far…

Few Americans noticed, but this past June, Muammar Qaddafi’s longtime spy chief Abdullah Senussi was apparently released from prison in Tripoli, where he had been sentenced to death in July 2015 for decades of officially sanctioned murders of his fellow Libyans. If Senussi was not…

Few Americans noticed, but this past June, Muammar Qaddafi’s longtime spy chief Abdullah Senussi was apparently released from prison in Tripoli, where he had been sentenced to death in July 2015 for decades of officially sanctioned murders of his fellow Libyans. If Senussi was not…

The Department of Justice is compelling a broad set of Internet records related to an organization established to coordinate anti-Trump protests during Inauguration Day, prompting a legal fight, according to multiple reports this week.

A federal extortion trial in Boston last week showed that Teamsters members haven’t lost their knack for cooking up trouble. It all began in June 2014, when the reality TV kitchen competition Top Chef visited the city to film. Let’s just say things got a little hot in Beantown, and we’re not…

With its adversarial structure and set procedural rules, the trial can be a perfect dramatic vehicle, offering the strategy and suspense of a sports event alongside the seriousness of life and death. The Big Trial subgenre of American fiction dates back at least as far as James Fenimore Cooper’s…

With its adversarial structure and set procedural rules, the trial can be a perfect dramatic vehicle, offering the strategy and suspense of a sports event alongside the seriousness of life and death. The Big Trial subgenre of American fiction dates back at least as far as James Fenimore Cooper’s…

There's a tragic irony at the heart of American criminal-justice policy. While we invest billions of dollars each year to house inmates in state and federal correctional facilities, our collective willingness to invest falters when it comes to ensuring the formerly incarcerated don't reoffend.

Federal judges who are blocking President's Trump new executive order restricting migration are making a mistake, using flawed reasoning, and setting back the larger cause of immigration reform. On Wednesday night, Derrick K. Watson, the U.S. District Judge in Hawaii, penned a 43-page jeremiad in…

When it comes to pushing the Donald J. Trump panic button, hardly anyone has been more industrious than just-retired Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-California).

The state of New York currently has some of the strictest weapons laws in America. But a statute banning most residents from possessing Tasers is now facing a federal lawsuit alleging that it violates the Second Amendment.

The Fall 2016 issue of the Claremont Review of Books features a review well worth your time by Jeremy Rabkin, a professor at the splendidly named Antonin Scalia Law School (previously the George Mason University Law School). The professor has written on Randy Barnett's new book, Our Republican…

Opponents of the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule claimed that it encouraged massive infringements on state authority by the federal government, according to briefs filed in federal court on Tuesday.

Clarence Thomas has been on the Supreme Court for a quarter-century. And Jeffrey Toobin has loathed him for nearly all twenty-five of those years. For more than two decades, the New Yorker author and CNN pundit has written of Thomas time and time again in only the most contemptuous terms.

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 makes it illegal to sell or rent housing "because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status or national origin." The provision prohibits the disparate treatment of individuals because of race or any of the other forbidden grounds it identifies, as when a real…

Last month a federal district judge in Wyoming invalidated an Interior Department rule setting stricter standards for hydraulic fracturing ("fracking," in commin parlance) on public lands. The decision dealt a blow to the Obama administration's environmental agenda, and news coverage focused on…

I first learned of Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett on Twitter—fittingly—in 2013, when he asked me for a copy of my then-Twitter header image of the U.S. Supreme Court justices holding Care Bears (except Justice Scalia, who is photoshopped holding broccoli). Since that time, I've had the…

President Obama is "frustrated" with the court's ruling on his executive amnesty. He expressed his frustration in comments at a press conference in Germany.

President Obama warned workers at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement: implement executive amnesty, or else. He made the comments in a town hall event on immigration on MSNBC.

With little fanfare, President Obama has enjoyed remarkable success in his project to remake the federal courts in his own ideological image. How much more he achieves during his final two years in office depends in large part on whether Republicans win control of the Senate this November.

IRS lawyers ought to enjoy themselves this holiday weekend because, as the Washington Examiner's Mark Tapscott reports, "they'll be busier than normal next week." IRS counsel will make two separate appearances next week in court to explain and defend the agency's handling of Lois Lerner's…

In the past week alone, President Obama has twice been rebuked by the Supreme Court for having run afoul of the Constitution (a 9-0 decision) or federal law (5-4).  Unchastened, he brazenly picked the very day that the second decision was announced to reassert the Obama Doctrine — namely, that if…

After a surprising run of 9-0 decisions, the Supreme Court ended its year the way we've come to expect: with hotly contested 5-4 splits. Most importantly, the Court finally decided Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the closely watched fight over whether the Health and Human Services Department can force…

Michael M. Grynbaum of the New York Times reports a court has ruled in favor of individual freedom.  

While some top Obama administration officials are downplaying threats posed the five senior Taliban officials released from Guantanamo in the prisoner exchange for Bowe Bergdahl, not long ago the administration went to court to prevent one of those men from going free. In a decision on May 31,…

In November, the Obama Justice Department dropped a lawsuit aimed at stopping a school voucher program in Louisiana. The Louisiana Scholarship Program is intended to give students in failing public schools a chance to attend better schools, including private ones. Justice tried to block the program…

Senator Harry Reid does not want any spent nuclear fuel going into that massive, and expensive, hole in the ground at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.  And he has been able to make sure it hasn't happened, though that was the reason for digging the hole in the first place. Still, an empty hole in the…

A visitor to Richmond can’t leave without a trip to John Marshall’s house, a living shrine to the greatest chief justice in the history of the United States. Passing through the halls of his former home, it is as if the spirit of the great man is present in the articles he used and the rooms he…

For at least half a century, judicial restraint has been the clarion call of the conservative legal movement. After the Warren Court era, Roe v. Wade, and very nearly a “right” to welfare benefits, it was not surprising that conservatives would seek to rein in judicial self-aggrandizement.

Our own Jonathan Last recently released a top-notch book, What to Expect When No One's Expecting, about America's coming demographic disaster. The book has been well received by readers, among them the justices on the Texas supreme court. On the sixth page of the court's recent decision for…

Gary Bauer debated Nicolle Wallace yesterday on Fox News over the issue of same-sex marriage and the courts:

Today, President Obama’s belief in a “living Constitution” came up against a ruling that enforced our fixed Constitution.  A 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board to be…

A few years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency lost a string of high-profile lawsuits brought by environmentalists challenging the Bush administration's regulations. And in certain circles, it was fashionable to cite those as proof of the Bush EPA's incompetence if not its utter corruption.

The New York Times gushingly describes how President Obama’s unique background — he’s “a man from many worlds,” “a transcender of tribes,” and, yes, “a former constitutional law professor” — has allowed him to unearth a creative “middle way” on the question of redefining marriage.  That “middle…

Adam Kredo reports: 

After the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) sparked national outrage by telling Boeing that it could not open a factory in a right-to-work state, there's little evidence that the board has been chastened. The latest news is that a recent decision to allow unions to hold "quickie" elections to…

In the Washington Post, George Will writes that Newt Gingrich’s “campaign against courts repudiates contemporary conservatism’s core commitment to limited government.”

"[Alec] Baldwin sees Weiner’s implosion as opportunity for him in 2013"