Justice

Is the criminal justice reform bill being considered in the Senate all it’s cracked up to be?

The left-wing organization MoveOn subjected itself to ridicule this week by posting a message to its social media accounts: “Low wages are violence. Knowingly letting people suffer is violence. It must end.” The attached graphic had to do with the minimum wage, which the staff at MoveOn in their…

Ending the law’s injustice to Indian children—and parents.

Widespread allegations of sexual harassment have in recent weeks rocked legislatures across Europe and North America. In London, harassment claims have brought down one cabinet minister and are threatening to bring parliamentary business to a standstill. In Brussels, the European parliament has…

“When I was in law teaching,” recalled Antonin Scalia in a speech just days before his 1986 nomination to the Supreme Court, “I was fond of doing what is called ‘teaching against the class’—that is, taking positions that the students were almost certain to disagree with, in order to generate some…

“When I was in law teaching,” recalled Antonin Scalia in a speech just days before his 1986 nomination to the Supreme Court, “I was fond of doing what is called ‘teaching against the class’—that is, taking positions that the students were almost certain to disagree with, in order to generate some…

Over the last quarter-century, America has witnessed a remarkable decline in urban crime—most notably in New York City, where murders dropped from a record high 2,245 in 1990 to 335 in 2016. This drop coincided with a change in police practices, with the NYPD leading the way in more active…

Today on the Daily Standard podcast, reporter Alice B. Lloyd discusses her recent story "There Is No Easy Way to Clean Up Obama's Title IX Mess."

Among the more than 200 commutations handed out yesterday, President Obama commuted the sentence of Oscar López Rivera, a member of Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña (FALN), a Marxist-Leninist terrorist group advocating Puerto Rican independence. He is set to be released May 17.

The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.

The Scrapbook finds itself so very, very disappointed in the media for their coverage of the recent salacious assertions about the president-elect.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s recent outburst against Donald Trump has been roundly criticized by people of all political stripes. Insofar as her comments suggested a clear bias about cases that could come before the Supreme Court, they were clearly a mistake and a departure from the norms of Court…

Later today, the White House and the Brennan Center for Justice will host an event pressing for the release of thousands of convicted federal felons in the name of sentencing reform. During this event, titled “The Economic Consequences of the Criminal Justice System," those consequences will likely…

What’s the biggest domestic public policy success of the last two generations? In our view, it’s the plummeting crime rate that began with a changed approach to crime in the Reagan years.

In a Labor Day speech, Hillary Clinton promised that, when she is president:

I've suggested before that 2016 is beginning to look more and more like 1968. This is true in terms of the presidential contests—on the Democratic side, Bernie Sanders is Eugene McCarthy, Hillary Clinton is Lyndon Johnson, Joe Biden will be Hubert Humphrey, and (the big question!) Elizabeth Warren…

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg made news recently, when she said—bragged, it seemed—that she and her fellow liberals on the Court were going out of their way to stifle their individual voices in high-profile cases. When the liberals find themselves on the losing side of a case, she explained, they…

Justice Anthony Kennedy, while dictating one of the most sweeping social changes in history in his opinion in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized same-sex marriage across America, waxes magnanimous towards foes of the expansion of the millennia-old definition of marriage. He said those who…

Days after the indictment of FIFA officials and just a day after the indictment of Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House, Attorney General Loretta Lynch is scheduled to mee with President Barack Obama. The meeting with take place in the Oval Office. 

At a Manhattan fundraiser yesterday (as noted by The Hill), potential presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spoke of the rioting in Baltimore by invoking a theme of the Obama administration: the need for reform of the criminal justice system.

At an Ivy League university, Hillary Clinton will propose having "body cameras for every officer nationally," the New York Times's Maggie Haberman reports on Twitter.

Less than four months ago, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice had concluded that the transgendered are among the classes of persons protected, unbeknownst to the framers of the legislation at the time, by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Tuesday's press…

In April of this year, the Obama administration announced it would “reformulate” clemency guidelines for federal prison offenders. As the Washington Post described it, “Justice Department Prepares for Clemency Requests from Thousands of Inmates.” The paper claimed that this “unprecedented campaign…

President Obama alluded to the recent unrest in Ferguson and New York City in remarks today at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. The president talked of "restoring a sense of common purpose."

President Obama, speaking live to the nation after the decision in Ferguson not to indict a police office for the killing of Michael Brown, said that "America isn't everything that it could be."

The Justice Department's Bureau of Prisons (BOP) recently committed $830,160 to purchase Protective Stab Vests for use by employees in federal prison facilities. The contract was awarded on a sole-source, no-bid basis because the need was determined to be of an "urgent and compelling nature."…

President Obama does not want to be a Supreme Court justice. He calls it "too monastic" for his own personality. Besides, in an interview with the New Yorker, President Obama acknowledges that he needs to get out of the "bubble" after what will be eight years as president of the United States.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan officiated a same-sex marriage over the weekend, the Associated Press reports. It was her first.

When a class action lawsuit gets settled, the deal has to prescribe how the defendant will pay the members of the injured class and who can be part of that class.

Hillary Clinton is right about Benghazi—or at least she's right about one thing. 

“Detroit civil rights lawyer Shanta Driver made a last-minute decision to argue in a high-profile Supreme Court affirmative action case on Oct. 15 in part, she said, because so few African-Americans appear before the justices.”

Via the Washington Free Beacon, Arkansas congressman Tom Cotton defended the NSA tool on the House floor this evening:

As Jonathan V. Last observed earlier today, the George Zimmerman trial illustrates the immense power and discretion afforded to state and federal prosecutors.

We're way past overload on Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman commentary, but there is a tiny tributary of the story that has been largely overlooked. And it's worth a moment because it points to a larger problem regarding both the state and the public.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial.  "Speedy" is, admittedly, an imprecise term.  

The Chicago Tribune editorializes:

In university classrooms, and across campuses nationwide, we hear it repeatedly: Ever--increasing calls for “social justice.” But not everyone is on board:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talks about her work outs in an interview with the Washington Post. “When I started, I looked like a survivor of Auschwitz,” she tells the paper. “Now I’m up to 20 push-ups.”

Attorney General Eric Holder said today at a Senate hearing that he believes he once shot an AR-15, a so-called assault weapon:

The death of Robert Bork this past December brought forth tributes to a man bearing no resemblance to the grotesque caricatures that emerged during the long debate over his 1987 nomination to the Supreme Court. Widely noted were his unswerving loyalty to friends and principles, his seminal…

On the morning of January 21, just before President Obama’s second inauguration, Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin congressman and House budget chairman who had run unsuccessfully as the Republican candidate for vice president, was roundly booed by the gathered crowd as he left the Capitol to attend…

The Justice Department announced that 16 folks would be sent to prison for hate crimes against Amish folks. The defendants, who range in age from 23 to 67 and all lived in Ohio, were found guilty of "forcibly remov[ing] beard and head hair from practitioners of the Amish faith with whom they had…

On Friday, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously declared President Obama’s “recess” appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to be unconstitutional. The judges rebuked Obama both because the Senate was actually in session when he made the…

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…

Robert H. Bork, a superb legal scholar, principled public servant, fine judge, and important social critic—withal, a great American—died early this morning from heart complications. He was 84.

Yesterday, when introducing President Obama at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a Democrat, said that the president "led the mission that brought Osama bin Laden to justice":

Yesterday, we endured an esoteric debate over a jurisdictional statute that practically no one expects to actually affect the Supreme Court's review of Obamacare. Today, by contrast, was the argument we've all been waiting for: the challenge to the constitutional merits of Obamacare's individual…

In order to make sure gays and lesbians are adequately represented on the judicial bench, the state of California is requiring all judges and justices to reveal their sexual orientation. The announcement was made in an internal memo sent to all California judges and justices.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. The only effect of a hard try to square the circle and make every contradiction disappear is a bad headache.

Keep America Safe just released this statement, following the death of Osama bin Laden: 

Washington lawyers are marking their calendars for the D.C. Courts' 36th Annual Judicial Conference.  The theme this year is, "Implicit Bias: Recognizing It and Dismantling It."

James Cole, recess appointed this week by President Obama to serve as deputy attorney general, famously wrote an op-ed on September 9, 2002, criticizing then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Cole argued:

Jennifer Rubin follows up on her May cover story for THE WEEKLY STANDARD (titled, "Gen. 'Stonewall' Holder") with this email: