Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

A state judge in New York, becoming the first court in the nation to apply the Supreme Court’s historic grant of presidential immunity to criminal prosecution, ruled on Monday night that Donald Trump cannot apply that ruling to his 34 guilty verdicts, reached by a Manhattan jury last May. In a 41-page opinion, Judge Juan… Read More

New York prosecutors have urged a state judge to adopt a plan that would keep intact the 34 guilty verdicts against Donald Trump, and allow him to be sentenced after he leaves office in the future, maybe in January 2029 at the end of his new term as President. They did not ask for prison… Read More

Donald Trump is halfway through a two-year campaign to defeat the criminal charges against him, but the other half may be more difficult or at least may take longer to carry out. With about six weeks to go before he becomes President again, his legal team this week stepped up their efforts to end the… Read More

The U.S. Constitution, tainted from the beginning by the sin of slavery, ultimately has come to be a promise of human equality. But that has happened only gradually, and the process has an uncertain future. The process faces another test on Wednesday, when the Supreme Court for the first time explores whether to assure a… Read More

A federal judge in the nation’s capital, acting at the request of a special federal prosecutor, on Monday blocked a criminal trial of Donald Trump while he serves his new term in the Presidency, but left a trial in the future open as an option. Trump, though, could erase that option once in office. The… Read More

Prosecutors in New York told a state judge on Tuesday that they will try to prevent Donald Trump’s move to overturn his one criminal conviction, in a case growing out of his 2016 election to the Presidency, the first time he won. At the same time, however, prosecutors said they will not oppose a delay… Read More

In a surprise move and without any explanation, the Supreme Court on Tuesday stepped back – at least temporarily – from its central role in the criminal cases arising out of the plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. This was the first time the Court had acted on any of those cases since Donald… Read More

Conceding that Donald Trump will be the next U.S. President, the special federal prosecutor moved quickly on Friday to begin the process of ending Trump’s prosecution for multiple crimes growing out of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election. Special Counsel Jack Smith on Friday afternoon urged a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to put… Read More

By winning Tuesday’s presidential election, and doing so by enough votes to remove any doubt, former President Trump very likely will avoid any other form of accountability – except the judgment of history. Very soon, it appears, the four criminal cases against Trump will begin to evaporate – including the one in which a New… Read More

It now seems highly likely that the Supreme Court will be pulled into the midst of the presidential election campaign, with only 25 days before the voters go to the polls.  The hectic pace that might now unfold could test the Court as it has not been since the 2000 election a quarter-century ago. The… Read More