Lyle Denniston

Oct 8 2024

The Court and “ghost guns”

The Supreme Court may be only one vote away from a wide expansion of the constitutional right to obtain a gun, and that prospect will get a test today when the Justices go to the bench for a historic hearing.  The Court opened its new term yesterday. At the center of the new gun rights… Read More

Oct 2 2024

Trump, politics and the law: 34 days, 165 pages

A political catastrophe, and maybe a legal catastrophe, struck former President Donald Trump on Wednesday afternoon, and he has little time and perhaps little opportunity to overcome the impact. With just 34 days to go before the presidential election on November 5, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., allowed the publication of a 165-page document… Read More

Sep 20 2024

New challenge to Trump Jan. 6 case

Mounting a broad new challenge to prosecution of Donald Trump for attempting to stay in power in 2021, the former President’s lawyers urged a federal judge on Thursday to stop that case before it goes any further. At the center of the new filing, made public Friday, is a claim that Special Prosecutor Jack Smith… Read More

Sep 6 2024

Judge delays Trump’s sentencing

A state judge in New York City on Friday, issuing a ruling that seemed to make him uncomfortable, put off until after the November 5 election the sentencing of former President Donald Trump for 34 guilty verdicts. Although Judge Juan M. Merchan said, in a four-page ruling, that he was acting to avoid affecting the… Read More

Sep 3 2024

Trump loses again in court

Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday failed in his latest attempt to prevent a state judge in New York from imposing a sentence for the 34 guilty verdicts arising out of a sex scandal surrounding his presidential election campaign in 2016. In a brief, four-page ruling, a federal judge in New York City refused to… Read More

Aug 31 2024

Trump asks long delay of January 6 case

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump, vowing multiple legal challenges to his prosecution for the violent January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and his attempt to stay in office after being defeated, asked a federal judge late Friday night to set a schedule that would keep the case going at least through January 2025…. Read More

Aug 30 2024

Trump makes new move to avoid prison

Former President Donald Trump, conceding that he may be sent to prison in the midst of his election campaign, went to a federal court on Thursday night seeking to put off any sentencing for his 34 guilty verdicts in New York state court. In a 64-page filing by his legal defense team, Trump asked a… Read More

Aug 19 2024

Trump sentencing date: up to judge (UPDATED)

(NOTE: Post updated to include additional detail.) New York prosecutors chose on Monday to leave it to the trial judge in Donald Trump’s state criminal case to decide either to delay or to go ahead with imposing a sentence next month — a decision with significant political and legal meaning. The district attorney’s new filing,… Read More

Aug 15 2024

Trump seeks delay of sentencing (UPDATED)

UPDATE: This is an expended version of an earlier post.) Continuing to use his political candidacy as a legal shield, former President Donald Trump has asked a New York state court judge to delay until after the election a decision on his sentencing on 34 criminal convictions. In a letter Wednesday to Judge Juan M…. Read More

Aug 8 2024

Trying again to revive ERA

The nation’s largest legal organization, the American Bar Association, moved this week to use its influence to try to put into the U.S. Constitution a strong guarantee of equal rights for women. In a vote at the annual meeting in Chicago of the ABA’s policymaking arm, the House of Delegates, the lawyers’ group approved a… Read More

Lyle Denniston continues to write about the U.S. Supreme Court, although he “retired” at the end of 2019 following more than six decades on that news beat. He was there for three revolutions – civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights – and the start of a fourth, on transgender rights. His career of following the law began at the Otoe County Courthouse in his hometown, Nebraska City, Nebraska, in the fall of 1948. His online, eight-week, college-level course – “The Supreme Court and American Politics” – is available from the University of Baltimore Law School, and it is free.

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