Covering the Supreme Court, lower courts, and the law

Trying to expand even wider the Supreme Court’s new ruling creating broad legal immunity for Presidents who break the law, Donald Trump’s lawyers have asked a state judge in New York to overturn his 34 guilty verdicts and to forbid any new trial. That is the only case so far to result in convictions of… Read More

The potential unraveling of all of the criminal cases against Donald Trump continued on Saturday, even before the Supreme Court puts into effect its decision this week granting broad legal immunity to the former President. A federal judge in Florida, who has for months moved very slowly in handling the criminal case charging Trump with… Read More

In the epic constitutional drama pitting the Supreme Court and Donald Trump on the national stage, there were two missing factors and their absence strongly influenced the outcome. First was the Court’s insensitivity to the corrosive cynicism that produced this historic drama in the first place. Second was the Court’s refusal to acknowledge the complete… Read More

A state judge in New York City, in the first lower-court reaction to the Supreme Court’s new ruling on presidential legal immunity, decided on Tuesday to delay imposing a sentence on ex-President Donald Trump for his conviction in May on 34 state charges., In a two-page order, Judge Juan M. Merchan also agreed to rule,… Read More

Elevating the American Presidency to almost kingly rank and power, a bitterly divided Supreme Court ruled Monday that ex-President Donald Trump has nearly unchallengeable immunity to criminal prosecution for any action he took that can be defined as official. For any act that qualifies as official, the majority ruled, his legal immunity will be “absolute,”… Read More

Not since 2000 has the Supreme Court been as centrally involved in a presidential election as it will be when it meets on Monday for a final decision day, closing a momentous nine-month term.  If the Court issues a ruling tomorrow on former President Donald Trump’s claim to total immunity to criminal prosecution, it will… Read More

In a sweeping and historic new claim to judicial supremacy within the national government, a divided Supreme Court on Friday ruled that the courts – not federal agencies – have the last word on those agencies’ powers. Just because an agency’s grant of authority from Congress is ambiguous or unclear, the Court’s conservative majority declared,… Read More

In a ruling raising new doubts about more than 300 guilty verdicts for rioters at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and maybe aiding former President Donald Trump’s legal defense, the Supreme Court on Friday narrowed the reach of an important federal criminal law. In a 6-to-3 decision, with unusual lineups among the Justices,… Read More

Trying hard to convince the public that it did not make a constitutional mistake two years ago in broadly expanding Second Amendment rights, the Supreme Court or Friday did give federal and state governments a bit more power to stop gun violence. The Justice’s 8-to-1 ruling in the case of United States v. Rahimi, with… Read More

In a major setback for federal government efforts to stop mass shootings, a divided Supreme Court on Friday overturned a five-year-old ban on a gun device that enables the firing of hundreds of bullets in just minutes – the kind used in the nation’s deadliest incident of firearm violence. By a vote of 6-to-3, a… Read More