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Category: Law/Crime

The coming legal battles of post-Roe America

The coming legal battles of post-Roe America

Vox reports: When the Supreme Court issued its 6-3 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, declaring that there is no longer a constitutional right to end a pregnancy, it ushered in a series of new and fiercely contested legal questions about who can be punished for doing so, and where, under newly restrictive state laws. Can a state punish a resident for getting an out-of-state abortion? Can it punish the provider in another state who facilitated it? Or as…

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Decades ago, Alito laid out methodical strategy to eventually overrule Roe

Decades ago, Alito laid out methodical strategy to eventually overrule Roe

The New York Times reports: In the spring of 1985, a 35-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr., cautioned the Reagan administration against mounting a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that declared a constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court was not ready to overturn it, he said, so urging it to do so could backfire. In a memo offering advice on two pending cases that challenged state laws regulating abortion, Mr. Alito…

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Trump privately called a Roe v. Wade reversal ‘bad’ for his party

Trump privately called a Roe v. Wade reversal ‘bad’ for his party

The New York Times reports: The man most responsible for shaping a United States Supreme Court that delivered the conservative movement a long-sought victory has spent weeks saying he didn’t think it will be good for his party. Publicly, after a draft of the likely decision leaked in May, former President Donald J. Trump was remarkably tight-lipped for weeks about the possible decision, which the court ultimately handed down on Friday, ending federal abortion protections. But privately, Mr. Trump has…

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No one is above the law, and that starts with Donald Trump

No one is above the law, and that starts with Donald Trump

Richard L. Hasen writes: In a 2019 ruling requiring the former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify at a congressional hearing about former President Donald Trump’s alleged abuses of power, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson declared that “presidents are not kings.” If we take that admonition from our next Supreme Court justice seriously and look at the evidence amassed so far by the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, we can — and in fact must — conclude…

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U.S. attorney general visits Ukraine, names a veteran prosecutor to help investigate Russian war crimes

U.S. attorney general visits Ukraine, names a veteran prosecutor to help investigate Russian war crimes

The New York Times reports: The United States attorney general, Merrick B. Garland, made a surprise trip to Ukraine on Tuesday and announced the appointment of a veteran prosecutor known for investigating former Nazis to lead American efforts in tracking Russian war criminals. Mr. Garland’s visit to Ukraine, a previously unannounced side trip from his scheduled visits to Warsaw and Paris this week, was intended to bolster U.S. and international efforts aimed at helping Ukraine identify, apprehend and prosecute Russians…

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Prosecute Trump? Put yourself in Merrick Garland’s shoes

Prosecute Trump? Put yourself in Merrick Garland’s shoes

Jack Goldsmith writes: The evidence gathered by the Jan. 6 committee and in some of the federal cases against those involved in the Capitol attack pose for Attorney General Merrick Garland one of the most consequential questions that any attorney general has ever faced: Should the United States indict former President Donald Trump? The basic allegations against Mr. Trump are well known. In disregard of advice by many of his closest aides, including Attorney General William Barr, he falsely claimed…

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Republican strategy to tilt courts against climate action reaches a crucial moment

Republican strategy to tilt courts against climate action reaches a crucial moment

The New York Times reports: Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet. But it’s only a start. The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the…

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January 6 hearings: Republicans will do it again

January 6 hearings: Republicans will do it again

Jonathan Chait writes: The January 6 hearings are about the events of a single day, but they implicate a much broader phenomenon: the Republican Party’s faltering commitment to democracy. The mob attack on Congress a year and a half ago was merely the most grotesque manifestation of Donald Trump’s rejection of democracy, and Trump himself merely the most grotesque manifestation of his party’s authoritarian impulses. “Parties that are committed to democracy must, at minimum, do two things: accept defeat and…

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Sweeping legislation aims to ban the sale of location data

Sweeping legislation aims to ban the sale of location data

Motherboard reports: Sen. Elizabeth Warren and a group of other Democratic lawmakers have introduced a bill that would essentially outlaw the sale of location data harvested from smartphones. The bill also presents a range of other powers to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and individual victims to push back against the multibillion-dollar location data industry. The move comes after Motherboard reported multiple instances in which companies were selling location data of people who visited abortion clinics, and sometimes making subsets…

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The January 6 committee isn’t messing around

The January 6 committee isn’t messing around

Quinta Jurecic writes: The open hearing last week of the committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt plunged viewers back into the brutality and terror of that day. The committee featured footage of insurrectionists beating the law-enforcement officers who attempted to stop them from entering the Capitol, material disturbing enough that YouTube later labeled video of the hearing as “inappropriate for some users.” Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about her injuries at the hands of the rioters,…

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AG Garland and federal prosecutors are watching all of the January 6 hearings

AG Garland and federal prosecutors are watching all of the January 6 hearings

NPR reports: Attorney General Merrick Garland is watching the House hearings on the lead-up to and day of Jan. 6, 2021 — as are the Justice Department lawyers prosecuting cases related to the attack on the Capitol. “I’m watching and I will be watching all the hearings, although I may not be able to watch all of it live. But I’ll be sure that I’ll be watching all that. And I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are…

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Ukraine’s ‘Nuremberg moment’ amid flood of alleged Russian war crimes

Ukraine’s ‘Nuremberg moment’ amid flood of alleged Russian war crimes

Robbie Gramer and Amy Mackinnon write: As Russia continues its assault on Ukraine, top Biden administration officials are working behind the scenes with the Ukrainian government and European allies to document a tsunami of war crimes allegedly committed by Russian forces. But the sheer volume of the documented war crime cases could be too overwhelming for Ukraine’s justice system as well as for the International Criminal Court (ICC), raising questions of how many cases will be brought to trial and…

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The other cause of January 6: The Electoral College

The other cause of January 6: The Electoral College

Kate Shaw writes: John Eastman. Rudy Giuliani. Donald Trump himself. These people all bear some responsibility for the events of January 6, 2021. But there is another contributing factor—an institution, not a person—whose role is regularly overlooked, and that deserves a focus in the ongoing January 6 committee hearings: the Electoral College. The Electoral College isn’t responsible for President Trump’s efforts to remain in office despite his clear loss. But it was integral to Trump’s strategy, and it has everything…

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Rural America reels from violent crime

Rural America reels from violent crime

The Wall Street Journal reports: Local prosecutor Rebecca McCoy used to think of her home in central Arkansas as a place where the worst crimes were usually stolen tractors and lawn mowers. In March 2020, she was called to the trailer of a 72-year-old man who had been bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat. It was White County’s first homicide in almost two years. By that December, there were 11 more. In Marion County, a swampy stretch of South…

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Big Oil is suing countries to block climate action

Big Oil is suing countries to block climate action

The Lever reports: Fossil fuel investors are adopting a bold new legal tactic in response to efforts to limit global warming: They are going to private international tribunals to argue that climate change policies are illegally cutting into their profits, and they must therefore be compensated. Now governments are scrambling to figure out how to not get sued for billions when enacting climate policies. Termed “investor-state dispute settlement” legal actions, such moves could have a chilling effect on countries’ ability…

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Trump on trial: A guide to the January 6 hearings and the question of criminality

Trump on trial: A guide to the January 6 hearings and the question of criminality

Norman Eisen, Donald B. Ayer, Joshua Perry, Noah Bookbinder, and E. Danya Perry, write: President Joe Biden legitimately won a fair and secure 2020 presidential election—and Donald Trump lost. This historical fact has been uncontroverted by any evidence since at least November 7, 2020, when major news outlets projected Biden’s victory. But Trump never conceded. Instead, both before and after Election Day, he tried to delegitimize the election results by disseminating a series of far-fetched and evidence-free claims of fraud….

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