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President Joe Biden on Wednesday moved to further diversify the federal bench in terms of demographics and job experience with five new judicial nominees, including two women with backgrounds as public defenders selected as appellate judges (…

Today, in the first use of his clemency power, President Biden granted clemency to 78 people, including three pardons and 75 communtations. The Statement by President Joe Biden on the Clemency and Second Chance Month begins with these words:

America is a nation of laws and second chances,…

Utah Highway Patrol officer pulls over a car with Kansas plates for speeding and changing lanes without properly signaling. After talking with the driver, trooper returns to his patrol car and calls for a local sheriff's K-9 unit. The K-9 eventually shows up and alerts on the car, and the…

What standard of review should federal habeas courts use when assessing state courts' prior determinations that constitutional trial errors were harmless?

A 6-to-3 divided Supreme Court answered that question yesterday in…

The U.S. Supreme Court struggled during oral arguments Wednesday over whether its landmark Miranda ruling allows criminal suspects to file civil suits against police officers who don't warn them of their rights against self-…

West Virginia used-car dealers file motion to suppress evidence obtained during search, and four years later a court agrees that the state trooper who applied for the warrant omitted important facts and made misleading statements and dismisses the criminal charges (failing to disclose to…

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away an appeal from a death row inmate in Texas who said his jury had been tainted by racial bias (…

The Senate in a historic vote today confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court (view full article). When sworn in this summer, Judge Jackson will be the first Black woman to serve…

If someone is held at gunpoint and forced to withdraw money from an ATM, is the bank being robbed (a federal crime) or just the person (not a federal crime)? Seventh Circuit (2005): The bank - because the money belongs to the bank. Fifth Circuit (2005):  The person - because the money…

The Senate voted Thursday to confirm two of President Joe Biden's district court picks, one for the Northern District of Georgia and another for the District of New Jersey.

Sarah Elisabeth Geraghty, a senior counsel at the Southern…