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How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
FEATURED
December 6, 2024
How Thick is the Blanket? – Preemptive Pardons as a Presidential Power
By: James Trusty
As the presiding judge scolded Hunter Biden’s attorneys this week, “The Constitution provides the President with broad authority to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, U.S. Const. art. II, § 2, cl. 1, but nowhere does the Constitution give the President the authority to rewrite history.”[1] But what exactly is that history he claims is being re-written? Judge Scarsi was challenging the largely academic issue of whether a pardon signed at noon, for instance, protects against crimes committed on the same day at dinnertime. That is a very limited run at the notion of “preemptive” pardons, and it seems to be strictly a question of chronology. The judge did not seem to question the idea of…
Supremely Improbable
July 30, 2024
Supremely Improbable
By: James Trusty
President Biden’s pronounced objectives for Supreme Court “reform” are improbable, politically lifeless under a particularly lame duck presidency, and motivated by transparently November-driven calculations. But even if the proposed changes are doomed from the start, they push public discourse on a couple of issues that are red meat for the democrats. The stated reforms are superficially simple ones: 1) to “clarify” that “there is no…
Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury
July 5, 2024
Presidential Immunity Ruling Stirs Sound and Fury
By: James Trusty
The immediate and eventual impact of the Supreme Court’s immunity decision in Trump v. United States is both considerable and dramatically misrepresented. The initial consequences include likely delay to the January 6 prosecution out of D.C. and the setting of hearings—in D.C., Georgia and south Florida—where the judges will be required to make factual findings as to whether the evidence supporting the indictments reflect “official…
Smart is the New Tough: A Changing Approach in America’s War on Drugs, Crime?
November 24, 2014
Smart is the New Tough: A Changing Approach in America’s War on Drugs, Crime?
By: Ifrah Law
Fact: the United States incarcerates its citizens at the highest rate in the developed world. Indeed—save one small chain of islands, whose entire population is just a fraction of our prison population—the United States’ incarceration rate is the highest on the planet. And nearly half of our approximately 1.75 million inmates are serving time for nonviolent and/or drug-related offenses. That is not OK. It is…
Where to Draw the Line With Undercover FBI Operations
November 13, 2014
Where to Draw the Line With Undercover FBI Operations
By: Nicole Kardell
Several news publications have been making much ado about a tactic the FBI used in 2007 to locate an individual suspected in a series of bomb-threats to Washington state high schools. The FBI created a fake news article, falsely representing it as an Associated Press publication, and sent a link to the suspect’s MySpace account. The article headline, which was directed at the suspect, was…
The Road to True Threats is Paved with Intimidating Intentions
September 24, 2014
The Road to True Threats is Paved with Intimidating Intentions
By: Jeffrey Hamlin
Recently, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals considered the dividing line between free speech guarantees and the state’s authority to criminalize threat speech. In United States v. Heineman, the court held that the government must prove specific intent in true-threat cases: to obtain a conviction, prosecutors must prove not just that the defendant intended to communicate a threat, but that he intended for the recipient…
A New Remedy for Online Defamation
September 12, 2014
A New Remedy for Online Defamation
By: Ifrah Law
In the United States it is enormously difficult to remove allegedly defamatory information from the internet. A victim can take the expensive and time-consuming step of suing the author for defamation in court. However, even if a court rules that the statement is defamatory—that is, that the published statement is false and harmful to the subject’s reputation—the victim’s remedy is usually monetary damages. U.S. courts…
More Money, More Problems – Another Billion Dollar Settlement for the DOJ
September 10, 2014
More Money, More Problems – Another Billion Dollar Settlement for the DOJ
By: Nicole Kardell
This summer BNP Paribas, one of the five largest banks in the world, agreed to a $9 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The settlement figure may seem nothing short of economic shock and awe; indeed it was the largest criminal penalty in U.S. history. What could justify such a staggering fine and was the DoJ too heavy-handed in its tactics against the…
