Legal News
Reports on lawmaking, constitutional issues, and court cases. The Daily Signal combines news reporting with conservative commentary and legal analysis.
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news
Trump Judicial Nominee Is Moved to Tears After a Liberal Interest Group Accuses Him of Bigotry
Lawrence VanDyke, one of President Donald Trump’s nominees for the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, was overcome with emotion before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday as he defended himself against charges that he would treat LGBT litigants unfairly. The American Bar Association issued a scathing review of VanDyke’s nomination on the eve of… -
opinion
Senators Should Ignore Liberal Lawyers Group When Evaluating Judicial Nominees
The American Bar Association’s ratings used to be—as Democratic Sens. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Charles Schumer of New York have often told us—the “gold standard” for evaluating judicial nominees. Now, they’re just fool’s gold. The American Bar Association has given a “not qualified” rating to nine of President Donald Trump’s 211 judicial nominees. Trump… -
news
What’s Behind the Struggle Over the Supreme Court
An unprecedented fight over judicial power is taking place on Capitol Hill as part of fierce partisan opposition to President Donald Trump, legal experts said Tuesday at a gathering of conservatives in Washington. “The conflict over judicial appointments has always been a conflict over judicial power,” Thomas Jipping, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation,… -
news
The Left Targets Supreme Court With ‘Packing’ Threat, ‘Shortlist’ of Activist Nominees
Perhaps encouraged by Democratic senators in August warning the Supreme Court to “heal” itself or face restructuring, one progressive group has doubled down on advocating court-packing, while another liberal group this week released a “Supreme Court shortlist” of 32 prospective judicial nominees for a future Democratic president, filled mostly with activists but only a few… -
news
Left Is Unscrupled in Supreme Court Fights, Author of Kavanaugh Book Says
A former law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas says that liberals will stop at nothing to defeat the nomination of constitutional conservative justices to the high court. Carrie Severino, now chief counsel with the Judicial Crisis Network, told an audience at the annual conservative Values Voter Summit in Washington on Saturday that the… -
news
Senator Seeks Update After Referring 4 Accusers to Justice Department for Kavanaugh Claims
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asked the Department of Justice and FBI on Tuesday for an update on the criminal referrals he submitted against witnesses who made potentially false accusations of sexual misconduct against Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Senate Judiciary Committee, when Grassley was chairman in 2018, asked the Justice Department to pursue criminal investigations of… -
opinion
Supreme Court Justices Ponder the Meaning of ‘Sex’
The Supreme Court, returning this week for the beginning of its 2019-2020 term, heard oral argument Tuesday in three cases asking it to decide whether the definition of sex in U.S. law includes sexual orientation and gender identity. At issue is the meaning of the word “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights… -
opinion
Podcast: What to Expect in the New Supreme Court Term
Heritage Foundation legal expert Elizabeth Slattery discusses what will happen in the 2019-2020 Supreme Court term, which began Monday. How big an impact will all the Brett Kavanaugh controversy have? What’s up with Clarence Thomas being out sick? And what are the blockbuster cases? Slattery breaks it down. Plus, we talk about the NBA’s decision… -
opinion
What You Need to Know About the Transgender Case at the Supreme Court
This interview, which is lightly edited, originally aired on “Problematic Women.” Lauren Evans: Welcome back. Virginia and I are in the studio today with religious liberty superstar Emilie Kao. Emilie is an attorney and director of the Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation and has spent the past… -
news
Justices Return for a Momentous Supreme Court Term
The Supreme Court returns from its summer hiatus Monday to begin an election year term heavy on politically salient disputes. The high court’s docket for the coming months is a genuine gantlet of highly polarizing disputes that could make the relative comity of its previous term impossible to replicate. The justices will decide by June… -
opinion
What’s at Stake in Supreme Court’s ‘Sex Discrimination’ Case
This week, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in cases that ask whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans employment discrimination on the basis of sex, extends to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and transgender status. It’s an odd legal argument, given that the public meaning of the… -
news
Supreme Court Remains Respected Despite Kavanaugh Turmoil
A pair of recent surveys suggest that Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation has not undermined public confidence in the Supreme Court. The studies, from Gallup and the Pew Research Center, show a majority of respondents approve of the high court’s job performance or have a favorable view of the institution. The figures in both polls… -
news
Federal Judge Upholds Harvard’s Race-Conscious Admissions Policy
A federal judge in Boston ruled Tuesday that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy does not violate the law, following a challenge alleging the university discriminates against Asian applicants. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs emphasized the university has a compelling interest in cultivating a diverse campus community, and that Harvard’s practices, though imperfect, are narrowly tailored to… -
news
Democrats Try to Tie Trump Judicial Nominee to Impeachment Inquiry
Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee are pressing a judicial nominee about his possible connection to President Donald Trump’s July phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, at the center of an impeachment inquiry. The nominee, Steven Menashi, is a White House lawyer and nominee for the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Democrats asked… -
news
Justice Elena Kagan Has a Message for Those Who Worry Supreme Court Is Becoming Too Partisan
Justice Elena Kagan said Monday night that concerns about the politicization of the Supreme Court are “overblown," pushing back against suggestions that the court’s increasingly conservative makeup will strain public confidence in the judiciary. Kagan told law students at the University of California, Berkeley, not to despair over current conditions, even as she agreed the… -
news
Before Kavanaugh, 3 Previous Attempts to Impeach Supreme Court Justices
Numerous Democrats have demanded the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh following discredited allegations by The New York Times of sexual misconduct in his college years. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., introduced a resolution to impeach Kavanaugh on Sept. 17. Although Democrats’ congressional leadership isn’t embracing the unlikely venture, U.S. history includes one instance of… -
opinion
The Smearing of Brett Kavanaugh Is an Attack on the Supreme Court
In the end, the Democrats’ smearing of Brett Kavanaugh is about delegitimizing the Supreme Court—the only institution that will inhibit the progressive agenda no matter who wins elections. In the mind of Democrats, conservative justices aren’t merely wrong; they’re nefarious, racist, and extremist. So it’s not surprising that virtually any smear against Kavanaugh is rationalized…. -
opinion
Could Kavanaugh Get Impeached? What You Need to Know
Some liberals are pushing for Justice Brett Kavanaugh to be impeached. But do they have any valid grounds? And how would an impeachment process of a Supreme Court justice even work? The Heritage Foundation’s Tom Jipping, who worked on an impeachment process during his time as a Senate staffer and who is a now senior… -
opinion
Why the Left Will Never Stop Attacking Kavanaugh
When the Supreme Court, under a previous ideological majority, was handing down decisions favorable to the left, Democrats were fine with deferring to that third branch of government to achieve what they declined to produce in legislation. Some Democrats in conservative states took the position that it wasn’t their fault that cases voters regarded as… -
opinion
Problematic Women: Another Baseless Accusation Against Brett Kavanaugh
This week on “Problematic Women,” we talk to Elizabeth Slattery, legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and host of the “SCOTUS 101” podcast, about the new allegation against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. She addresses whether the accusation has any credibility and what it means for the future of the high court. We also break…