Andrew Cohen

People say the f-word all the time, and Biden's a grown man. Get over it More »

The legal argument made by more 16 states in court against the health care law is that there are too many uninsured to start covering More »

The dubious doctrine of interposition is now being used by opponents of health care reform as they marshal their forces with an eye toward post-passage litigation challenging the constitutionality of the new legislation. More »

Fifteen years ago, the face of that frustration was McVeigh. Today, the face looks very much different indeed, don't you think? More »

As couples go, Clarence and Virginia Thomas already have done a great deal more than most family units to define the meaning of the Constitutution. More »

Are we really back here again, in ugliness, dishonor and hypocrisy? Of course we are. Four years ago, senior Bush administration officials fired nine diligent, competent, respected, Republican-appointed federal prosecutors because they were deemed insufficiently conservative to be trusted with such high office. It was a disgrace and the resulting scandal, which we now know as the U.S. Attorney scandal, set back the Justice Department for years. Now another nine… More »

There are now two paths ahead for Obama. One is politically expedient and to some extent popular. The other is right and to some degree risky. More »

The second Constitutional bookend corralling the modern American gun control movement is just about in place. The Supreme Court's oral argument Tuesday morning strongly suggests that a majority of the justices intend to extend onto the state and local scene the Second Amendment's individual gun rights. Once such a ruling is in place (bet the house on the last week of June) we'll see a sea change in the way gun ordinances are written, enacted, defended, and judged. More »

The company's ex-president goes to the Supreme Court to argue he shouldn't have been tried in Houston where his crimes took place. Believe it or not, this bad guy is right. More »

It's been another extraordinarily bad stretch of days for those dwindling few lawyers, judges and politicians who stand ready still to publicly defend Texas's unjust, unkempt, and often unconscionable criminal justice system. Things are so bad in the Lonsestar State, in fact, that the same officials who doggedly continue to believe "Texas Justice" is anything but an oxymoron-- those who would rather pester their colleagues in Congress for a change in the BCS… More »

Just a few weeks after harness racing made a sweeping and long-anticipated move against Jeffrey Brooks and his enormous stable of fast trotters and pacers, the Brooks family has struck back against its pursuers. Brooks has sued the United States Trotting Association and New York racing officials for $108 million, alleging that the regulators and licensors have restrained his trade and violated his constitutional rights. It's a lawsuit that is likely to break either… More »

It's only, really, truly "poor judgment" when your client thinks it is. Whatever else the controversial Office of Professional Responsiblity report on Bush era torture authority means, it is an extraordinary paean to the dismaying proposition that lawyers will almost always bend over backwards to protect themselves and promote their clients' needs, no matter how constitutionally warped or extralegal they may be. What's worse, they'll continue to do it not just with… More »

The American people owe a new wave of gratitude these days--and maybe a medal or prize-- to the Denbeaux family, Mark and Joshua, father and son, professor and lawyer, who have consistently made historic contributions to our understanding of the Bush administration's approach to terror law in the wake of 9/11. Their dogged pursuit of hidden truths has illuminated for us vital, objective facts about how the legal war on terror detainees has really been waged. More »

Earlier this month, I lightly begged for some brilliant psychologist/psychiatrist out there to do a study about whether and to what extent the lingering emotional effects upon New Yorkers of the events of September 11, 2001 have impacted the City's surprising unwillingness to host the federal civilian trial of Al Qaeda conspirator Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The line elicited some very intense responses from some very close and beloved friends who live in or near New… More »

Down the path Friday morning comes a case as important as it has been underreported.The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear argument from federal lawyers seeking legal authority for the police to demand cell phone location data without a showing of probable cause to a judge or magistrate. The case, many lawyers feel, has the potential to be "one of most important privacy rights battles of the modern era." It almost surely will end up before the United… More »

If President Barack Obama has to hand his adversaries a bauble in order to achieve success with health care reform, it might as well be the misnomer commonly known as "tort reform." The ends of providing insurance for millions of uninsured Americans, never mind whatever good it might do for the rest of us, is worth the means of giving Corporate America yet another legally-sanctified level of protection against the wailing interests of its customers, consumers,… More »

President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have no one but themselves to blame for the mess that's become of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) trial. They waited too long between the November announcement that he would be tried in federal civilian court in Lower Manhattan and any concrete action taken toward that end. The continuing and still-unexplained delay--no indictment, no initial hearing, no nothing in public--precluded veteran judges and… More »

The rubble of body-armor manufacturer David H. Brooks' once formidable empire continues to claim its victims. First it was investors in his body-armor company, DHB Industries, whom he and a co-defendant allegedly defrauded out of approximately $190 million. Now it's an entire industry, the sport of harness racing in North America, which has been left dazed and reeling over the possibility that its biggest and most controversial owners may soon be out of the… More »

Senators like Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Joseph Lieberman (D-Ct.), and John McCain (R-Ariz.) are a big part of the reason why men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed have not yet been tried before military commissions down at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Dozens and dozens of other short-sighted, stubborn, overzealous legislators also doomed President Bush's tribunal plans by repeatedly adopting and endorsing rules and laws they knew or should have known would be (and shortly… More »

For more than 300 years, American communities have fought and scraped to host criminal trials for men and women alleged to have committed crimes in their jurisdictions. It was written into the 6th Amendment. With only rare and logical exceptions, federal court judges have blocked defendants who have tried to avoid the effects of the essential "home court" advantage which occurs each time the members of the community most affected by the crime are then asked to sit… More »