Andrew P. Napolitano

Supreme Court should not be political because its role is to safeguard personal liberty

Harsh winds are blowing on Capitol Hill. The hoped-for and feared clash between Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh and his principal accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, has come and gone, with all of its calculated and spontaneous outbursts, as well as gut-wrenching emotion.

October 3, 2018

Is this any way to confirm a Supreme Court justice?

Until two weeks ago, President Donald Trump's nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court seemed a sure thing. He ably handled more than 1,200 questions put to him by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He demonstrated even to his adversaries a masterful command of constitutional jurisprudence. The FBI had completed six background investigations of Judge Kavanaugh throughout his career in government, and it found no blemishes.

September 26, 2018

Donald Trump surely fears what Paul Manafort will tell Robert Mueller

If you have been following the serious destruction brought about by Hurricane Florence in North Carolina and the political turmoil caused by the allegations of teen-age sexual misconduct made by Christine Blasey Ford against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, along with his firm and unbending denials, you might have missed a profound event in a federal courtroom in the nation's capital late last week.

September 19, 2018

Donald Trump and the rule of law

Last week, The New York Times published a scathing critique of Donald Trump — the man and the president. The Times said the critique was written by a senior Trump administration official who insisted on remaining unnamed. This bitter and harsh opinion piece, which portrays the president as dangerous to the health of the republic and his White House as slouching toward dysfunctionality, has understandably infuriated him.

September 12, 2018

Trump’s presence was in that church as powerfully as if he had physically been there

Last week, I was intrigued by all the fanfare attendant upon the national farewell to the late Sen. John McCain. I have written in this space that Mr. McCain and I were friends who spoke many times, but generally only about the issues upon which we agreed — abortion, immigration and torture.

September 5, 2018

John McCain and me

About four years ago, I was browsing through one of Manhattan's last remaining independent bookstores, when my cellphone rang. I didn't recognize the incoming telephone number, with its 202 area code, but I assumed it was a Fox News colleague from our Washington bureau.

August 29, 2018

Interviewing the president

When federal prosecutors are nearing the end of criminal investigations, they often invite the subjects of those investigations to speak with them.

August 8, 2018

Trump sabotaged by his own lawyer

In the past week, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, now the chief lawyer and principal spokesman for President Donald Trump's legal team, has offered arguments more harmful to Mr. Trump than helpful. In a series of combative, disjointed and logically challenged television rants, Mr. Giuliani has essentially argued that Mr. Trump did not engage in any conspiracy with the Russians for them to provide help to his campaign and that even if he did, it wasn't criminal.

August 1, 2018

Remembering a father, husband and veteran

Last week, in Ridgewood, New Jersey, a 92-year-old unsung American patriot lost his battle with congestive heart failure. He had been surrounded by his wife and children and their spouses and their children. He left this vale of tears in his wife's arms, peacefully and with dignity.

July 25, 2018

In defense of Trump with Putin

As a trial judge in New Jersey during the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush years, I spent much of my time trying to settle cases. This process involved bringing into my chambers the lawyers for the disputants and asking them in the absence of their adversaries to lay their cards on the table.

July 18, 2018

Trump rewards swamp denizens by nominating one of their own to the Supreme Court

When Donald Trump started running for the Republican nomination for president in June 2015, he began by attacking the Republican establishment in Washington, and he began his attack by calling the establishment "the swamp."

July 11, 2018

The values underlying Independence Day

The Declaration of Independence — which was signed on July 3, 1776, for public release on July 4 — was Thomas Jefferson's masterpiece. Jefferson himself wrote much about the declaration in the 50 years that followed.

July 4, 2018

Can immigrants be deported without a trial?

Last weekend, President Trump argued that those foreigners who enter the United States unlawfully should simply be taken to the border, escorted across it and let go. According to the president, this would save precious government resources, avoid the business of separating children from their parents and free up the Border Patrol and other federal assets to do their jobs.

June 27, 2018

How to keep the Federal Bureau of Investigation independent

When President Donald Trump appointed Atlanta lawyer Christopher Wray to succeed James Comey as the director of the FBI, my initial reaction was not positive. Mr. Wray is a veteran of the Department of Justice and is part of that good-old-boy DOJ network that knows how to protect its own. Indeed, when New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a former U.S. attorney, needed a good criminal defense lawyer — whose millions in fees were paid by New Jersey taxpayers — he hired Mr. Wray.

June 20, 2018

The House Intelligence Committee interferes with the investigation of the president

Amid all the happy hoopla over President Donald Trump's trip to Singapore, where he began the process for what he hopes will be the normalization of relations between the United States and North Korea and the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, has come an effort by the House Intelligence Committee to interfere with the criminal investigation of the president.

June 13, 2018

Rudy Giuliani’s hypothetical question deepens Donald Trump’s legal woes

Last weekend, the White House leaked a copy of a letter sent by President Donald Trump's legal team on Jan. 29 to special counsel Robert Mueller. The letter set forth the president's legal strategy, arguing essentially that he is immune from prosecution for any crime.

June 6, 2018

Rudy Giuliani’s unwarranted attack on the Trump investigation

This past weekend, President Trump and the most visible member of his legal team, former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, fired up their campaign against special counsel Robert Mueller. They attacked people at the Department of Justice (DOJ) whom Mr. Trump appointed. They smeared career DOJ lawyers and FBI agents by offering allegations without showing any supporting evidence. And they purported to challenge the legitimacy of Mr. Mueller's office itself.

May 30, 2018

If Mueller actually has something on Trump, intervention could look like obstruction

This past weekend, President Trump suggested that his presidential campaign may have been the victim of spies or moles who were FBI informants or undercover agents. He demanded an investigation to get to the bottom of the matter.

May 23, 2018

Supreme Court strikes down the 1992 federal law that banned commercial sports betting

In 1992, Congress passed a statute authored by Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, who was a former Princeton University and New York Knicks basketball superstar, prohibiting the states from authorizing sports betting. At that time, gambling in Atlantic City was flourishing, and notwithstanding one of its own senators' efforts to keep gambling away from competitive sports, the state of New Jersey wanted to duplicate Las Vegas' success with sports betting.

May 16, 2018

Prosecutors and the rule of law

Late last week, a federal judge in Alexandria, Va., questioned the authority of special counsel Robert Mueller to seek an indictment and pursue the prosecution of former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort for alleged financial crimes that, according to the indictment, began and ended well before Donald Trump ran for president.

May 9, 2018