By William H. Freivogel >> French publication Le Monde headlined this week that it was “The week the US shook Europe’s world.” Americans could justifiably say it’s the month that shook ours. There is no precedent for President Donald Trump’s massive restructuring of the government with a flurry of executive orders, pronouncements, firings and pardons
By William H. Freivogel >> While President Donald Trump unleashes a torrent of legally questionable exertions of power, Congress sits by compliantly, the U.S. Supreme Court remains unengaged and the Fourth Estate shrinks from its role as a watchdog of presidential abuse. Media executives even curry favor with the man they’re supposed to be watching.
By William H. Freivogel >> Linda Greenhouse, the Pulitzer-Prize winning Supreme Court reporter, said in St. Louis last week that Justice Samuel Alito elaborately reinterpreted a 1990s precedent to “provide to a veneer of legal analysis on what is at its core a religious tract” overturning Roe v. Wade. Greenhouse added that the “metastasized precedent”
By William H. Freivogel >> “Facts can’t fix this.” That was the headline that emerged from a post-election discussion recently at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School about how the press fell short covering the presidential election. The point: The press constantly repeating facts and pointing out lies won’t stop a man like
By William H. Freivogel >> Updated Dec. 22: A state judge ruled Dec. 20 that Missouri’s strict law redacting the names of witnesses and victims from court records violated both the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Open Courts provision of the Missouri Constitution. Judge Aaron J. Martin, ruling out of Cole County
