Justice

Sean "Diddy" Combs used fame and violence to sexually abuse women, prosecutors have said in opening statements at the hip-hop mogul's trial, while the rapper's attorneys defended his "swinger" lifestyle.

The 55-year-old has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.

The court also heard from prosecutors' first witnesses, including a security guard from a hotel where Mr Combs is seen in a now-viral video beating his ex-girlfriend in 2016.

President Donald Trump's Department of Justice (DOJ) is investigating an “anti-Catholic law” in Washington state that threatens priests with up to one year in jail if they fail to report child abuse they learn about during the sacrament of confession.

Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.

Souter died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday.

He retired from the court in June 2009, giving President Barack Obama his first Supreme Court vacancy to fill. Obama, a Democrat, chose Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina justice...

David Souter has died at 85. Just as Sandra Day O’Connor was the Supreme Court’s last politician and Byron White was the Court’s last moderate Democrat appointee, Souter was most likely the last of his kind: a liberal Republican appointee. Even the most moderate subsequent Republican-appointed justice, Chief Justice John Roberts, is significantly to Souter’s right...

As courts block parts of his agenda, President Donald Trump and his allies are ramping up criticism of judges and continuing to question judicial oversight of the executive branch.

While he's said he would abide by their rulings -- but also appeal them -- he kept up the effort to undermine the authority of the courts on Wednesday, alleging in a social media post that a "highly political, activist judge" wanted to stop the work of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency...

President Donald Trump on Tuesday formally unveiled his first round of judicial nominees since returning to the White House, tapping five lawyers whose legal credentials include prestigious clerkships and working for Republican state attorneys general or as federal prosecutors.

If confirmed, the nominees would join a federal court system whose judges have lifetime appointments and can shape policy over multiple administrations.

Republicans are gearing up to lock in their remake of the judiciary under President-elect Donald Trump and a new Senate majority, including potentially installing several more conservative Supreme Court justices.

Having already picked three Supreme Court justices in his first term — who were critical in overturning abortion rights — Trump will have appointed a majority of the court if he lands two more...

It is generally a bad idea to get in the government’s crosshairs. After all, the Justice Department has powerful tools at its disposal — among them, the vast machinery of federal law enforcement and the ability to gather information that literally no one else can legally obtain. These are just some of the reasons why the government has a roughly 95 percent conviction rate in criminal cases.

But the Justice Department’s most potent asset is the credibility of its lawyers.

In his first hours back as president, Donald J. Trump did an extraordinary thing: He made a direct assault on the Constitution. He declared that his government would no longer treat U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants or children of lawful, temporary immigrants as citizens, as the 14th Amendment commands.

Former Republican Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has lost her defamation suit retrial against the New York Times.

The federal jury ruled after just two hours of deliberation on Tuesday that the New York Times was not guilty of libel when it falsely linked her to a 2011 mass shooting in an editorial it published in 2017. Per Axios:

Throughout this trial and the original 2022 trial, the Times asserted that the inaccurate link made in the editorial was a mistake.