Andrew Cohen
Andrew Cohen is a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. He is also the Commentary and Analysis Editor at The Marshall Project, legal analyst for 60 Minutes, and chief analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News.
Articles by this author
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Views Tuesday, August 13, 2019 The Completely Predictable Death of Jeffrey Epstein The reported suicide on Saturday of disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein in a federal jail cell in the heart of Manhattan was both utterly shocking and completely predictable. It’s shocking that the Bureau of Prisons was unable to keep Epstein alive pending his federal sex trafficking trial and that... Read more |
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Views Thursday, March 14, 2019 When a Bill to Revive Democracy Is Called an Ode to Socialism The New York Times’ editorialists last week called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell the only “roadblock” preventing a vote on the For the People Act, the sweeping voting, ethics, and election rights legislation House Democrats passed on Friday. That’s true. But the fight is broader than that... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, November 20, 2018 The Case for Matthew Whitaker Grows Weaker by the Day Last week ended with an extraordinary request of the U.S. Supreme Court: Decide in a pending gun case out of Nevada whether Matthew Whitaker, the acting attorney general, can lawfully lead the Justice Department or whether his dubious appointment taints everything the DOJ now does . President Trump... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, September 05, 2018 The Kavanaugh Hearings Are an Egregious Abuse of Power It devolved into farce even before Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh made it into the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing room. It started with the release of selected portions of his opening remarks. He would be an “umpire,” he promised , a neutral arbiter of law and fact who would “be part of... Read more |
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Views Saturday, January 06, 2018 The Overton Window and Trump's Judges In its first year in power the Trump administration has done to the federal judiciary what it has done more broadly to American political discourse. It has moved the courts far to the right, beyond prior boundaries, by relentlessly nominating conservative ideologues, with and without appropriate... Read more |
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Views Monday, June 26, 2017 Justice Kennedy Is the Bulwark Against a Conservative Counterrevolution It is the last Monday in June and I don’t know if Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is going to resign. Neither do you. This is yet another one of these insipid inside-Washington stories where the few people who know aren't talking and the many people who are talking don't know. One thing is... Read more |
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Views Friday, February 10, 2017 Jeff Sessions Without Tears Now that Jeff Sessions has been confirmed as the next attorney general of the United States, now that he’s in charge of a Justice Department already embroiled in political controversy, now that he’s the first line of defense against a president whose business conflicts, and ties to Russia, are... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, January 25, 2017 Okay. Let's Have That Investigation into "Voter Fraud" The scary part of the still-developing "voter fraud" story isn't that President Donald Trump evidently buys into a conspiracy theory that supports both his worldview and his ego. The scary part is that a majority of his fellow Republicans, and a significant number of Democrats, also evidently buy... Read more |
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Views Tuesday, September 20, 2016 The Myth of Pervasive Voter Fraud One of the most distressing indications of failure in American journalism today is the release of a poll last week that reveals that nearly half of the country believes that voter fraud occurs “very or somewhat often.” Since there is no rational basis in law or fact for this belief, since you are... Read more |
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Views Wednesday, July 15, 2015 When the President Goes to Prison When President Barack Obama goes to Oklahoma Thursday and enters the medium-security federal prison FCI-El Reno he will be entering the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department, a bureaucratic fiefdom that is nearly as sprawling as the Department of Defense and in many... Read more |