Carrie Johnson

Shaka Senghor served 19 years in prison for killing a man in Detroit. He racked up dozens of disciplinary violations behind bars. But he says reading, writing and mentors helped him change.

Prisoners argue their detention in special Communication Management Units left them stigmatized and hurt their relationships with family members.

Republican lawmakers questioned Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Wednesday about the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton's email server.

Oregon Democrat Sen. Ron Wyden is warning that prosecutors may be taking advantage of a powerful law enforcement tool that allows them to detain people as "material witnesses" in federal investigations by holding them indefinitely, sometimes alongside convicted criminals or in solitary confinement.

Wyden is urging the Justice Department to ...

President Obama plans to nominate someone to replace Supreme Court Justice Scalia. But Republican leaders say the Senate won't consider his pick. A White House meeting between the two sides failed to bridge the divide.

The legal world has a new blogger: former constitutional law professor and current President Barack Obama.

The president took to SCOTUSblog, the leading online chronicle of the Supreme Court, on Wednesday to offer some "spoiler-free insights" into what he is seeking in a justice to replace the late ...

A federal judge said he will allow a conservative watchdog group to take steps to find out whether the State Department and former Secretary Hillary Clinton "deliberately thwarted" an open records law by using a private email server.

U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan made the ruling Tuesday at the urging ...

President Obama will nominate a candidate to replace Antonin Scalia. Lawyers who worked in the Obama and George W. Bush White Houses offer clues as to what's happening with the vetting process.

The Obama administration has made "virtually no progress" to increase transparency and accountability for its lethal drone program, a new report has concluded, with only months left to spare before the White House hands control of the targeted killing apparatus to a successor.

The report by the nonpartisan Stimson Center ...

The unexpected death of Justice Antonin Scalia and the looming face-off between the White House and the Senate over his replacement have revived proposals that would limit the tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Legal scholars from both political parties renewed a call Tuesday to reconsider how much time justices ...

The Supreme Court has been closely divided, 5-4, on major social issues for years. With Justice Scalia's death, the White House has a chance to shift the balance of power with a Democratic appointee.

NPR's Carrie Johnson and Ron Elving talk to host Michel Martin about the political battle developing over the replacement of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia.

Justice Antonin Scalia loved a good fight.

So it's only fitting that news of his death at age 79 ignited an immediate and partisan battle over who might take his place on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kent., said the vacancy should not be filled until ...

The director of the federal government team that interrogates key terrorism suspects has a message for people who want to see a return to waterboarding and other abusive strategies: They don't work.

Frazier Thompson, who leads the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, said research demonstrates that "rapport-based techniques elicit the most ...

The federal civil rights lawsuit comes after the Ferguson city council adjusted terms of a negotiated settlement meant to bring the police force, jail and local court system in line.

A federal judge has ordered the Justice Department to file court briefs by Wednesday explaining why some portion of the remaining Hillary Clinton emails, subject to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Vice News, cannot be produced by Feb. 18.

U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras said after a 30-minute ...

The decision by Hillary Clinton to use a private email server as secretary of state has spawned an FBI investigation, multiple congressional inquiries and dozens of private lawsuits that demand copies of her messages. It's also become an issue in her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Republicans on the ...

Veteran Philadelphia prosecutor Robert Zauzmer is heading up a key priority in the final year of Obama's presidency. He tells NPR he has seen too many unfair sentences levied for low-level offenders.

The State Department will not release 37 pages of Clinton emails because they are top secret. The latest turn in the controversy of her private email server comes days before the Iowa caucuses.

New revelations over the documents on her controversial private server — which were not marked classified at the time they were sent — come just days ahead of the Iowa caucuses.