Jeff Sessions

by James Oliphant It's 10 a.m. and the hearing room in the Hart building is packed to the rafters. Nearly all the seats are filled by media. Reports of the near extinction of the Washington press corps seem to be......

(AP/Gerald Hebert) by James Oliphant We are here again in Hart 216 and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy has begun his first round of questions. Each member of the panel will question Judge Sotomayor in 30-minute periods. Stay with the......

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and top Republican Jeff Sessions at a taping of the CBS program Face the Nation Sunday. (AP/Karin Cooper) by James Oliphant As a political spectator sport, Supreme Court confirmation hearings can fall...

Note: you can follow continuously updated coverage of the Kagan hearings here. by Mike Memoli In pointed questioning, the Senate Judiciary Committee's leading Republican accused Elena Kagan of treating the U.S. military in a "second-class" way during...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) began her 30 minutes of questions with a pointed defense of Sotomayor after the tough but fair questioning posed by GOP Sens. Jeff Sessions of Alabama and Orrin Hatch of Utah. Feinstein, like Sen. Patrick Leahy......

by David G. Savage and Mark Silva Judge Sonia Sotomayor, poised to become the first Hispanic member of the U.S. Supreme Court, won the support of the Senate Judiciary Committee today in a lopsided vote cast largely along party lines......

by James Oliphant and David E. Savage and updated at 5 pm. Sonia Sotomayor completed an unlikely and historic journey today, one that began with her birth in a Bronx, New York, housing project 55 years ago and culminated in......

by Mark Silva So it is the Senate that goes first with the bailout -- some call it rescue -- of the nation's bad-mortgage-clogged banking institutions, with a vote tonight of 74-25. The Senate's strong and bipartisan approval of a......

by Josh Meyer Confirmation of President Barack Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., was delayed for a week today, after Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee placed a hold on it, complained that they have not been......

by Mark Silva If you're looking for a preview of what the fight over President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court might look like, look no further: Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) will become the ranking Republican member of the......

by Rebecca Cole Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) scored a political trifecta this year: His close friend Barack Obama is in the White House, he is a member of the Democratic leadership and the Obama administration's senior staff is......

by Mark Silva President Barack Obama will not be nominating "a bomb-thrower'' for the Supreme Court, according to the ranking Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has spoken with the president about the decision he faces. "The...