Andrew Napolitano | |
|---|---|
 Napolitano in 2015 | |
| Judge of theNew Jersey Superior Court | |
| In office 1987–1995 | |
| Appointed by | Thomas Kean |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Andrew Peter Napolitano (1950-06-06)June 6, 1950 (age 75) Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Party | Libertarian |
| Education | Princeton University (BA) University of Notre Dame(JD) |
| Signature | .jpg) |
| Website | Official website |
Andrew Peter Napolitano[1] (born June 6, 1950) is an American retired jurist and syndicated columnist whose work appears in numerous publications, includingThe Washington Times andReason. Napolitano served as aNew Jersey Superior Courtjudge from 1987 to 1995. He also served as a visiting professor atWidener University Delaware Law School,Seton Hall University School of Law, andBrooklyn Law School. He is alibertarian and has gained prominence in part due to his criticism of the administrations ofGeorge W. Bush,Barack Obama, andDonald Trump.[2] Beginning in 1997, he became an analyst forFox News, commenting on legal news and trials. He has written nine books on legal and political subjects.
Napolitano was born inNewark, New Jersey. He graduated with an A.B. in history fromPrinceton University in 1972 after completing a senior thesis titled "An Essay on the Origin and Evolution of Representative Government in the Colony of theMassachusetts Bay, 1630–1644."[3] He received hisJ.D. fromNotre Dame Law School[4] and was admitted to the New Jersey bar in 1975.[citation needed] After law school, he entered private practice as a litigator. He first taught law for a brief period in 1980–1981 atDelaware Law School (nowWidener). He sat on theNew Jersey bench from 1987 to 1995, becoming the state's youngest then-sitting Superior Court judge.[5]
Napolitano resigned his judgeship in 1995 to return to private practice. He served as an adjunct professor atSeton Hall University School of Law for 11 years, from 1989 to 2000. He served as a visiting professor atBrooklyn Law School from 2013 to 2017.[citation needed]
Napolitano told friends in 2017 that PresidentDonald Trump told him he was considering him for aUnited States Supreme Court appointment should there be a second vacancy.[6] Ultimately, JudgeBrett Kavanaugh was chosen instead.
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Before joining Fox as a news analyst, Napolitano was the presiding judge for the first season ofTwentieth Television's syndicated court showPower of Attorney (2000–2002), in which people brought small-claims disputes to a televised courtroom. Differing from similar formats, theplaintiffs anddefendants were representedpro bono by famous attorneys. He departed the series after its first season.
From 2006 to 2010, Napolitano co-hosted atalk radio show onFox News Radio withBrian Kilmeade titledBrian and the Judge. He hosted a dailylibertarian talk show calledFreedom Watch that aired onFox Business Channel. Frequent guests onFreedom Watch were CongressmanRon Paul,Lew Rockwell andPeter Schiff. He promoted the works ofFriedrich Hayek andLudwig von Mises in his program. The show originally aired every Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. on Fox News'Strategy Room and from September 14, 2009, aired three to four times a week. On June 12, 2010, it debuted as a weekly show onFox Business. It was one of several programs dropped in February 2012 when FBN revamped its primetime lineup.[7]
Napolitano regularly substituted for television hostGlenn Beck when Beck was absent from his program. After Beck announced that he would be leavingFox News, he asked Napolitano to replace him.[8] He regularly provided legal analysis on top rated shows on bothFox News Channel andFox Business Network, such asThe Kelly File,The O'Reilly Factor,Varney & Co.,The Fox Report withShepard Smith,Fox & Friends andSpecial Report with Bret Baier until an appearance on March 16, 2017, related to a then-postulated conspiracy theory involving President Trump's accusation that former PresidentBarack Obama had wiretapped him. On March 20, 2017, theLos Angeles Times reported that Napolitano was pulled off the air indefinitely because of the wiretapping claims;[9] however, it was unclear whether Napolitano would return to the air or whether it was just a temporary move to remove him from the news cycle.[10] He returned to the air on March 29 and stood by his claims concerning British intelligence.[11] A 2020 book byCNN reporterBrian Stelter asserts thatAttorney GeneralWilliam Barr met withFox News bossRupert Murdoch in October 2019 to request that Murdoch "muzzle" Napolitano and that Napolitano's Fox appearances have been limited since that meeting.[12][13]
Napolitano was let go from his position as a contributor to Fox News in August 2021 after allegations of sexual harassment filed by a Fox Business production assistant.[14][15] During his 24-year tenure as Fox News' Senior Judicial Analyst, Napolitano appeared on air more than 14,500 times,[16][17] a record for any on-air personality at the network.[citation needed] After his career in TV, Napolitano started his own Youtube show Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom which, as of 2025, has over 625,000 subscribers.[18]
Napolitano isanti-abortion and holds thatabortion "should be prohibited."[19] He reasons that while a woman has a natural and undeniable right to privacy in her personal choices, the rule of necessity causes the right to life of the fetus, which he believes to begin at conception, to take priority for the duration of gestation. He believes the Supreme Court's ruling oninterracial marriage inLoving v. Virginia (1967) set aprecedent that would also requirestate recognition ofsame-sex marriage.[20] He opposescapital punishment, saying, "I don't believe that the state has the moral authority to execute."[21] He is a believer in theseparation of Church and State.
With respect to both presidentsBush andObama and their handling of civil liberties in thewar on terror, Napolitano is a strong critic. In both his scholarly work, appearing in theNew York University School of LawJournal of Law and Liberty, and in his bookSuicide Pact, he criticized the actions of both presidents and their parties concerning torture, domestic spying, unilateral executive action and encroachments on political power.
After the release of theMueller report onRussian interference in the 2016 election, Napolitano said the report showed that Trump engaged in numerous instances ofobstruction of justice. However, the report deliberately refused to make a firm conclusion about obstruction of justice accusations.[22]
According toThe New York Times, Napolitano "has a taste for conspiracy theories".[23]The Washington Post has described him as a "purveyor of conspiracy theories."[24]
In 2010, Napolitano said, "It's hard for me to believe that it (7 World Trade Center) came down by itself... I am gratified to see that people across the board are interested. I think twenty years from now, people will look at 9/11 the way we look at theassassination of JFK today. It couldn't possibly have been done the way the government told us."[25][26]
Napolitano has made numerous controversial claims about theCivil War. Napolitano expressed disdain forAbraham Lincoln on Fox News, saying, "I am a contrarian on Abraham Lincoln." Napolitano has also claimed that slavery, while one of the most deplorable institutions in human history, could have been done away with peacefully due to being an already dying institution. Napolitano sees the Civil War asAbraham Lincoln's war by choice.[27][28] More specifically, in aDaily Show segment, he said that Lincoln started the war "because he wanted to preserve the union, because he needed the tariffs from the southern states," a claim rejected by a panel of three distinguished historians of the Civil War:James Oakes,Eric Foner andManisha Sinha.[28] Napolitano argued that Lincoln could have solved the slavery question by paying slaveholders to release their slaves, a method known ascompensated emancipation, thereby avoiding war.[27] Lincoln did offer to pay to free the slaves inDelaware, but the Delaware legislature rejected him.[27] He also asserted that Lincoln attempted to arm slaves, but two prominent historians of the Civil War said they had never heard of such an effort andPolitiFact rated the claim "pants-on-fire".[27][29] He has asserted that slavery was dying a natural death at the time of the Civil War, a claim that Eric Foner on theDaily Show panel rejected. Foner said, "Slavery was not only viable, it was growing ... This idea that it was dying out or was going to die out is ridiculous."[28] In his bookSuicide Pact, Napolitano focused his criticism of Lincoln on theprecedent set by his specific constitutional violations, such as his unilateral suspension of the right tohabeas corpus and hisinstitutionalization of military commission systems for civilian crimes.
Napolitano has also said that Lincoln enforced theFugitive Slave Act "until the Civil War was over" by sending escaped slaves back to their owners. PolitiFact notes that "while there were cases when Lincoln enforced the law during the Civil War, he did so selectively when he thought it would help keep border states in the Union fold. When it came to slaves from Confederate states, the weight of the government actions fell heavily on the side of refusing to return escaped slaves." Furthermore, his claim that Lincoln enforced the act "until the Civil War was over" was indisputably false, as the Fugitive Slave Act was repealed in June 1864, more than ten months before the end of the war.[27]
Napolitano subscribes to anatural lawjurisprudence that is influenced by a respect for originalist ideas and methods. He has expressed strong sympathies with theRandy Barnett new originalist vein oforiginalism, as it incorporates the natural law through an original understanding of theNinth Amendment. He has published a favorable column on Barnett's idea of a constitutional presumption of liberty.[30]
Napolitano's philosophy generally leans towards strong originalism while not accepting the limitations of the older types oforiginalism espoused byRobert Bork and JusticeAntonin Scalia concerning the Constitution's open-ended provisions like the Ninth Amendment. He finds such limitations too restrictive on a judge's ability to apply the natural law to decide cases where the individual's liberty is at stake. He is a strong believer in economic liberties. He argues thatLochner v. New York was overruled in error in theWest Coast Hotel case, as the Contracts Clause and theFifth andFourteenth Amendment due process clauses protect a sphere of personal economic liberty.[31]
In September 2015, Napolitano was the featured speaker at a conference held by the Republican government watchdog groupJudicial Watch.[32]
On March 16, 2017, citing three unnamed intelligence sources, Napolitano said on the programFox & Friends that Britain's signals intelligence agency,Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had engaged in covert electronic surveillance of then-candidate Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign on orders from President Obama.[23] He said that by using the British intelligence apparatus, Obama would avoid leaving "fingerprints" that could identify the origin of this surveillance action.In response to “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmead stating that Napolitano was claiming Trump's phone was “wiretapped”, Napolitano denied actual physical tampering, instead citing the agency has digital access to digital information.
In a column on the Fox website, he wrote that GCHQ "most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trump's calls. The NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access to its computers, so GCHQ — a foreign intelligence agency that, like the NSA, operates outside our constitutional norms — has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's."[33] One of his sources was formerCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) officerLarry C. Johnson, who later toldCNN that Napolitano had misrepresented the statements he made on an online discussion board. Johnson, citing two anonymous sources, claimed that the GCHQ was passing information on the Trump campaign to U.S. intelligence through a "back-channel", but stressed that the GCHQ did not "wiretap" Trump or his associates and that alleged information sharing by the GCHQ was not done at the direction of the Obama administration.[34][35]
On March 16,White House Press SecretarySean Spicer repeated Napolitano's claim at a White House press briefing. The following day, GCHQ responded with a rare public statement: "Recent allegations made by media commentator Judge Andrew Napolitano about GCHQ being asked to conduct 'wiretapping' against the then president-elect are nonsense. They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored."[36] A British government source said the allegation was "totally untrue and quite frankly absurd".[37] AdmiralMichael S. Rogers, director of theNational Security Agency, said he has seen nothing to suggest that there was "any such activity," nor any request to do so.[38] Former GCHQ directorDavid Omand told theFinancial Times that "The suggestion that [Barack Obama] asked GCHQ to spy on Trump is just completely barking—that would be evident to anyone who knew the system."[39]
The claim started a diplomatic dispute with Britain.Tim Farron, theLiberal Democrat leader in Britain, said, "Trump is compromising the vital UK–US security relationship to try to cover his own embarrassment. This harms our and US security."[37]The Telegraph said that two U.S. officials had personally apologized for the allegation.[37] The British government also said that the U.S. government promised not to repeat these claims.[39][40] TheWhite House denied reports that it had apologized to the British government, saying Spicer was merely "pointing to public reports" without endorsing them.[37][41]
On April 12, 2017,The Guardian reported that GCHQ and other European intelligence agencies had intercepted communications between members of the Trump campaign team and Russian officials and shared the intelligence with their U.S. counterparts. The communications were obtained through "incidental collection" as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets, not from a targeted operation against Trump or his campaign.[42][43]
Fox News distanced itself from Napolitano's claims and suspended him from contributing to the network's output, according to theLos Angeles Times and theAssociated Press.[44] He returned on March 29 after a nearly two-week absence, but continued to support his earlier claims.[45]
Napolitano splits his time living inManhattan andNewton, New Jersey, where he owns a farm that producesmaple syrup.[46]
Napolitano has stated that he is not related to formerSecretary of Homeland SecurityJanet Napolitano, whom he sometimes jokingly calls "Evil Cousin Janet".[47][48]
Napolitano is avegetarian.[49]
Napolitano identifies as aTraditionalist Catholic who is opposed to the reforms ofVatican II and was critical ofPope Francis.[50][51]
Napolitano was sued by two New Jersey men alleging sexual assault, in one case arising during his time on the bench.[52] Napolitano countersued in one case bringing a libel case. All three suits were later withdrawn and it is reportedly unclear whether any financial settlement occurred.[53]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)"We collected 800 gallons of sap from our sugar maples and had it boiled down to 24 gallons of delicious, pure maple syrup that area residents can sample from the local shops that have agreed to carry our glass-jarred, locally made syrup," said FoxNews commentator Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, proprietor of Vine Hill Farm.
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