pretense

It is supplying the constitutional context and stripping away the pretense courts so often cling to when they want to stay out of the fray.

From Slate ● Jul. 27, 2026

Rubio added that the Nicaraguan leader and his wife, Rosario Murillo, whom Ortega named as his "co-president" in February 2025, had "abandoned even the pretense of popular consent".

From BBC ● Jul. 23, 2026

But recent scholarship has exploded this pretense and identified hundreds of anonymous tracts and articles that Paine seems to have written in the years before his emigration to America.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 12, 2026

This year, McVay avoided any pretense of suspense.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 11, 2026

She had played the ditzy, glamorous mother to Belet, but now I realized it was all pretense.

From "City of the Plague God" by Sarwat Chadda

After learning that his client couldn’t locate her husband, Rodriguez admitted to obtaining a warrant in July 2022 under false pretenses in order to find him.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 20, 2026

Barofsky said Fain declared under false pretenses that Boyer had been derelict in his duties.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 13, 2026

Meanwhile, Lori, a young Black woman hired under false pretenses as an assistant, stares mutely.

From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 9, 2026

But that news is tempered by the drumbeat of reports from the other end of the airport, where scores of arriving travelers have been detained in frightening conditions and under flimsy pretenses.

From Slate ● Jul. 10, 2025

And yet he felt guilty, knowing that he was accepting the kid’s admiration under false pretenses, that he wasn’t cool at all, not at all.

From "The Chocolate War" by Robert Cormier