The U.S. Constitution

AEDPA and Federal Habeas Review of State Convictions

Federal habeas corpus is often described as an emergency exit for unlawful imprisonment. For state prisoners today, that exit is mostly a statutory one: modern federal habeas review runs primarily through 28 U.S.C. § 2254, against a constitutional backdrop that includes the Suspension Clause. The...

The Jencks Act and Witness Statements

The Jencks Act is one of those federal trial rules that sounds technical until you picture it in real life: a witness points at a defendant in open court and tells the jury what happened, and the defense thinks, Have you said something different before? The Constitution does not contain a “right...

The Crime Victims’ Rights Act

You can read a lot of American criminal procedure and come away with a lopsided impression: the Constitution is a map of what the government cannot do to the accused. Search and seizure. Self-incrimination. Counsel. Confrontation. Due process. Those rules are essential, and they are deliberately...

Change of Venue in Criminal Trials

Most people hear “change of venue” and think it means the defendant is getting a better judge, a friendlier jury, or a procedural reset. In reality, it is something narrower and more constitutional than that. It is a tool courts use when the place where a crime is charged becomes an obstacle to...

The Plain View Doctrine

Most Fourth Amendment stories start with a warrant. Plain view stories start with something simpler: an officer is already somewhere they are allowed to be, sees something exposed to lawful observation, and its incriminating character is immediately apparent without the officer doing anything that...

Bench Trial vs. Jury Trial

The Constitution promises a right that most Americans treat as automatic: a trial by jury. But in many criminal cases, the most consequential decision happens before any witness is sworn. Do you want twelve citizens to decide whether the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, or do...

The Rule of Four

The Supreme Court is not a court you can simply appeal to because you lost. It is a court that mostly gets to decide whether it will listen at all. Every year, thousands of people ask the justices to take their case. Only a small fraction get a yes. And that “yes” is often triggered by one...

Giglio v. United States

You can lose a criminal trial without losing on the facts. Sometimes you lose because the jury never got to see what would have made a government witness look different in the witness chair: a promise, a deal, a quiet assurance, or even just a reason to shade the truth. That is where Giglio v....

Moore v. Harper and the Independent State Legislature Theory

Two constitutional provisions have done an outsized amount of work in modern election litigation. They both say that state election rules for federal contests are set by each state’s “Legislature.” That single word powered one of the most ambitious constitutional arguments in decades, the...

Prior Restraint and the First Amendment

You can be punished for speech after you publish it. That is the normal First Amendment fight. Prior restraint is different. It is the government trying to stop speech before it reaches anyone. A judge’s order that a newspaper cannot print. A licensing office that says you cannot hand out...

Reasonable Suspicion vs. Probable Cause

You can feel the difference between these two standards in real life, even if you have never said their names out loud. Reasonable suspicion is the legal threshold for an officer to briefly stop you and investigate. Probable cause is the higher threshold that usually justifies an arrest or a full...

The Antideficiency Act Explained

When Congress misses a funding deadline, the public tends to talk about a “shutdown” like it is a switch someone flips in a back room. But inside the executive branch, it is more like a legal tripwire. When appropriations lapse for a given account , a statute with 19th-century origins called...

Alito and Thomas Staying Put, for Now

In Washington, the loudest Supreme Court news is often the news that does not happen. Multiple sources now indicate that Justice Samuel Alito is not expected to step down this term. The term lasts until the Court’s new year begins in October. Alito, who is 76, has already hired all four law...

A Strait of Hormuz Blockade Without Congress?

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a watery choke point. It is a constitutional one too. When the world’s most sensitive shipping lane becomes the stage for armed enforcement, the question is not only what happened at sea, but who, back home, has the authority to set the rules. After an incident...

Navy Seizes Iranian Ship in the Strait: War Powers and the Escalation Risk

The Strait of Hormuz is not just a narrow stretch of water. It is a pressure point where global commerce, regional rivalries, and U.S. constitutional limits collide. On April 19, 2026, U.S. Central Command released video showing the destroyer USS Spruance firing on an Iranian-flagged cargo vessel...

When Schools Keep Gender Identity Secret From Parents

Across the country, families are learning a hard civics lesson: the most emotional school debates are often the ones with the most complicated lines of authority. Who decides what a school can keep from parents about a child’s gender identity? When does student privacy matter most? And where,...

SCOTUS Curbs Climate Lawsuits Against Oil Companies

A growing number of climate activists and state and local governments have tried to use the courts to pressure oil and gas companies, not only through regulation, but through lawsuits that seek massive financial liability. The basic theory is straightforward: if a judge or jury can be persuaded...

New Hampshire’s Campus Carry Fight

New Hampshire just shoved a hard question back onto the table: when you step onto a college campus, do you step out of your constitutional rights? A campus carry bill, HB 1793 , has cleared the New Hampshire House and now heads to the state Senate, where lawmakers will weigh it next. The bill is...

Partisan Gerrymandering and the Supreme Court

Gerrymandering is one of those civic words that gets used like a moral verdict. A map “looks wrong,” so it must be unconstitutional. But the Supreme Court has drawn a sharp line between two accusations that sound similar in everyday speech: partisan gerrymandering (drawing districts to help a...

Sobriety Checkpoints and the Fourth Amendment

Sobriety checkpoints sit in a narrow, counterintuitive constitutional exception that surprises almost everyone the first time they hit one. You did not do anything wrong, no officer saw you weaving, and yet you are being stopped by the government on a public road. Under the Fourth Amendment, that...