The U.S. Constitution

Ninth Circuit Blocks California School Secrecy Law on Gender Transitions

California’s ongoing fight over what public schools may, must, or may not tell parents just took a sharp turn in federal court. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued an injunction blocking enforcement of parts of California’s AB 1955, a state law that...

Can Veterans Sue First? The Supreme Court Takes Up VA Gatekeeping

For decades, veterans have been told some version of the same thing: Start with the VA . File the paperwork. Take your place in the line. If you lose, appeal. If you lose again, appeal again. And only at the far end of that long hallway does a real judge eventually appear. Now the Supreme Court is...

Supreme Court to Decide If Veterans Can Skip the VA Appeals Track

Every civics student learns the comforting phrase: you can take your case to court. Then real life walks in and asks a harder question: which court, when , and on whose timeline ? Next term, the Supreme Court will confront that question in a case that sits at the intersection of two American...

Can Members of Congress Trade Stocks?

Every time a headline resurfaces about a lawmaker buying or selling shares at a politically convenient moment, the same public question returns: is congressional stock trading actually legal ? Today’s news hook is a familiar one: a former House member who once brushed off the idea of a ban now...

Can a State Limit ICE? Sanctuary Laws, Federal Power, and Preemption

When headlines say the Justice Department is suing a state over “sanctuary” limits, the constitutional question is usually simpler than the politics: Can a state refuse to help ICE , and if it can, how far can it go before it starts interfering with federal law ? To be clear on the factual...

Can Courts Control a District Attorney?

District attorneys are typically elected to make hard calls that judges are not supposed to make. Who gets charged, what the charges are, whether a plea deal is offered, and whether a conviction should be defended on appeal are core prosecutorial functions. In American constitutional design, those...

What Is FISA? How Confirmation Votes and Surveillance Renewal Got Linked

FISA is one of those Washington acronyms that seems designed to stay mysterious until it suddenly becomes the headline. It stands for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act , a post-Watergate and Church Committee era law that created special rules for spying in the name of national security. It...

What Is the Filibuster? Senate Rules, New States, Court Expansion, and the Save America Act

The word filibuster does not appear anywhere in the Constitution. And yet it routinely determines what the United States can and cannot do, not because it is a constitutional command, but because the Senate chose to build a supermajority gate into its own procedures. That is why a single newsy...

What Is FISA Section 702?

When surveillance makes the news, the public question is almost always the same: Can the government spy without a warrant? FISA Section 702 sits right on that nerve. It is a federal surveillance authority designed for foreign intelligence gathering, built for the reality that modern communications...

Supreme Court and Guns: Can Illegal Drug Users Possess Firearms?

The question people are asking today is simple: Can illegal drug users own firearms under federal law? The Supreme Court’s new unanimous decision makes the honest answer more complicated, but also clearer. The Court did not erase the federal ban on gun possession by “unlawful users” of...

SCOTUS Could Overturn 91-Year Precedent

There are Supreme Court cases that feel like legal housekeeping, a quiet tightening of bolts in the machinery of government. And then there are cases that threaten to move the engine itself. In the Court’s final stretch this term, the justices are staring down a set of disputes tied to President...

Juneteenth: What It Commemorates and How It Became a Federal Holiday

Juneteenth is often described as the day slavery ended in America. That is true in a moral sense, and more complicated in the historical one. What Juneteenth commemorates is specific: June 19, 1865 , when enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they were free, more than two and a half years...

Court Packing and the Separation of Powers

A sitting U.S. senator just addressed, in plain terms, a topic that can turn politically volatile fast. Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, asked on Meet the Press about expanding the Supreme Court, replied that all options have to be on the table . That line matters because court expansion is not...

Can a President Suspend Habeas Corpus?

Habeas corpus sounds like Latin you can safely ignore until the day it becomes your problem. In plain English, it is the right to ask a judge a simple question: Why is the government holding this person? If the government cannot justify the detention under law, the court can order release or other...

Short Circuit: The Constitution in the Small

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The White House Octagon and the Limits of Presidential Spectacle

A cage on the White House South Lawn is not the kind of sentence most of us expect to read in a civics lesson. And yet, this weekend, an Ultimate Fighting Championship fight night is scheduled with “The Octagon” built on the South Lawn, timed to President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday and...

The Fifth Circuit’s Horse Racing Fight Is Back, and SCOTUS Gets the Cleanup

There is a particular kind of legal mess that doesn’t come from the Constitution itself. It comes from a lower court deciding, repeatedly, that it knows better than everyone else, including the Supreme Court. That is where we are again with federal regulation of horse racing. A deeply...

Gordon Wood’s Defense of the American Revolution

When Americans argue about the Founding, they often argue past one another. One side points to soaring language about liberty. The other points, rightly, to the brutal realities of the era: slavery, legal inequality for women, and a political community that drew its boundaries tightly. The recent,...

The Supreme Court and the Weather-Delayed Ballot

Most election disputes are fought with spreadsheets and statutes. This one is being fought with wind, ice, and a single, stubborn fact of American geography: in parts of the United States, the mail does not move on a predictable timetable. The Supreme Court is considering a challenge that could...

A Supreme Court Mail Ballot Case With Big Stakes for Snowy, Remote States

Election Day often brings to mind a polling place, a line, and results that start rolling in that night. But for many Americans, especially in rural and remote communities, voting looks different. It can depend on a plane, a boat, a snow machine, or simply the hope that the mail arrives on time....