The U.S. Constitution

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

The Constitution is supposed to be the nation’s big operating system. But you do not really learn what it does by reading it in a vacuum. You learn it by watching it collide with the ordinary machinery of government: jails, school boards, zoning offices, and courtroom scheduling orders. This...

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....

The Death Row Split Between Kavanaugh and Gorsuch

Some constitutional rules look clean on paper but messy in a courtroom. The doctrine promises an orderly sequence, yet real trials move fast, objections overlap, and judges are forced to make credibility calls on the fly. When that happens, a procedural misfire can turn into the whole case: did the...

Supreme Court Reopens Fight Over Gas Furnace Rules

The Supreme Court reopened a fight over federal efficiency rules for natural gas home-heating equipment this week, vacating a lower-court decision that had upheld the Biden-era standards and sending the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. No full opinion, no sweeping...

Patagonia vs. Pattie Gonia: When Trademark Law Meets Parody

There is a familiar American story hiding inside a very modern fight: a famous brand says it has to police its name, and an activist says their work depends on being recognizable. On Jan. 21, 2026 , Patagonia filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against environmental activist and drag performer...

Techdirt’s Funniest Comments of the Week, and Why They Matter

There is a particular kind of comment section that does not just dunk on the news. It audits it. Techdirt tends to draw that kind of reader. People who can spot a bad incentive structure from a mile away, people who understand that “just ban it” is not an argument, and people who use humor the...

Supreme Court Revives Challenge to Biden-Era Gas Furnace Rule

The Supreme Court has reopened a fight over federal energy efficiency standards for home heating, clearing the way for natural gas trade groups to keep challenging a Biden-era rule that would effectively push a large share of today’s gas furnaces out of the market. The Court did not issue a full...

Of Course Trump Is Going After E. Jean Carroll

When a private citizen sues a powerful public figure and wins, that is the legal system doing what it is supposed to do. When that same person then becomes the target of a criminal investigation under an administration led by the figure she sued, it is hard not to hear the warning embedded in the...

Trump Presses DOJ ‘Weaponization’ Fund After Court Block and Walkout

There are two very different ways to read a president insisting a controversial government fund should “move forward” after the Justice Department has backed away and a judge has already blocked it. One reading is political. The other is constitutional. And right now, President Donald Trump is...