Amendments

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment: Can a President End It by Executive Order?

Birthright citizenship is one of those constitutional ideas that sounds simple until someone tries to change it in real time. A recurring flashpoint is when a president issues (or proposes) an executive order aimed at narrowing who counts as a citizen at birth, and a federal court quickly blocks it...

The 26th Amendment, Mail-In Voting, and Age Limits

You can read the Twenty-Sixth Amendment in under ten seconds. Understanding it, especially in the mail-in voting fights that keep surfacing in state legislatures, takes longer. That is because the amendment does two things at once. It prohibits the United States and the states from denying or...

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship feels like one of those constitutional “obvious truths.” If you are born here, you are American. End of story. Except the rule is not written as a bumper sticker. It is written as one sentence in the Fourteenth Amendment , plus more than 150 years of debate and litigation...

Birth Tourism and the 14th Amendment: How Birthright Citizenship Works

You can feel the constitutional question hiding inside the headline: if someone flies to the United States late in pregnancy, gives birth, and leaves, did they just “exploit” a loophole or did they use a rule the Constitution itself writes in ink? That question is getting fresh attention after the...

Airport Wudu Stations and the First Amendment: What DOJ Can Do

Debates over so called “wudu stations” in public airports can sound like culture war fodder. But the underlying issue is a straightforward constitutional question: what does the First Amendment require, and what does it forbid, when a government run space tries to accommodate religious practice?...

Can Trump Run Again in 2028? The 22nd Amendment and the Third-Term Wall

Presidential term limits are one of those constitutional rules most Americans feel in their bones even if they cannot quote the exact text. This week, President Donald Trump put that rule back on the front page himself. Speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Tuesday night, Trump...

Can a President Serve a Third Term? What the 22nd Amendment Says

The question resurfaces every few years, usually after an offhand comment or a headline that sounds like a dare: can a president serve a third term? Today the answer is straightforward in law and in practice. The Constitution, through the 22nd Amendment , forbids any person from being elected...

What Is Birth Tourism? Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment Explained

“Birth tourism” is the term commonly used for a practice critics often describe as a loophole. A nonresident travels to the United States late in pregnancy, gives birth here, and returns home. The goal is straightforward: if the baby is a U.S. citizen at birth, that status can matter later, from...

The 25th Amendment Explained: How Presidential Disability and Removal Work

The phrase “invoke the 25th” has become modern political shorthand for a very old anxiety: what happens if the President cannot do the job, and nobody can agree on it? That question flares up whenever a major public figure claims a President is cognitively unfit, medically impaired, or simply not...

Florida’s Campus Speech Fight Heads Toward En Banc

When a state tells a university professor, “You may discuss this idea, but only if you do it neutrally and without endorsement” , what exactly is being regulated: curriculum, or conscience? That is the knot now tightening in Pernell v. Fla. Bd. of Governors of State Univ. , a Florida case that may...

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment

Birthright citizenship is one of those American ideas that feels so basic we can forget it is also deeply technical. If you are born here, you are a citizen. In practice, that is how most people understand it. Except the 14th Amendment does not actually say “born here, therefore citizen” with no...

Can Birthright Citizenship Be Changed Without the Supreme Court?

Birthright citizenship feels like one of those American rules that is too basic to argue about, like the idea that the Constitution outranks ordinary politics or that courts can say what the law is. Then a headline comes along suggesting a president might be able to “end” it, maybe even without the...

Why the ACLU Started Defending the Second Amendment

For decades, the American Civil Liberties Union was the organization many people associated with unpopular speech, controversial protests, and the principle that constitutional rights do not depend on whether the public approves of the speaker. So it has surprised some observers to see the ACLU...

Privileges or Immunities Clause, Explained

The 14th Amendment is famous for two ideas most Americans can recognize on sight: due process and equal protection . But it opens with a third promise that sounds like it should be the main event. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens...

Brandenburg v. Ohio and the Imminent Lawless Action Test

You can say a lot in America, including things most people find ugly, reckless, or flat-out dangerous. The First Amendment does not exist to protect only polite opinions. It exists to protect speech that would be easiest for the government to suppress when public fear runs high. But the protection...

Carpenter v. United States: CSLI and the Fourth Amendment

You carry your phone. Your phone talks to cell towers. Your carrier keeps the logs. For years, that basic infrastructure quietly reshaped Fourth Amendment law. Not because the Constitution changed, but because the most revealing “search” in modern life often looks like paperwork. A request. A...

Article V Convention of States

Americans love to say the Constitution is hard to change. That is true in practice, but the document itself gives us two amendment mechanisms. One is familiar: Congress proposes amendments, then the states ratify. The other sits in a kind of constitutional suspense: if enough states apply, Congress...

The 24th Amendment and Poll Taxes

You can learn a lot about a country by asking what it charges for. For decades, parts of the United States charged people to vote. Not as a fundraising gimmick, and not as a neutral administrative fee, but as a deliberate filter. If you could not pay, you did not participate. If you did not...

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 leaflets...

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...