Articles by Charlotte Greene

Birthright Citizenship and the 14th Amendment

New demographic estimates can land like a spark in a dry field, especially when they touch the Constitution. Before you let a viral number do the thinking for you, it helps to step back. The core civic questions exist even without a headline statistic : who is a citizen at birth, what...

The Shadow Docket Was Built to Restrain Presidents

When people hear the phrase “shadow docket” , they usually imagine something secretive: important decisions made quickly, with little explanation, outside the Court’s normal rhythm of briefing, oral argument, and a signed opinion. That concern is real. But there is another part of the story...

Federal Court Halts Arkansas Act 900 in NetChoice Challenge

Arkansas tried, once again, to reshape how social media works for young people. And once again, a federal court stepped in. In NetChoice LLC v. Griffin , a judge in the Western District of Arkansas issued a preliminary injunction against Arkansas Act 900 of 2025, concluding that major parts of the...

How Much Power Should an Attorney General Use to Reshape Gun Enforcement?

When Americans talk about “gun policy,” they often picture Congress passing a law. But a large share of day-to-day Second Amendment enforcement flows through the Department of Justice and its sub-agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). That reality is at the...

Supreme Court to Hear Green Card Case on Charges

For many families, a green card represents stability: the ability to live and work in the United States on a long-term basis and to build a life with fewer immigration uncertainties. But lawful permanent residence is not the same as citizenship. One major difference is that the federal government...

The SEC Settlement Gag Rule and the First Amendment

When most people think about the First Amendment, they picture a public square, a protest sign, or a newspaper editorial. But some of the most consequential speech questions happen in quieter places, like the fine print of a settlement agreement. That is the heart of the dispute over the SEC’s...

Virginia Democrats’ referendum would rewrite redistricting rules for a 10–1 map

Virginia is holding a rare kind of election with national consequences: a statewide referendum that would change the rules for drawing congressional districts and immediately swap in a new set of lines that could reshape who represents the Commonwealth in the U.S. House. The proposed map is not...

Tariffs After a Court Ruling

TL;DR: Congress holds the Constitution’s core tariff power, but it has given presidents several statutory tools to act in defined circumstances. Courts typically police the boundaries of those statutes. In scenarios where a court narrows one statutory pathway, disputes often shift to which...

Who Owns Presidential Records?

In everyday life, we assume the person who writes an email or takes a note “owns” it. The presidency does not work that way. When a president and the White House staff create documents while carrying out public duties, those materials are generally treated as public records , preserved for...

Supreme Court to Weigh Colorado’s Pre-K Rules and Catholic Schools

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Colorado dispute that sits at a familiar constitutional crossroads: when a state offers public benefits to private groups, how far can it go in setting the terms without crossing the First Amendment’s protections for religious exercise? The case arises from...

Judge: DOJ and DHS Likely Coerced Platforms To Remove ICE-Tracking Speech

A federal judge has signaled that federal officials may have crossed a constitutional line when they urged major tech companies to remove online tools used to share information about immigration enforcement activity. In a preliminary ruling, U.S. District Judge Jorge L. Alonso found that the...

DOJ Seeks Wayne County’s 2024 Ballots

The U.S. Department of Justice has demanded that Wayne County, Michigan, produce materials from the November 2024 election, including all ballots along with supporting paperwork like ballot receipts and ballot envelopes. The request, delivered in an April 14 letter, gives the county 14 days to...

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...

When a Judge Bans You From Saying Someone’s Name

It is hard to think of a more sweeping speech restriction than this: a court order telling a person to stop “publicly writing, printing, or speaking” another person’s name. That is not a metaphor. It is the kind of command that reaches into ordinary civic life, where we argue about...

Trump’s Yemen Strikes and the War Powers Question

A naval blockade sounds like a Cold War era phrase, but constitutionally it raises a very modern question: how far can a president go, on their own, before the United States is effectively at war? This question lands differently when the news is not hypothetical. President Donald Trump has ordered...

Virginia Gun Sales Spike Ahead of New Controls

One of the easiest ways to see how law influences everyday behavior is to watch what happens right before a rule changes, or might. In Virginia, gun retailers say that is exactly what is happening now: as a slate of proposed gun controls moves through the legislative process, customers are rushing...

When the government locks someone up, our constitutional tradition expects more than a label. Recent detention litigation in multiple jurisdictions has drawn fresh attention to a recurring issue in immigration law: when, if ever, the government can require detention automatically under certain...

WATCH: Rex Heuermann Pleads Guilty to Killing 8 Women

Rex Heuermann admitted in court that he killed eight women as he changed his plea to guilty on April 9, 2026, in the Gilgo Beach murders case in New York. For many people following a case like this, a guilty plea can feel like the end of the story. In reality, it is more like a hinge in the...