Articles by Eleanor Stratton

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...

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...

The Death Penalty and the Constitution

The Constitution both assumes the possibility of capital punishment and tightly polices how it is used. That tension is the story of modern death penalty law. The Fifth Amendment contemplates “capital” crimes and warns that no person shall be deprived of “life” without due process. But the...

Gideon v. Wainwright: The Right to a Lawyer

You can read the Sixth Amendment in under a minute. Its promise takes longer to absorb: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” For much of American history, that sentence did not mean what modern audiences assume...

The Naturalization Oath of Allegiance

You can study the civics questions for weeks. You can gather tax transcripts, travel records, and a stack of evidence thick enough to make your mailbox nervous. But U.S. citizenship does not finalize with paperwork. It finalizes with words. The Naturalization Oath of Allegiance is the moment USCIS...

Article III Courts vs. Legislative Courts

Most people hear “federal judge” and picture one job: a robed official with a lifetime appointment, insulated from direct political retaliation, calling balls and strikes until retirement. That picture is real, but it is incomplete. In the federal system, some judges are protected by the...

How to Read a U.S. Supreme Court Opinion

Most Supreme Court opinions look like they were designed to keep ordinary readers out. Dense prose. Latin phrases. Citations stacked like bricks. Then a one-line result that somehow changes the law for hundreds of millions of Americans. But you do not need a law degree to read an opinion...

Terry Stops and Frisks

You can feel it in the phrasing: Just a few questions . Step over here . Mind if I pat you down? Many Fourth Amendment conflicts do not begin with a battering ram and a warrant. They begin with a pause on a sidewalk or shoulder of a road, where an officer suspects something is off but does not yet...

How Lower Federal Judges Are Appointed and Confirmed

Most Americans can name the Supreme Court nominees who dominate the headlines. Far fewer could explain how the judges who decide the overwhelming majority of federal cases actually get their jobs. That matters because Article III district and circuit judges are not supporting characters. They are...

Student Speech and the First Amendment

Public school students do not leave the First Amendment at the schoolhouse gate. That line comes from the Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), and it is still the starting point for nearly every student speech fight you see in the news. (The Court’s...

The Speedy Trial Act Explained

People talk about a “speedy trial” like it is one rule with one countdown. In federal court, it is really two different systems that can point in the same direction but do different work: The Sixth Amendment gives you a constitutional right to a speedy trial, enforced through broad balancing...

Constitutional Rights in U.S. Territories

Most civics explanations start with a simple premise: the Constitution is the rulebook, and Americans get a standard set of rights plus a vote for the people who run the federal government. That premise breaks the moment you step off the map of the fifty states. About 3.5 million people (roughly...