Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Swatting at Justice Barrett’s Home and the Court’s Security Problem

On Wednesday night, police in Fairfax County, Virginia, were dispatched to the residence of Justice Amy Coney Barrett after a caller reported an emergency. It was a swatting call, a false report designed to trigger a law enforcement response where none is needed. A Fairfax County Police Department...

Can a City Compel Counselors to Counsel Same-Sex Married Couples?

There is a version of this question that sounds simple. If you open a business to the public, you serve the public. End of story. And then there is the constitutional version, where “service” is not just selling a product but speaking, listening, advising, affirming, challenging, and guiding....

South Carolina Senate Refuses to Redraw Maps Mid-Election

Editor’s note: This article is a forward-looking analysis set in the 2026 election cycle. Dates, figures, and quotations are presented within that hypothetical setting. South Carolina lawmakers came to Columbia with a clear mission: redraw the state’s congressional map in time for the 2026...

What Are US Midterm Elections?

Midterm elections are the federal election cycle held two years into a president’s four-year term. They are not a “midterm test” in any legal sense, but politically they often function like one because voters decide whether the president’s party will keep or lose power in Congress. Here is...

New Hampshire’s Campus Gun Ban Fight

Public colleges like to speak in the language of community. They are marketplaces of ideas, shared spaces, open campuses, open doors. But when the topic is firearms, many public universities suddenly speak a different language. Not community, but property. Not rights, but rules. Not citizens, but...

The Supreme Court’s Worst Decisions (and Why They Never Really Die)

We treat Supreme Court decisions like tombstones. Chiseled in stone. Final. Settled. But the Court’s worst moments do not stay buried. Even when a case is “overruled,” the reasoning that powered it can linger in the legal bloodstream, ready to reappear in a new body with a new name. So when...

Graham’s Warning to GOP Dissenters

Political parties are coalitions until they are not. At some point, a coalition stops being a loose agreement about goals and becomes a discipline system. Rewards flow to those who help the leader. Penalties land on those who do not. Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested the Republican Party is operating...

What Are RICO Charges?

When you hear that someone is facing “RICO charges,” it often sounds like a prosecutor just opened a trap door labeled organized crime and dropped the defendant through it. But RICO is not a magical super-crime. It is a statute, passed in 1970, that lets prosecutors connect the dots between...

“Don’t Let Them Hide FOX News” and the First Amendment

You are on Fox News. The page dims. A centered popup takes over the screen in dark blue with Fox branding and a warning that sounds less like marketing and more like mobilization: “Don’t Let Them Hide FOX News.” Under it: “Take control of your search.” The call to action is specific. A...

McMorrow’s Water Bills and the Politics of Shutoffs

Mallory McMorrow is building a U.S. Senate campaign around affordability and the idea that basic necessities should not be rationed by wealth. But at her Royal Oak-area property, her own water account became a quiet case study in how quickly “policy” turns into “practice.” Records show...

Jacksonville’s Gun Log Lawsuit and the Meaning of “Registration”

“Registration” sounds like a bureaucratic word. A form. A checkbox. A harmless administrative ritual. But in American gun politics and American gun law, registration is not neutral vocabulary. It is a loaded category. It can mean everything from a city guard writing down a visitor’s name to a...

What Is an Arraignment Hearing?

You can feel the whole criminal justice system snap into focus at an arraignment. Until that moment, an arrest can feel like a blur of handcuffs, paperwork, and holding cells. An arraignment, or a closely related first appearance in some courts, is where the state has to say, out loud and on the...

What Happens at an Arraignment

For many people, “arraignment” is a word they only hear on TV, usually shouted right before a dramatic plea. In real life, an arraignment is less theatrical and more structural. It is the court’s way of putting the case on the record: who you are, what you are charged with, what your rights...

Clarence Thomas’ Record and the Court’s Balance of Power

There is a particular kind of Supreme Court power that does not show up in oral argument transcripts or in the tally at the bottom of an opinion. It is the power of simply being there, term after term, long enough for your “dissent” to become the next generation’s baseline. Last week, Justice...

Virginia Supreme Court Voids Democrats’ House Map

Virginia voters said “yes” to a new set of U.S. House districts. The Virginia Supreme Court said that “yes” no longer counts. In a 4-3 decision, the court held that the General Assembly did not follow the Virginia Constitution’s required sequence for putting a redistricting amendment on...

When ICE Arrests the Wrong Person

It is easy to talk about “due process” like it is a courtroom concept. A judge. A lawyer. A formal charge. A tidy timeline. But due process often fails earlier, in the messy place where armed authority meets an ordinary morning. George Retes, a 25-year-old U.S. citizen, Army veteran, and...

A New SCOTUS Line on Gerrymanders

Gerrymandering is one of those political practices Americans love to hate, until it helps their side win. But the Constitution does not treat every kind of gerrymander the same. After a recent Supreme Court decision involving Louisiana’s congressional map, that difference just got sharper in a...

What Is Dark Money?

Dark money is political money with an identity problem. You can see the ad. You can hear the message. You can sometimes even guess who benefits. But the public cannot reliably see who paid for it , because the true donors are routed through organizations that are not required to disclose them. That...

What Is RICO?

“RICO” gets used like a synonym for “big crime.” But the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act is not a vibe. It is a specific federal statute, passed in 1970, that lets prosecutors and civil plaintiffs treat a long-running scheme as the main event. Most criminal law is built...

RICO Case Meaning

People throw around the phrase “RICO case” like it is shorthand for big scandal . Someone gets indicted with a stack of charges, the headline says “RICO,” and the public takeaway is basically: this must be serious . It often is. But the meaning of a RICO case is more specific and more...