Articles by Eleanor Stratton

How Congress Overrides a Presidential Veto

The President can stop a bill with a veto. But the Constitution does not treat that veto like a royal command. It treats it like a speed bump, one that becomes a wall unless Congress can prove something important: that the bill has overwhelming support even after the President has objected. That is...

The Pocket Veto Explained

The Constitution gives the President a familiar choice when Congress sends a bill to the White House: sign it into law or veto it and send it back. But there is a third option that can feel counterintuitive. The President can do nothing, and if Congress has adjourned in the right way at the right...

Natural-Born Citizen and Presidential Eligibility

The Constitution sets only a few eligibility rules for the presidency, and one phrase does most of the work: “natural born Citizen.” It is a requirement everyone recognizes and for which almost no one can point to a single, controlling definition. The result is predictable. A short clause...

Electoral Count Act: How Congress Certifies Electoral Votes

Americans talk about presidential elections like they end on election night. Constitutionally and legally, they do not. The public vote drives which slate of electors gets appointed in each state, and those duly appointed electors determine the winner by casting electoral votes. The public-facing...

Writ of Certiorari

You will hear it in headlines like it is a verdict: “The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.” But what the Court usually declines is not the merits. It declines the invitation . That invitation is called a writ of certiorari , often shortened to cert . It is the procedural gatekeeper that...

Pam Bondi Fired as Attorney General

Attorney General Pam Bondi has been fired by President Donald Trump, a jarring reminder that in the modern presidency, the Justice Department can become both a legal institution and a political mirror. The White House has confirmed that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche will step in as acting...

The Noem Story and the Constitution’s Blackmail Problem

There are two separate stories wrapped inside the recent revelations about Bryon Noem, the husband of former homeland security secretary Kristi Noem. The first is tabloid fodder: private photos, explicit messages, and a months-long online fetish exchange that reportedly involved cross-dressing...

Amicus Briefs: When Outside Groups Weigh In

You have probably seen the headline version of this: a major case hits the Supreme Court and suddenly a flood of outside groups “weigh in.” States. Trade associations. Civil rights organizations. Retired judges. Sometimes even members of Congress. Those filings are usually amicus briefs , short...

Mistrials and Hung Juries

A criminal trial is supposed to end with a verdict. Guilty or not guilty. A clean, final answer. But sometimes the system cannot get there. Jurors cannot agree. Something happens in the courtroom that makes a fair verdict impossible. The judge declares a mistrial , and the case hits an unsettling...

The Senate Blue Slip, Explained

Some of the most consequential power in Washington lives in places you will not find in the Constitution’s text. The Senate “blue slip” is one of those places. It is not a law. It is not a constitutional requirement. It is a Senate Judiciary Committee tradition that can slow, reshape, or stop...

Unanimous Consent in the Senate

The Senate has 100 members, debate can be extended on many questions, and it has a reputation for procedural gridlock in practice. Yet most days, it still manages to move quickly through stacks of routine work. The tool that makes that possible is unanimous consent , usually shortened to UC . UC is...

What Is a Special Counsel?

Americans tend to talk about “the DOJ” as if it is a single, unified person with one set of motives. In reality, it is a sprawling bureaucracy with thousands of attorneys, layered supervision, and a basic institutional goal: to make prosecutorial decisions that can survive scrutiny from bosses,...

Senatorial Holds Explained

The Senate is built partly around a polite fiction: that it runs on cooperation. Most days, it does. Many noncontroversial measures move by unanimous consent, many nominations get cleared in batches, and the chamber can move faster than its reputation suggests. Then one senator decides to slow...

Court Gag Orders Explained

A gag order is one of the stranger things an American court can do in public: tell people involved in a case to stop talking about it. It sounds like censorship, and sometimes it functions that way. But it is also a courtroom management tool, aimed at protecting a defendant’s right to a fair...

Criminal Indictment vs Information vs Charge

You can be told you are “charged with a crime” in several different ways, by different actors, at different moments in a case. That is why the words indictment , information , complaint , and “ charge ” get used interchangeably in headlines, even though they do not mean the same thing. A...

Congressional Subpoenas Explained

A congressional subpoena is one of the sharpest tools Congress has for getting information it believes it needs to legislate, oversee the executive branch, or investigate public problems. It can look like a court subpoena. It can feel like a criminal investigation. But constitutionally and...

The Speech and Debate Clause

Members of Congress say controversial things for a living. Sometimes they say them in hearings, sometimes on the House floor, sometimes in a committee report that lands hard in the news cycle. So here is the natural question, especially when subpoenas start flying and prosecutors start asking...

Contempt of Court Explained

“Contempt of court” sounds like a judge punishing someone for being rude. Sometimes it is about behavior. Often, it is about enforcement: the court’s ability to make its orders mean something in the real world. And before we go further, a quick but important separation. Contempt of court is a...

Congressional Censure Explained

Congress can do something that feels like punishment without ever touching a person’s job title: it can formally condemn a member in the name of the institution itself. That is censure. It is not a criminal sentence. It is not impeachment. It is not, strictly speaking, a removal tool. It is...

Chicago Mayor’s Armed Detail and Two Sets of Rules

There is a particular kind of argument that never happens in a courtroom and yet shapes constitutional culture anyway: the argument about who gets to live under the “real” rules. That is why a reported price tag attached to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s personal security has landed with...