Articles by Eleanor Stratton

The Guarantee Clause Explained

You have probably heard a politician say something like, “We are a republic, not a democracy.” It sounds like a slogan. But tucked into the Constitution is a sentence that actually uses the word “republican” as a legal promise. Article IV, Section 4 declares: the United States “shall guarantee to...

Ex Post Facto Laws and Bills of Attainder

Some constitutional limits are famous because they get quoted in speeches. Others do their work quietly, like load-bearing beams you only notice when they crack. The bans on ex post facto laws and bills of attainder are in that second category. Both are aimed at the same temptation: when a...

Civil Rights Act of 1964: Titles, Rights, and Constitutional Backing

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is often remembered as a moral turning point, and it was. But it is also a piece of legal engineering: a statute built to do something the Constitution, standing alone, did not clearly require private businesses to do in 1964. The Fourteenth Amendment limits what states...

How Class Action Lawsuits Work in Federal Court

When people talk about a class action, they usually mean one thing: a lot of people, one lawsuit, one big check at the end. Federal court treats it as something more specific and more constrained. A class action is a procedural device, a way to bundle many similar claims into a single case so that...

Administrative Procedure Act (APA) Explained

The federal government writes rules that touch everyday life: what counts as “overtime,” what a “clean” tailpipe means, which medicines can be marketed, and how student loans can be collected. Most of those rules are not written by Congress line-by-line. They are written by agencies. The...

The Logan Act Explained

The Logan Act is one of those laws that feels like it should be in bold type across the front of a civics textbook. It criminalizes a private citizen attempting to conduct unauthorized diplomacy with a foreign government in a way meant to affect a dispute with the United States. Yet most Americans...

Federal Court Jurisdiction 101

Most people think “federal court” means “big case” or “important case.” In reality, federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction . They cannot hear everything, even if the dispute feels national, emotional, or high-stakes. The threshold issue is subject-matter jurisdiction , which is...

The Nondelegation Doctrine Explained

The federal government runs on delegation. Congress passes statutes that set goals, create agencies, authorize programs, and then require someone to fill in the operational details. Those details become regulations that shape everything from workplace safety to environmental standards to...

Supreme Court Original Jurisdiction

Most Supreme Court stories begin the same way: a case climbs a ladder. Trial court, appeal, another appeal, and finally a petition asking nine justices to take a look. But a tiny slice of cases do not climb at all. They begin at the top. That is what original jurisdiction means, and it is one of...

Can a Court Order OpenAI to Cut Off ChatGPT to One User?

In the AI age, some of our oldest constitutional questions are returning in unfamiliar clothing. A plaintiff has asked a court to order OpenAI to cut off a particular person from ChatGPT, prevent him from creating new accounts, and notify her if he tries to get back on. The allegations behind the...

Massachusetts and the Quiet Squeeze on Section 230

Section 230 is famous for what it says in plain English: if you run a website that hosts user content, you usually are not treated as the “publisher or speaker” of what your users post. That protection is not a courtesy. It is the legal architecture that made comment sections, reviews, social...

Can the Government Unmask Anonymous Critics?

Anonymous speech is not a loophole in the First Amendment. It is one of its oldest habits. That is why a recent effort to force Reddit to identify a user who criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement is not just a platform privacy story. It is a stress test for a constitutional principle:...

Congressional Review Act Explained

Most federal regulations do not die dramatic deaths. They fade out in committee hearings, get revised in the Federal Register, or get whittled down in court. The Congressional Review Act , or CRA, is different. It is a statutory trapdoor. If Congress and the President agree, they can wipe out a...

Bivens Actions Explained

You can sue state and local officials for constitutional violations under a statute most lawyers know by heart: 42 U.S.C. § 1983 . But what if the person who violated your rights works for the federal government? That is where people often hear the phrase “Bivens action” , usually said with a...

The USA PATRIOT Act and the Constitution

“The PATRIOT Act” has become shorthand for a single idea: the government can listen to your calls, read your messages, and raid your bank account because Congress moved quickly in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The reality is more bureaucratic, more specific, and in a way, more constitutionally...

FISA and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court

You can tell how confusing FISA is by the way people talk about it. Some treat a “FISA warrant” like a cheat code that lets the government spy without rules. Others treat it like a normal warrant with a different label. Neither is quite right. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978...

Section 1983 Lawsuits Explained

When people say they are “suing the police for violating my rights,” they are usually talking about one statute: 42 U.S.C. § 1983 , commonly called Section 1983 . It is not a constitutional amendment. It is a Reconstruction-era law that creates a civil lawsuit when a state or local official uses...

The Public Charge Rule Explained

In American immigration law, few phrases cause more confusion than “public charge.” People hear it and assume it means: if you ever used a public benefit, you can be deported. Or: if you are poor, you cannot immigrate. Or: if you apply for a green card, you have to prove you will never need help....

The Espionage Act Explained

You can think of the Espionage Act as a law built for wartime, then left on the books for peacetime. It was born in World War I, designed to protect military operations and national defense information. A century later, it is still one of the government’s main tools for prosecuting the unauthorized...

Alien Tort Statute Explained

The Alien Tort Statute is one of the strangest power tools in American law. It is a single sentence written in 1789, largely dormant for almost two centuries, then suddenly revived as a way for foreign plaintiffs to bring human rights cases in U.S. federal courts. And then the Supreme Court spent...