Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Jury Nullification: Can a Jury Legally Ignore the Law?

Every criminal trial ends with the same ritual: the judge explains the law, the jury “finds the facts,” and everyone pretends those roles never overlap. Then a jury walks into the deliberation room and does something the system is built to discourage, but cannot completely prevent: it refuses...

U.S. Citizenship Test: 100 Civics Questions and Answers (2026)

You can learn the U.S. Constitution in a lifetime. You can pass the civics test in a few focused weeks. The citizenship civics test is not designed to trick you. It is designed to check whether you can recognize the basic structure of American government, name a few core rights, and place key...

Habeas Corpus Explained

Habeas corpus is one of those constitutional phrases people recognize without quite knowing what it does. It sounds ceremonial, like something you would find engraved on a courtroom wall. In reality, it is a blunt tool. A person is locked up. A judge demands an answer. The government must either...

The Supreme Court and the Postmark Problem

“Election Day” sounds like a single, fixed moment. Polls close, the votes are counted, a winner emerges, and the country moves on. But the legal fight now in front of the Supreme Court turns on a deceptively simple question: when federal law sets a single national Election Day, what counts as...

Texas Democrat Talarico Scrambles After Anti-Meat Clip Returns

In politics, nothing is ever really “old.” It is just waiting to be reintroduced with a sharper caption and a meaner algorithm. That is the predicament now facing James Talarico, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Texas, after a 2022 clip resurfaced showing him urging Texans to cut back...

The Voter ID Trap in the Senate

Washington has a favorite magic trick: declare agreement in principle, then make sure the principle never becomes law. That is the story a Republican senator tried to force into the open this week when he asked the Senate to pass a standalone national voter ID requirement by unanimous consent. The...

Justice Alito’s One-Word Argument in the Late-Ballot Case

Sometimes a Supreme Court argument turns on a constitutional principle so grand it feels like it belongs on marble. Other times it turns on a word so ordinary you could miss the stakes entirely. This week, the justices wrestled with one of those ordinary words: day . Not “liberty.” Not “equal...

DHS Shutdown Fight Turns Into a Constitutional Power Struggle

A shutdown is usually sold as a budget problem. But the longer it drags on, the more it becomes something else: a live-fire test of who, exactly, controls the machinery of the federal government. As the Department of Homeland Security entered its 36th day of a partial government shutdown affecting...

DOJ Asks Court to Lift Abrego Garcia Deportation Block

Immigration fights usually look like policy arguments. This one is mostly a procedural collision between two kinds of government power: the executive branch’s authority to remove a noncitizen, and a federal court’s authority to pause that removal while legal questions are sorted out. In the...

GOP States Rally Behind the SAVE Act

There is a quiet constitutional irony at the center of America’s loudest election fights: the federal government sets baseline rules for federal elections, but the states build the machinery that decides how those rules are enforced.  That tension is exactly what Republican governors and...

Judge Declines Recusal in Minnesota DHS, ICE Dispute

A basic promise sits underneath every court ruling, especially the ones that land in a political spotlight: the judge has to be more than fair. The judge has to look fair. That is why a new fight in federal court in Minnesota is not just about immigration enforcement tactics. It is also about...

Federal Judge Blocks Ten Commandments Displays in Arkansas Classrooms

A federal judge has permanently barred several Arkansas school districts from posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms, ruling that the state’s 2025 mandate violated the Constitution. The decision is the latest flashpoint in a long-running fight over the First Amendment’s religion clauses,...

A Biden-Appointed Judge, a Supreme Court Stay, and the New Anxiety Over Trial Courts

When people talk about “the Supreme Court,” they usually mean finality. Black robes. Marble steps. The last word. But most of the real governing in American law happens earlier, lower, and faster. It happens when a single district judge issues an order that takes effect immediately, long before...

The Supreme Court Case That Won’t Let States Fix Education

States pour enormous sums into public schools, but a Supreme Court ruling from 1982 sharply limits how states can respond when those dollars are used to educate children of people in the country unlawfully. That tension is now back in the spotlight, with Tennessee pushing toward a fresh test of...

Nine convicted in North Texas ICE attack

A federal jury in Fort Worth convicted nine defendants for their roles in the July 4, 2025, attack on the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, according to the U.S. Department of Justice. Jurors delivered a mixed verdict, meaning the defendants were not all convicted of the same...

Illegal Alien Charged After Violent Tussle with Federal Officer

A routine enforcement stop outside a business in Utica, Michigan turned into something far more serious: a Justice Department criminal complaint now accuses a Venezuelan national of assaulting a federal officer, resisting arrest, and grabbing and possessing the officer’s firearm during a physical...

Boasberg Quashes Subpoenas Targeting Fed Chair Powell

There are a lot of ways a President can try to bend Washington to his will. Public pressure. Backchannel persuasion. Personnel changes. And, sometimes, something far more fraught: using the optics of a criminal process as a lever in a political dispute. That is the concern sitting at the center of...

Appeals Court Pauses Block on Trump Third-Country Deportations

A federal appeals court just gave the Trump administration a short-term victory in a fight that is quickly turning into a constitutional stress test: how much process the government must provide before it sends a noncitizen to a country they are not from. On Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for...

Michigan Police Respond to Reported Shooting at West Bloomfield Synagogue

Michigan State Police say they are responding to an “active shooting” incident at Temple Israel, a Reform Jewish synagogue in West Bloomfield, Michigan. The response began around 12:30 p.m. local time Thursday , according to state police. Reuters also reported that federal officials are...

Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to End Haiti TPS

The Trump administration is asking the Supreme Court to step in and clear the way for ending Temporary Protected Status for about 350,000 Haitian migrants, escalating a fight that sits at the intersection of immigration policy, judicial power, and how courts review executive branch decisions. At...