Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Authorizations vs Appropriations

People talk about “Congress funding” something as if it is one vote, one bill, one clean yes or no. But in Washington, the power of the purse usually works like a two-key system. One key says, “This program may exist.” The other says, “This program may spend money.” If you only have one...

Ranked-Choice Voting

Ranked-choice voting sounds like a simple promise: instead of choosing one candidate and hoping your vote “counts,” you rank candidates in the order you prefer them. If your first choice cannot win, your ballot can still help decide between the remaining options. That is the sales pitch. The...

President Pro Tempore of the Senate Explained

The President pro tempore of the Senate is one of those constitutional offices that most Americans only hear about when something goes wrong: a vacancy, a sudden succession question, or a moment when Senate procedure becomes national news. But in ordinary times, it is a quiet position with a...

How the Speaker of the House Is Elected and What Powers They Have

The Speaker of the House is one of those offices Americans hear about most often during a crisis: a shutdown fight, a leadership revolt, a razor-thin majority, a sudden vacancy. But the Speaker is not a cable news invention. It is a constitutional officer chosen by the House, governed by a mix of...

527 Organizations Explained

You are watching a mid-October football game, and a grim voice tells you a candidate “voted to cut benefits” or “raised your taxes.” The group paying for the ad has a forgettable name, a Washington mailing address, and a required line at the end: “Paid for by….” Sometimes the sponsor...

Traditional PACs vs Super PACs

“PAC” is one of those political acronyms that sounds simple until you look at the rulebook. In everyday conversation, people use PAC to mean any political committee that spends money to influence elections. Under federal campaign finance law, that casual definition hides a big legal split:...

The Senate Nuclear Option

The “nuclear option” sounds like a constitutional crisis in a trench coat. In reality, it is a Senate procedure that lets a simple majority change how the Senate applies its own rules, without going through the formal (and usually filibusterable) process of amending those rules. It matters...

Melania Trump, Epstein, and the Public’s Right to Know

When powerful people get mentioned in the orbit of a notorious criminal, the public instinct is simple: Tell us everything. But the American system was not designed to satisfy curiosity. It was designed to allocate power, constrain government, and protect individual rights, including the rights of...

ICE, Graphite Spyware, and the Fourth Amendment

Americans like to tell ourselves a comforting story about modern surveillance. If your message is encrypted, it is safe. If the government wants what is on your phone, it needs a warrant. If an agency crosses the line, the Constitution snaps back like a rubber band. That story is getting harder to...

Should You Have to Pay to Read the Law?

We talk about “the rule of law” the way people talk about gravity. Like it is a force of nature. Always there. Always working. Not something you have to maintain. But law is not gravity. Law is text. It is language. It is a set of instructions written by humans, enforced by humans, and...

Chatrie and the Geofence Warrant: The Fourth Amendment’s Next Privacy Test

The Fourth Amendment was written for a world of paper ledgers and locked desks. But it was built for a problem that never goes out of style: the government’s temptation to search first and justify later. Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear a case that forces that old constitutional...

En Banc Review in Federal Appeals Courts

Most federal appellate cases in the U.S. courts of appeals are decided by three judges. That is not a fun fact. It is the structural reality that makes “en banc” review so powerful. When a federal court of appeals sits en banc , it is the circuit speaking with a bigger voice, sometimes with...

Treaties vs. Executive Agreements

Americans hear the word treaty and assume a single, official process: the President negotiates, the Senate votes, the United States is bound. That is real, and it is in the Constitution. But it is not the whole story. In modern practice, many of the most important U.S. commitments with other...

Selective Incorporation

The Bill of Rights reads like a national promise. Speech. Religion. Jury trials. Counsel. Protection against unreasonable searches. For many Americans, it feels obvious that these rules bind every government actor, from the FBI to your local police department. But that instinct is historically...

Youngstown and Jackson’s Three Tiers of Presidential Power

Presidential power is easiest to defend when it looks like competence. A crisis hits, an industry freezes, a strike threatens supply chains, and the President acts. The harder question is not whether the action was useful . The question is whether it was lawful . That tension is why Youngstown...

Stare Decisis and Precedent

Americans talk about Supreme Court decisions like they are permanent, like a ruling is a constitutional tattoo. But much of what people experience as constitutional law is not spelled out line by line in the Constitution’s text. It is mediated through precedent and doctrine, meaning earlier cases...

Ripeness and Mootness

Federal courts are not constitutional complaint boxes where you drop off a problem and get back a legal answer. They are built for a narrower job: resolving live disputes between real parties with something concrete at stake. That is why timing kills cases in two different directions. Ripeness...

The Dormant Commerce Clause Explained

Most people learn the Commerce Clause as a simple grant of power: Congress may regulate commerce “among the several States.” Then they run into a stranger idea that is not written anywhere in the Constitution’s text: even when Congress does nothing , states still cannot pass laws that...

The Political Question Doctrine

Sometimes the biggest headline in a Supreme Court story is not what the justices decided. It is what they refused to decide. When a court labels an issue a political question , it is not saying the issue is “too political” in the everyday sense. Almost everything in constitutional law has...

Federal Preemption

Most constitutional fights between states and the federal government do not look like philosophical debates about federalism. They look like a lawsuit over a warning label, a city ordinance, or a state enforcement policy that collides with a federal program. That collision has a name: federal...