Articles by Eleanor Stratton

Presentence Investigation Reports and Federal Sentencing

Federal sentencing has a reputation for being cold and mathematical, like you type a few numbers into a formula and the judge prints a prison term. In reality, one of the most influential documents in the entire process is often written after the plea or verdict, when most of the drama seems...

Judicial Recusal: When Judges Must Step Aside

Most Americans learn the basics of the courts as if judges are neutral machines: a case goes in, the law comes out. Recusal is the part of the system that quietly admits what everyone already knows. Judges are people. They have friendships, investments, former clients, spouses with careers, strong...

Superseding Indictments Explained

You can be indicted, arraigned, and think the shape of your case is finally set. Then the government comes back with a new charging document that adds a defendant, adds counts, fixes dates, or swaps in a different theory of the crime. That is a superseding indictment. And the word is doing more...

Immigration Bonds and ICE Custody Hearings

When someone is held by ICE, families often reach for the closest familiar idea: bail. But immigration detention is civil, not criminal. That one distinction changes almost everything about release. There is no jury, and there is no criminal prosecutor. Instead, the government is represented by a...

What Secretaries of State Do in Elections

During election season, the phrase “the secretary of state” starts showing up in headlines like it is a single national referee. It is not. There is no single federal official who serves as “secretary of state for elections.” The federal government does have election-related roles,...

Divided Government

Americans talk about “divided government” like it is a temporary weather system: clear skies when one party wins everything, gridlock clouds when power splits. But divided government is not a glitch. It is what you should expect from a constitutional design that intentionally divides power even...

Pledged Delegates, Superdelegates, and How Nominees Are Chosen

Every four years, Americans talk about “winning the primary” as if a state’s popular vote directly crowns a nominee. It does not. Not exactly. What it actually does is award delegates , and those delegates later cast the votes that formally nominate a candidate at the party’s national...

Help America Vote Act (HAVA) Explained

Americans like to say voting is a right. In practice, voting is also a process. A long chain of check-in tables, poll books, registration databases, ballot scanners, and human judgment calls. When that process fails, the Constitution usually does not hand you a simple remedy. Elections are largely...

National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter), Explained

Most Americans have heard of “Motor Voter” in the vague way we hear about a lot of election laws: it sounds like something about the DMV, and it probably happened in the 1990s, and it is either the reason elections are easier or the reason elections are suspicious, depending on who is talking....

Runoff Elections in the United States

America runs elections the way it runs a lot of things: locally, inconsistently, and with more rules than most voters realize until the rule hits them. One state can send a Senator to Washington with a simple plurality. Another can send you back to the polls a month later for a runoff. A...

Election Recounts, Audits, and Certification

On election night, you are not watching “the results.” You are watching unofficial tallies roll in. Networks project winners. Candidates concede. Social media declares victory. But none of that is the legal finish line. The legal finish line is a quieter sequence: local officials reconcile...

Privileges or Immunities Clause, Explained

The 14th Amendment is famous for two ideas most Americans can recognize on sight: due process and equal protection . But it opens with a third promise that sounds like it should be the main event. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens...

State Constitutions vs. the U.S. Constitution

Americans talk about the Constitution like it is the whole story. It is not. In real life, you live under two constitutional layers at the same time: the U.S. Constitution and your state constitution. They overlap, they conflict, they borrow language from each other, and sometimes they protect you...

Jury Selection Explained

Most people think jury duty ends once you show up, sit in a big room, and wait to be called. But the most constitutionally loaded part often happens after that, when the courtroom door closes and the lawyers start trying to shape who will decide the case. That process is jury selection . It is a...

Sports Betting and Federalism at the Supreme Court

There is a familiar American instinct that if something gets big enough, Washington should be able to settle it with a single rule. In sports betting, a single rule can look like this: states are told they cannot authorize it, even if their voters and legislators want a different approach. But...

The Necessary and Proper Clause Explained

There is a sentence at the end of Article I, Section 8 that does more work than almost any other line in the Constitution. It does not sound dramatic. It does not announce a new right. It just quietly tells Congress it may pass laws that are “necessary and proper” to carry out the powers the...

Preventive Pretrial Detention

In American civics, we teach a clean sequence: you get arrested, you post bail, you go home, you come back for court. Then real life interrupts the lesson plan. Sometimes a judge does not set bail at any price, or orders someone held without bail. Whether a court has that authority depends on the...

Direct Democracy in the States

Americans talk about “democracy” like it is one thing. In practice, we run two systems at once. At the federal level, the Constitution is relentlessly representative. You do not vote on federal statutes. You elect lawmakers who vote on federal statutes. Even the President is filtered through...

Withholding of Removal and CAT Protection

Asylum gets most of the headlines. It is the form of protection people recognize, the one that sounds like a fresh start. But in immigration court, many cases turn on two quieter forms of protection: withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture (CAT) . They exist for a...

Adjustment of Status Explained

If you are eligible , you can pursue a green card from inside the United States without traveling abroad for a visa interview. That process is called Adjustment of Status , or AOS. It sounds simple in a sentence, but in practice it is a choreography of forms, deadlines, and eligibility rules that...