Articles by James Caldwell

DOJ Sues Denver Over Its Gun Ban

Denver is about to learn the hard lesson every civics student eventually bumps into: the Constitution does not always care what a city council meant to do. The U.S. Department of Justice has sued Denver over a local gun ban, moving the dispute into federal court. Beyond the politics, the practical...

Sanctions and “Lawfare”: When Courts Punish Bad-Faith Briefs

Every civics teacher eventually has to say a sentence students hate: process matters . Not because process is pretty, but because it is the guardrail that keeps power from turning into pure muscle. That is why a seemingly small courtroom moment, a federal judge ordering a $5,000 sanction after a...

Booker’s Supreme Court Warning

Sen. Cory Booker is making a straightforward midterm argument about the Supreme Court: if Democrats take control of Congress, he says they will “reform” the Court. The question that prompted his remarks was framed as part of a long American tradition of political conflict over the Court,...

Pausing the Carroll Judgment: What an Appeal Freezes and What It Does Not

In civics class, I used to tell my students that the law has two speeds: what the jury decides, and what the system can actually enforce. Those two speeds collide when a losing party asks for a “stay,” meaning a court-ordered pause, while an appeal continues. That is the moment we are in with...

Roberts, the Court, and the Politics We Pretend Not to See

Chief Justice John Roberts told a room of lawyers at a legal conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania, that many Americans have the Supreme Court wrong. People, he said, see the justices as “political actors.” “I don’t think that is an accurate understanding of what we do,” Roberts added,...

Explosives-Filled Car Crashes Into Portland Club

A car “packed with explosives” was driven into the Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland, Oregon, and the driver was killed in the resulting explosion, officials said. Investigators believe the driver was a former employee who deliberately rammed the vehicle through the club. Those are the basic...

Rudy Giuliani Hospitalized in Critical Condition

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and onetime adviser to President Donald Trump, has been hospitalized and is in “critical but stable condition,” according to his spokesman. The statement came Sunday from spokesman Ted Goodman, who did not disclose what led to Giuliani’s...

Can the FCC Yank ABC’s Licenses Over a Political Feud?

When people hear that the federal government “licenses” television stations, a natural conclusion follows: if Washington grants the privilege, Washington can take it away. And if it can take it away, why not use that threat when a network becomes politically inconvenient? That line of thinking...

When the White House Jokes About ‘No Kings’

A royal visit is always a little surreal in Washington. It invites a republic to admire the optics it claims to reject. That tension shows up whenever American politics brushes against crowns, carriage-processions, and the theater of inherited authority. The question is not whether the United...

When the State Wants to Look Inside Your Home

The Fourth Amendment was written with a simple instinct: a person’s home should not be treated like a public hallway. The recurring question in state and local policymaking is how far government should be able to go in peering into the home, and how easily private spaces can be treated as close...

The Supreme Court Reopens Texas’ Mid-Cycle Map Fight

The Supreme Court just handed Texas Republicans a win with a move that was both simple and deeply consequential: it summarily reversed a lower-court ruling that had blocked Texas’ mid-cycle congressional redistricting plan. In other words, the Court struck down the block and left the new map...

The Conspiracy Surge After the Dinner Attack

When a violent incident erupts in a public place, we expect fear. What we do not always expect is the second blast, the one that hits your phone. No sooner had a gunman tried to storm the ballroom of the Washington Hilton, where the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was taking place Saturday...

Ohio’s Gun Preemption Debate

In Ohio, arguments over gun policy often drift toward a familiar dividing line: whether cities should be able to write their own firearm rules, or whether the state should insist on one uniform standard everywhere. That can sound like a technical turf fight between the statehouse and city halls. It...

Texas and the Ten Commandments: A Test of the Establishment Clause

Texas wants the Ten Commandments on the wall of every public school classroom. Not in a textbook. Not as part of a unit on ancient law codes. On the wall, full time, in the King James wording, as a state-mandated presence in the daily life of a student. A closely divided federal appeals court has...

Birthright Citizenship and the Share-of-Births Question

Debates over birthright citizenship often hinge on disputed estimates about how many U.S. births involve parents who are not permanent residents. Those claims can be politically potent even when the measurement is not consistent. Treat the premise carefully. The figures that circulate in public...

A Digital Constitution Archive Worth Building

Every few years we watch the same national ritual: a public official holds up the Constitution like a prop, a pundit invokes “what the framers intended,” and a classroom of teenagers asks the most honest question of all. “Where does it actually say that?” That question is the beating heart...

Congress at 10% Approval: A Crisis of Legitimacy or Just Another Tuesday?

Congress is sitting at 10% approval , with 86% of Americans disapproving , a level that ties the worst public verdict ever measured for the institution. Those are not “bad numbers.” Those are governance numbers . They tell us something about whether people still believe the system is capable of...

Tariffs in Court: Refunds, Prices, and Next Moves

Tariff fights tend to end up in the same place most constitutional conflicts do: the gap between what government can do and what the public is told it will do. This is a general, evergreen guide to how tariff litigation and implementation typically unfold. It is not commentary on any single case,...

Should Candidates Be Allowed to Bet on Their Own Elections?

Here is a civics-class question that should make every voter a little uncomfortable: if a candidate can legally raise money, buy ads, hire staff, and shape the message, why should it feel different when that same candidate puts cash on the outcome of their own election? Because it is different. Not...

When the Court Leaks

For most of American history, the Supreme Court has asked the public for patience. Read the opinions, follow the reasoning, accept the result, even if you hate it. That bargain is not written into the Constitution, but it is the cultural glue that has kept nine unelected lawyers from looking like...