Articles by James Caldwell

Concealed Carry Across State Lines

Try this on for size: you can invoke the First Amendment in any state, demand due process in any state, and refuse an unreasonable search in any state. But if you want to carry a concealed handgun for self-defense and you cross an invisible line on the highway, your legal status can go from...

DHS Pushes ICE to Pre-Dismiss Weak Asylum Claims

DHS has told its courtroom lawyers to move faster in a specific way: file early motions asking immigration judges to deny asylum applications that government attorneys believe are legally insufficient on their face. Under new Trump administration guidance, ICE attorneys are being directed to raise...

Supreme Court Stay Upends Mail-Ballot Injunction Fight

When the Supreme Court hits pause , it rarely feels like a simple pause. It changes the posture of a case, the leverage of the parties, and sometimes the behavior of the judge who thought she had the last word. That is the story behind this week’s whiplash in the litigation over new federal...

A Justice Called It a ‘Kafkaesque Nightmare’

There are phrases you expect to see in a Supreme Court opinion: jurisdiction , standing , irreparable harm , maybe even equity . “Kafkaesque nightmare” is not usually on the list. And yet on Monday, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put those words in writing, in a dissent tied to the Court’s emergency...

McIver’s Immunity Claim Takes a Hit in Newark ICE Case

There is a question I used to put to my civics students when we hit the “Speech or Debate” Clause in Article I: What, exactly, counts as doing your job in Congress ? This week, a federal appeals court handed down a blunt answer in the case of Rep. LaMonica McIver of New Jersey. If the government’s...

A ‘Kafkaesque Nightmare’ at the Supreme Court

When a sitting Supreme Court justice reaches for the phrase “Kafkaesque nightmare,” you should not treat it as rhetorical garnish. That is a flare shot into the sky. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson used those words in a dissent tied to the Court’s latest emergency decision involving mail-in voting...

Firing the Newsroom: Stars and Stripes, the First Amendment, and Congress’s Job

When the Pentagon fires the top leaders of a newspaper that exists to serve American service members, it is tempting to reach for a single tidy headline: censorship . But the harder question is the constitutional one. What does the First Amendment actually protect inside a newsroom where the...

Prediction Markets, Gambling, and the Supreme Court

Prediction markets force a blunt constitutional question that America keeps dodging: when citizens put money behind a belief about the future, are they gambling, or are they participating in something closer to a public information system? That question is no longer academic. State regulators argue...

Can a President Rewrite the Vaccine Schedule?

Presidents love the clean drama of a signature. One pen stroke, one camera flash, and the public is supposed to understand: something has changed . On childhood vaccines, President Donald Trump is testing that idea again. His new executive order calls for fewer childhood vaccines and recommends...

Texas, Suppressors, and the Limits of State Power

It is easy to treat a ruling about suppressors like a niche fight between hobbyists and regulators. But the decision handed down by U.S. District Judge James Hendrix last week is not a narrow technicality. It is a constitutional pressure point. When a federal judge says parts of a 1930s gun law may...

What “Vindictive Prosecution” Really Takes

When people hear the phrase vindictive prosecution , they tend to translate it into everyday English: the government is “out to get me.” In ordinary life, that is a serious accusation. In constitutional law, it is not enough. A federal judge in the Middle District of Alabama has now rejected the...

Kagan’s Quiet Warning to the Left

For years, some progressives have treated the Supreme Court like a captured institution, a black-robed obstacle that can only be overcome by force of politics. Add seats. Impose term limits. Cut the Court down to size. The underlying argument is simple: if the Court is a partisan weapon, then the...

Who Gets to Tax You at the Border?

There is a moment in every civics class when the kids realize something unsettling: taxes are not just about money. They are about power. Who gets to reach into your pocket, under what authority, and with what limits. That old question has resurfaced at the border, where twenty-five states have...

When Agencies Become the Courtroom

Here is a question I used to spring on my civics students when they got a little too comfortable with the word government : When the government accuses you of wrongdoing and demands money, who gets to decide whether you actually did it? For most Americans, the instinctive answer is simple. A judge....

Trump Underwater at -25: Iran and Inflation Bite

In civics class, I used to ask students a simple question that never stayed simple: What does the public actually judge a president on ? Character. Competence. Results. Values. Crisis leadership. And, when everything gets real, the price of what you need to live. Right now, one number is catching...

Trump’s Approval Hits a New Low as Iran and Inflation Squeeze

When a president goes “underwater,” we usually treat it like a mood ring. The public is annoyed. The headlines get rough. The next election starts creeping into every conversation. But there’s a harder civics question underneath the approval numbers: what exactly is the public reacting to when it...

Answering the Door Armed: The Fourth Amendment Trap

There are constitutional questions that live comfortably in textbooks, and then there are constitutional questions that show up on your porch, under a flashing blue light, when your heart rate is already climbing. Here is one of those questions: Can you put on a holstered handgun before you answer...

When War Injuries Go Quiet

In civics class, students always wanted to argue about the big questions of war. When can a president strike? Who has the power to declare? What counts as self-defense? But the grown-up fight is often smaller, quieter, and in some ways more revealing: who gets to know what war costs and when. This...

A $95,000 Plane for a 6-Pack: The Supreme Court Takes an Eighth Amendment Forfeiture Case

It is hard to teach the Bill of Rights as a set of living limits on power, and then watch a case like this drift across the legal landscape for more than a decade. The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear the challenge of Ken Jouppi, a retired 82-year-old Alaska bush pilot whose $95,000 Cessna...

Who Owns the Constitution?

Every few years, Americans stumble back into the same argument like it is a bar fight we never finished: Who actually gets the final say on what the Constitution means? Most people answer with a shrug and a single word: the Supreme Court. Nine justices. Black robes. End of story. But the...