Bill of Rights

Public Forums and Time, Place, and Manner Rules

The First Amendment powerfully protects public speech. Everyone knows that. Except that in practice, the “in public” part does most of the work. A sidewalk is not a school hallway. A city park is not a courthouse lobby. A government-run comment page is not always a free-for-all bulletin board....

Vagueness, Overbreadth, and the First Amendment

Most First Amendment fights are framed as moral dramas. Hate speech versus tolerance. Disinformation versus truth. Protest versus order. But many cases turn on something far less cinematic and far more practical: the words in the law itself. Not what lawmakers meant . What they actually wrote ....

Reasonable Expectation of Privacy and the Katz Test

You can read the Fourth Amendment ten times and never find the word “privacy.” What you will find is a promise about security: the people’s right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures. So how did “privacy” become the everyday shorthand for Fourth Amendment protection?...

The SEC Settlement Gag Rule and the First Amendment

When most people think about the First Amendment, they picture a public square, a protest sign, or a newspaper editorial. But some of the most consequential speech questions happen in quieter places, like the fine print of a settlement agreement. That is the heart of the dispute over the SEC’s...

The Border Search Exception

You can memorize the Fourth Amendment in a minute. You can spend a lifetime learning the exceptions. The border search exception is one of the biggest. It is the doctrine that lets the government search people and property at the international border, and at its functional equivalents like...

Bench Trial vs. Jury Trial

The Constitution promises a right that most Americans treat as automatic: a trial by jury. But in many criminal cases, the most consequential decision happens before any witness is sworn. Do you want twelve citizens to decide whether the government proved its case beyond a reasonable doubt, or do...

Reasonable Suspicion vs. Probable Cause

You can feel the difference between these two standards in real life, even if you have never said their names out loud. Reasonable suspicion is the legal threshold for an officer to briefly stop you and investigate. Probable cause is the higher threshold that usually justifies an arrest or a full...

The Death Penalty and the Constitution

The Constitution both assumes the possibility of capital punishment and tightly polices how it is used. That tension is the story of modern death penalty law. The Fifth Amendment contemplates “capital” crimes and warns that no person shall be deprived of “life” without due process. But the...

Gideon v. Wainwright: The Right to a Lawyer

You can read the Sixth Amendment in under a minute. Its promise takes longer to absorb: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right … to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.” For much of American history, that sentence did not mean what modern audiences assume...

Terry Stops and Frisks

You can feel it in the phrasing: Just a few questions . Step over here . Mind if I pat you down? Many Fourth Amendment conflicts do not begin with a battering ram and a warrant. They begin with a pause on a sidewalk or shoulder of a road, where an officer suspects something is off but does not yet...

Student Speech and the First Amendment

Public school students do not leave the First Amendment at the schoolhouse gate. That line comes from the Supreme Court in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District (1969), and it is still the starting point for nearly every student speech fight you see in the news. (The Court’s...

Search Warrants and Probable Cause

You have a Fourth Amendment right to be secure against “unreasonable searches and seizures.” Everyone knows that. But the part most people miss is the mechanism that makes that promise operational: the warrant requirement. Not because warrants are magic, and not because police always need one,...

When a Judge Bans You From Saying Someone’s Name

It is hard to think of a more sweeping speech restriction than this: a court order telling a person to stop “publicly writing, printing, or speaking” another person’s name. That is not a metaphor. It is the kind of command that reaches into ordinary civic life, where we argue about...

When Schools Punish Off-Campus Snapchat Speech

Public schools have real responsibilities: keeping students safe, maintaining order, and protecting learning time. But the First Amendment still matters, especially when a student’s speech happens off campus, in a private message, or otherwise outside school programs. A recent federal case out of...

Border Arrests and Real Warrants

The border is where Americans often assume the rules change. In some ways, they do. The government has broader authority at and near the nation’s entry points, especially for searches tied to immigration and customs enforcement. But border power still has edges. A legal question that can get lost...

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...

Defamation Law Explained

Defamation law sits in one of the Constitution’s most misunderstood pressure points: the place where the First Amendment’s promise of free expression meets a person’s ability to protect their name. Many people assume the First Amendment means you can say anything without consequence. Others...

The Right to a Speedy Trial Explained

The Sixth Amendment says that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial.” That guarantee does two things at once. It promises a safeguard against a government that could otherwise lock someone up, leave charges hanging, and wait until the...

The Confrontation Clause Explained

The Sixth Amendment promises a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” That sentence sounds straightforward until you see how modern cases are actually built. Many prosecutions are not just people testifying in person. They are recordings, lab results,...

The Exclusionary Rule Explained

The exclusionary rule is one of those legal ideas that feels backwards the first time you hear it: sometimes a court will keep reliable evidence out of a criminal trial because the government gathered it the wrong way. That sounds like a technicality. It is not. It is a constitutional pressure...