The U.S. Constitution

DACA and the Constitution

DACA is one of those policies that feels like it should be a statute because it affects so many lives in such a sweeping way. But it is not a law Congress passed. It is an exercise of executive discretion, built on top of an immigration system Congress wrote, administered by agencies Congress...

RICO: The Racketeering Law That Rewired Criminal Prosecutions

RICO is the law you hear about when prosecutors want to say something bigger than “a person committed a crime.” They want to say: an organization ran a system of crime, and the people inside it played roles in a coordinated pattern. That is the core idea behind the federal Racketeer Influenced...

What Is an Arraignment?

You can tell how early a case is by how little has actually been decided. An arraignment is that moment. It is often the first formal court appearance where the case becomes official in open court and the system puts its cards on the table: the charges the government is bringing, the rights the...

What Is a Midterm Election in the USA?

Midterm elections are the elections that happen in the middle of a president’s four-year term. They are not a separate kind of election created by one constitutional clause. They are the natural result of a system where different offices run on different calendars. And that scheduling detail has...

Arraignment Meaning

Arraignment is the moment a criminal case stops being an abstract accusation and becomes a formal, on-the-record proceeding in a courtroom. It is usually a short hearing, but it can be a high leverage one. This is where the judge tells you what you are charged with, confirms you have a lawyer or...

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,...

USPS and Handguns: A Major Rule Change in Motion

For most Americans, “mailing a handgun” sounds like something that is obviously illegal, like putting fireworks in a box and hoping nobody notices. But the law has never been that simple. It has been a layered system of federal statutes, postal regulations, and the background reality that the...

NJ Donor Disclosure Fight Shows the Power of Impact Litigation

Constitutional law does not always arrive with a sweeping statute or a landmark opinion that everyone recognizes on sight. Sometimes it starts with something smaller and more procedural: a demand for records. That is the posture of a dispute now unfolding in New Jersey. The state attorney general...

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...

New Jersey ruling draws a line on off-duty cannabis use for police

For many Americans, cannabis policy is no longer an abstract debate. It shows up in workplace handbooks, union negotiations, disciplinary hearings, and a simple but important question: what can an employer control once an employee clocks out ? A recent decision from the Superior Court of New...

DOJ vs. Colorado Magazine Ban

Colorado has limited ammunition magazines to 15 rounds since 2013. Now the U.S. Department of Justice is in court arguing that Colorado’s “large-capacity magazine” law is not just bad policy, but unconstitutional. That lawsuit tees up a question that sounds simple until you touch the...

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,...

11 Supreme Court Cases to Watch This Term

The Supreme Court’s term does not end with oral argument. It ends with consequences. The Court is now in the final stretch of its 2025–2026 term. Oral arguments are over and the merits docket is fully submitted. What remains is the work that actually settles the law: drafting, finalizing, and...

Visa Overstay and Unlawful Presence Explained

Most people use the phrase “overstayed my visa” like it is self-explanatory. It sounds like a single mistake with a single punishment. Immigration law does not work that cleanly. In everyday speech, “overstay” often means you stayed longer than you were supposed to. But the legally...

National Security Letters Explained

National Security Letters sound like something a judge signs in a hurry, under dim lights, with a national crisis ticking in the background. They are not that. A National Security Letter, or NSL, is an administrative demand issued by the FBI that compels a company to hand over certain categories of...

Removing Federal Judges: The Good Behavior Clause

You will sometimes hear it said that federal judges “can’t be fired.” That is true in the way a bank vault is “unopenable.” It does not open like an ordinary door, but the Constitution includes a mechanism. It is just intentionally difficult. The key phrase is in Article III: judges...

Batson Challenges and Peremptory Strikes

Jury selection is one of the few moments in American law where vibes can look like doctrine. In theory, a juror is removed for a clear reason: bias, a conflict of interest, an inability to follow the law. In practice, lawyers also get a limited number of “peremptory strikes,” which allow them...

The Anti-Commandeering Doctrine

Federal law is “the supreme Law of the Land.” That line from the Supremacy Clause gets quoted like it settles every federalism fight on the spot. But supremacy has a boundary that shows up again and again in modern constitutional law: Congress can regulate private actors, but it cannot...

Jury Nullification Explained

Jury nullification is the legal system’s open secret: a jury can agree the government proved its case, and still refuse to convict. It is not a magic button. It is not a right you can demand. It is a power that shows up as a byproduct of two things the Constitution protects with unusual...

Open Primaries vs. Closed Primaries

Most Americans learn the basics of elections in one sentence: we vote, someone wins, democracy happens. But nominations are where modern elections are often decided. In a district that reliably leans red or blue, the tightest, most consequential contest is frequently the primary, not the November...