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Nation Topics - The Constitution

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Digital surveillance

Search engine executives warn about invasive government surveillance, but the digital arms trade begins with their own technologies.

Guantánamo Bay detention center

That’s the unanimous conclusion of a nonpartisan task force. It should teach us not to overreact to the Boston bombings.

Proposition 8 opponents

Gay rights advocates were hoping that the Court would issue a broad ruling, but the justices seem most concerned with issues of standing.

Clarence Earl Gideon

In its historic decision, the Supreme Court ruled that poor people have a right to a lawyer. But today, our system of indigent defense is shameful.

Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama

Section 5 is as necessary today as it was in 1965, when Alabama state troopers beat freedom marchers in Selma.

Ballot

How many dysfunctional election cycles are we going to endure before we accept the necessity of this reform?

Barack Obama

Even if we like President Obama, do we want him to be a one-man death panel?

Barack Obama

There are many measures the president could take to restore civil liberties—if he wanted to.

When The New York Times first revealed the NSA was wiretapping Americans without a warrant in 2005, it was a scandal. But the government continues to spy with impunity—and what was once illegal has become the law.

Barack Obama

How did a community organizer and a constitutional law professor become an extrajudicial, drone-happy president? 

Blogs

Amid speculation about the bombing, a great city and its people are responding to tragedy with a strength that is the stuff of poetry.

April 16, 2013

The late New York Times columnist believed telling critical truths about your country was a higher form of patriotism.

March 25, 2013

For all his talk of being guided by the libertarian philosopher, his record is weak on individual freedom. 

August 15, 2012

The state of Pennsylvania did a terrible job defending its voter ID law—but today a judge ruled it constitutional anyway.

August 3, 2012

A 93-year-old woman who voted in every election for five decades will lose her right to vote this November. The question of constitutionality that presents goes before a judge tomorrow.

July 24, 2012

The GOP admits that it believes voter ID laws will win Romney the election. 

July 9, 2012

There are booby traps in the Court’s Commerce Clause reading, and the traps are baited and ready for tripping in the Medicaid part of the ruling.

June 29, 2012

"It’s going to be hard for conservatives to say that John Roberts condoned a socialist plan,” Howard Dean tells The Nation.

June 28, 2012

The Court issued the biggest ruling of its term on Thursday.

June 28, 2012

Why did the Court limit its ruling to cases with mandatory sentences, instead of banning juvenile life without parole altogether?

June 26, 2012