Three U.S. states originally had unicameral legislatures, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Vermont. Unicameralism didn’t last long in those states. Georgia adopted a second chamber in 1789. Pennsylvania in 1790. Vermont held out a bit longer, adding a second chamber to its legislature in 1836. All states...
The punitive approach taken by community corrections agencies around the U.S. has made them major drivers of mass incarceration, a New York conference on justice reform was told this week. Releasing more individuals under supervisory conditions of probation or parole was meant to reduce America’s high...
It was 25 years ago that HarperCollins published what is today considered something of a conservative classic, Hollywood vs. America: Popular Culture and the War on Traditional Values. The irony is that the book was written by a liberal who avoided being drafted to serve...
Modern courtrooms are being outfitted with some of the latest display and sound technology available: theater-sized projection screens, fully high-definition video monitors, streaming video capability, multi-speaker stereo systems, and even surround-quality audio. Yet for every high-tech court, attorneys must face juries in rooms equipped with...
After the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, most Americans regardless of party favor tightening restrictions on firearms, NPR reports. Eight in 10 Americans told an NPR/Ipsos survey that they favor bans on assault weapons, high-capacity ammunition magazines and “bump stocks,” an accessory used...
On Wednesday the justices heard oral argument in National Association of Manufacturers v. Department of Defense, which will determine the venue for challenges to Clean Water Act rules. [Disclosure: Goldstein & Russell, P.C., whose attorneys contribute to this blog in various capacities, is among the...
The question that Julia Ward Howe posed in 1899—“Why should we fear to pass from the Old Testament of our own liberties, to the New Testament of liberty for all the world?”—could serve as an epigraph for Walter McDougall’s scholarship over the past 20 years. Howe...
It is subtle, or at least ironic, to use a term—“liquidate”—that has lost its original meaning to initiate a discussion of constitutional interpretation. Today the word still has a legal usage, referring to the payment and settlement of debts. The OED finds that meaning in...
Mike Rappaport joins us to discuss Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of the Trump administration and what the Constitution has to say about it....
Ganesh Sitaraman has written an oped in the New York Times arguing that our Constitution was not built for a society as unequal as our has become. Even leaving aside the claim that our society is becoming substantially more unequal—one I have contested, the essay...