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Informed Citizens

are Better Citizens

Is the U.S. Constitution Dead or Alive?

Is the U.S. Constitution Dead or Alive?

by Jodi L. Miller When the U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 it took at least 30 seconds to load a musket. Could the framers of the Constitution have envisioned automatic weapons? In a time when writing daily letters was the norm could they have imagined the legal...
Maintaining Checks & Balances in Moore v. Harper

Maintaining Checks & Balances in Moore v. Harper

by Jodi L. Miller  The United States government is a system of checks and balances. The Founders designed it that way so that no one branch—executive, legislative or judicial—has more power than another. In June 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision in Moore...
U.S. Supreme Court from Origins to Reforms

U.S. Supreme Court from Origins to Reforms

by Jodi L. Miller A national survey, conducted by Marquette Law School and published in November 2022, revealed that 56% of the public disapprove of the job that the U.S. Supreme Court is doing. A Gallup poll in September 2022 put the number at 58% disapproval. Ken I....
Updating an Old Act

Updating an Old Act

by Jodi L. Miller Election rules and procedures in the United States can be complicated. That is especially true in presidential election years because we don’t have one presidential election, we essentially have 50 separate ones. In the U.S. Constitution, Article II,...
Are States “Labs of Democracy?” Yes and No

Are States “Labs of Democracy?” Yes and No

by Jodi L. Miller In civics education, generally the U.S. Constitution gets all the attention, but every state has its own constitution too and some of them pre-date the federal constitution. An often-quoted dissenting opinion, written in 1932 by U.S. Supreme Court...