On Dec. 19, 2016, Colorado elector Micheal Baca, in T-shirt second from left, cast his electoral ballot for John Kasich, though Hillary Clinton had won his state’s popular vote.
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
Electors may not vote their consciences, which means the Electoral College will continue to operate how most Americans think it does.
On Dec. 19, 2016, Colorado elector Micheal Baca, in T-shirt second from left, cast his electoral ballot for John Kasich, though Hillary Clinton had won his state’s popular vote.
AP Photo/Brennan Linsley
Many Americans are surprised to learn that Electoral College members do not necessarily have to pick the candidate their state’s voters favored. Or do they?
In this photo from March 29, 1968, striking sanitation workers march to Memphis City Hall, past Tennessee National Guard troops with bayonets.
(AP Photo/Charlie Kelly)
In dealing with mass protests of police killings of African Americans, U.S. President Donald Trump is invoking old phrases and laws — first from 1967 and then further back to 1807.
On April 13, the president said he had the authority to order the states to reopen the economy.
Getty/Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Throughout the coronavirus crisis, President Trump has made inconsistent statements about who is responsible for key aspects of the nation’s response to the pandemic. The Constitution has the answer.
Despite voter dissatisfaction with the Republican and Democratic parties, they are likely to persist.
Shutterstock/Victor Moussa
Despite the fact that only 38% of Americans say they think the Democratic and Republican parties are doing ‘an adequate job,’ they’re unlikely to disappear.
President Donald Trump, left, and federal Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, right.
Trump, AP/Steve Helber and Jackson, Wikipedia
If President Trump’s attacks on the justice system are meant to intimidate, there’s one class of employees who are immune to that: federal judges who have lifetime tenure.
Joseph Morales and company in ‘Hamilton,’ the musical that opens to sold out shows in Toronto this month. The show highlights early ambition in America.
(Hamilton national tour/Joan Marcus)
Trump’s backers say he is shielded from removal as no criminal offense took place. But this view may be at odds with the original intent of the impeachment clause.
Sen. Susan Collins is among the senators who have chosen to stay quiet about impeachment so far.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
A little-known provision of the Constitution might allow Trump to be reelected president in 2020 even if he is removed from office through the impeachment process.
President Donald Trump arriving at the Rose Garden, May 22, 2019, in Washington.
AP/Evan Vucci
Politics have pervaded the debate about whether Congress should impeach President Trump. One legal scholar says that whether to impeach – or not – should not be viewed as a political question.
U.S. President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Topeka, Kan., Oct. 6, 2018.
REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
US law says the president can’t be indicted, an echo of ancient Roman law. The efforts Roman leader Julius Caesar made to maintain his immunity is a cautionary tale for America’s political system.
Warren Clarke, Richard Harrington, Ruby Bentall, Aidan Turner, and Kyle Soller in Poldark.
Mammoth Screen
Americans have rediscovered the Supreme Court, as they do periodically when it’s at the center of controversy. With a president who attacks the legitimacy of courts, will their attention be benign?
A 2004 reenactment of the 1804 duel between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton.
Marko Georgiev/AP Photo
A philosopher argues that Trumpism may have vulgarized electoral politics, but he has also unwittingly illuminated brilliantly one of America’s greatest accomplishments: a civil democracy
Protestors chant after a rally.
Charles Rex Arbogast/AP
Hillary Clinton’s candidacy has revived an old controversy in a new way: presidential third terms. It is, as one historian explains, a controversy as old as the nation itself.
The announcement that Harriet Tubman will be the first woman on U.S. currency in more than a century recalls the history of female – and African-American – portrayals on money.
Hamilton is shown whispering into Ben Franklin’s ear in Howard Chandler Christy’s depiction of the signing of the Constitution.
US Capitol/flickr
Alexander Hamilton and the policies he pursued as America’s first treasury secretary set the US on a course of national unity. That’s just what Europe needs today.
Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and Broeklundian Professor of Political Science Emerita, City University of New York