United States

Drafted in Philadelphia in 1787 and ratified by the states, the Constitution creates three branches with checks and balances, divi...

Promised during ratification to quiet anti federalist fears, the first ten amendments protect speech, press, religion, arms, secur...

Ratified in December 1865 as the Civil War ended, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as ...

The Fourteenth Amendment defined national citizenship over the Dred Scott denial, bound states to due process and equal protection...

The Fifteenth Amendment prohibited denying the vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, completing the ...

After a seventy two year campaign from Seneca Falls onward, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in August 1920 when Tennessee be...

The Sherman Act outlawed contracts in restraint of trade and monopolization, criminalizing conduct that had alarmed the populist e...

Signed by Franklin Roosevelt in August 1935, the act created old age insurance funded by payroll contributions, unemployment insur...

Proposed by President Kennedy after Birmingham and passed under President Johnson after the longest filibuster in Senate history, ...

Passed after the Selma marches, the act suspended literacy tests and stationed federal examiners, but its core was the preclearanc...

FOIA establishes the presumption that the public may see agency records, subject to nine exemptions covering national security, pr...

The APA laid down the modern administrative constitution, requiring notice and comment rulemaking, formal adjudication with hearin...

Passed six weeks after the September 11 attacks with near unanimous margins, the PATRIOT Act eased intelligence sharing, broadened...

The 1934 act created the Securities and Exchange Commission, extended disclosure beyond the initial offerings regulated by the 193...

Judicial review, power of courts to refuse effect to unconstitutional acts, was asserted for the Supreme Court by Chief Justice Ma...

Federalism splits sovereignty, assigning enumerated powers like war and currency to the center while reserving police power over h...

Articulated by Montesquieu and embedded in the American Constitution with checks and balances, separation of powers aims to preven...

Over ninety percent of American criminal convictions arrive by negotiated plea rather than trial, a practice that grew quietly in ...

Class treatment under Rule 23 aggregates thousands of small claims that no one would bring alone, binding absent members after not...

The Fifth Amendment requires federal felony prosecution to begin with a grand jury indictment, a body of citizens hearing prosecut...

Article Two empowers the President to grant reprieves and pardons for federal offenses, unchecked by Congress or review, except in...

The Sixth Amendment promises the assistance of counsel, which the Supreme Court in 1963 in Gideon made binding on states for felon...

Bail trades release before trial for conditions, historically money bonds, that secure appearance. The Eighth Amendment bars exces...

At-will employment lets either side end the relationship at any time without notice or cause, the default in every American state ...

Signed by President George H. W. Bush in July 1990 after years of activism that included the Capitol Crawl, in which disabled prot...

Ratified with the rest of the Bill of Rights in 1791, the First Amendment bars Congress from establishing religion or prohibiting ...

The Fourth Amendment grew out of colonial anger at general warrants and writs of assistance that let British officials search home...