Word: charter
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Bentkowski, TIME's art director for special projects, this issue's challenge was to convey the pervasiveness of the charter's influence visually. He and Ferrer decided to organize the magazine around themes from the Constitution rather than in TIME's usual sections. Says Bentkowski: "The whole process was engrossing. It became richer as we went along." A case in point is the photographic essay that accompanies the story by TIME Senior Writer Lance Morrow about the ubiquitous effects of the Constitution on U.S. citizens. Most of the pictures were planned in advance with Dorothy Affa, who directed photo research...
...come a long way, but we have a long way to go," says Rose Bird, former chief justice of the California Supreme Court. "It's part of our heritage to rectify past injustices, and the Constitution is no exception." Without an ERA, some feminists argue, the American charter will continue to bear the sexist imprint of a document written...
...wonder Soviet workers take off every Oct. 7 to celebrate the adoption of this generous charter. But the reality is that most of the Soviets' political freedoms have never existed in practice or are locked in a straitjacket of limitations. Article 39, for example, is a loophole as wide as the ruling regime wants to make it: "Enjoyment by citizens of their rights and freedoms must not be to the detriment of the interests of the society or the state...
Unlike its U.S. counterpart, the Soviet charter is not the law against which other laws are judged. Instead, an exhaustive compendium of legal codes takes precedence, and the Soviet Supreme Court is not empowered to override such laws by invoking the constitution. "There is no system of checks and balances whereby the judiciary can say to the legislative branch, 'You can't do that, it's against the constitution," says Harold Berman, a Soviet legal expert at Emory University...
...then trouble to have a charter at all? Though political freedoms are a glaring exception, the Soviet government does provide much of what the constitution promises: housing, education, pensions and cradle-to-grave security. And in the great majority of court cases, Maggs points out, "Soviet law, including constitutional rights, is applied the way it is supposed...