Word: key
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...have passed since Congress overwhelmingly endorsed the Equal Rights Amendment. Five years have elapsed since the measure, battered by scare talk of homosexual marriages, unisex bathrooms and female combat duty, went to its death, just three states shy of the 38 needed for ratification. Yet the ERA's 24 key words -- "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex" -- simply refuse to go away. Fifty-one Senators are now cosponsoring an effort to launch the amendment again, and the National Organization for Women...
...individual states the right to secede -- a fiction that remains in the current text. The 1936 revision, known as the Stalin constitution, theoretically expanded personal freedoms at a time when the dictator's Great Terror was sweeping the country. The current version was adopted in 1977. One of its key changes: the right to sue the state, which has seldom been exercised but which Party Leader Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to strengthen through a reform of the Soviet legal code...
Some constitutions are born of disaster. After World War II, Americans played a key role in drafting charters for the defeated nations of Japan and West Germany. The Japanese charter declares that the country will never again make war or maintain an army, navy or air force. As a result, Japan spends only about 1% of its gross national product on defense, freeing the economy for more productive purposes. Ironically, the U.S. is pressing the Japanese to boost defense outlays...
...worry -- you're not too late. The festivities will continue for many months, and you don't need to RSVP, buy a gown or rent a dinner jacket. Come as you are. The Constitution is having a / birthday, and all of America is celebrating, in a rather low-key way for a change. There is plenty of room and everyone is invited...
...key problem," Justice Lewis Powell once said, "is one of balance." He was referring to conflicts between the rights of criminal suspects and society's need for law-and-order. But he might have been describing his role on the Supreme Court. For more than 15 years Powell sought constantly to strike a balance between conflicting interests as well as between the court's liberal and conservative wings. He became the least predictable of the nine Justices and perhaps the court's central figure, casting the swing vote in one 5-to-4 decision after another. His resignation last week...