Before you head to the polls, The Constitution Project encourages you to learn more about the principle One Person, One Vote. This notion is synonymous with American democracy, but did you know that the decisions that ensured that right almost tore the Supreme Court and the country apart?
Watch our film One Person, One Vote and learn more about the series of landmark Supreme Court cases that guaranteed our right to fair and equal representation in our state legislatures. And make sure you vote!
The Supreme Court heard oral arguments this week in two cases debating whether the police need warrants to search the cellphones of people under arrest. The main issue is whether modern cellphones, with their vast data capacity, require a different approach under the Fourth Amendment and its ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. To learn more about search warrants and the Fourth Amendment, watch our award-winning film on the landmark search and seizure case, Mapp v. Ohio.
January 30th is Fred Korematsu Day. Mr. Korematsu was a national civil rights hero. He was one of only a handful of Asian Americans who challenged the government’s efforts to incarcerate Japanese Americans from the West Coast in internment camps during World War II. At the age of 23, Mr. Korematsu was arrested and eventually convicted for defying the government’s order to leave California. Undeterred, he appealed his case all the way to the Supreme Court. In 1944, in a decision that remains a stain on the Court’s legacy, the Court ruled against him. As Associate Justice Stephen Breyer declares in our film, Korematsu and Civil Liberties, it is “universally acknowledge that that was an error.” Watch our film and learn more about Mr. Korematsu and his fight for justice.
