It is widely believed that the judiciary can maintain the rule of law and guarantee fundamental rights only if it is independent from political and other pressures. Most countries have provisions in their constitutions guaranteeing an independent judiciary. Usually, this independence has two faces: institutional measures that separate the…

In this learning activity senior high social studies students examine and discuss specific parts of the Soviet Constitution and learn that there is often a big difference between theory and reality. (RM)

In August 1945, the United States unleashed an atomic weapon against the Japanese at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and brought an end to World War II. These bombs killed in two ways -- by the blast's magnitude and resulting firestorm, and by nuclear fallout. After the Soviet Union exploded its first atom bomb in 1949, the Cold War waged between the two…

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military gave the press unprecedented freedom of access to combat zones. This allowed newspaper reporters, photographers, and television crews to document a war involving U.S. sons and daughters on the other side of the world. This willingness to allow war documentation also was extended to the military's own…

Planning for "Operation Overlord" had been under way for about a year when General Dwight Eisenhower, commander of all the Allied forces in Europe, was ordered in February 1944 to invade the continent. Thousands of troops from the United States, Great Britain, France, Canada, and other nations were assembled in southern England and…