News, Media & Publications

Representation is integral to the study of legislatures, yet virtually no attention has been given to how representative assemblies developed and what that process might tell us about how the relationship between the representative and the represented evolved. The Rise of the Representative corrects that omission by tracing the development of representative assemblies in colonial […]

Like most of the nation during the 1930s, St. Louis, Missouri, was caught in the stifling grip of the Great Depression. For the next thirty years, the “Gateway City” continued to experience a significant urban decline as its population swelled and the area’s industries stagnated. Over these decades, many African American citizens in the region […]

Since late-May, a group of 21 Mizzou undergrads have been living, studying, working, and exploring in (and around) the capital as part of the Kinder Scholars D.C. Summer Program. We reached out to them recently for news about the first few weeks in Washington, and what follows is a wrap-up of some of their responses, […]

The U.S. Constitution requires laws to be made by elected representatives. Today, most policies are made by administrative agencies whose officials are not elected. Not coincidentally, many Americans increasingly question whether the political system works for the good of the people. In this trenchant intellectual history, Postell demonstrates how modern administrative law has attempted to […]

Hearty congratulations are due to University of Oklahoma Assistant Professor of Classics & Letters Andrew Porwancher, whose John Henry Wigmore and the Rules of Evidence: The Hidden Origins of Modern Law, the second title in the Kinder Institute and University of Missouri Press’ Studies in Constitutional Democracy monograph series, was one of two books to receive […]

Electing the House is the first book-length study to explore how the US came to adopt the single-member district system, how it solidified into a seemingly permanent fixture of American government, and whether it performs well by the standards it was intended to achieve. Dow traces the history of the present system from its origins […]