Perhaps no extant product of the U.S. Constitution has received more bipartisan animus than the Electoral College. Since 1800 there have been more than 700 proposals introduced in Congress to amend or eliminate the way in which America chooses its presidents. Yet the Electoral College lives on. Why do we have this system? Why does it inspire such cross-party antipathy? Can it be changed -- should it be changed? -- and if so how? Electoral College expert Dr. Edward B. Foley joins the Institute to discuss.

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Some 40 million people in the American West rely on water from the Colorado River. But the river’s flow has diminished, and those decreases will likely continue. What does this mean for the American West in general and California and Arizona in particular? Will booming metro areas—Maricopa County, for example—have to halt their growth? Will vast expanses of agriculture disappear? Or is there reason to be optimistic about the West’s water future? Grady Gammage Jr. and Sarah Porter of Arizona State University's Kyl Center for Water Policy discuss the issue.

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Episode three of the three-part series "The Economy: Inflation, the Fed, and You."

Inflation in America is happening for the first time in forty years, but different parts of the country are experiencing inflation differently. How do the ways in which we measure price increases, such as the Consumer Price Index (CPI), contribute to regional variances in inflation? What role do rising housing costs play? And do certain types of inflation cause more pain than others? University of Arizona economist George W. Hammond joins Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for a discussion. Hammond directs the Economic and Business Research Center in the Eller College of Management. A specialist in econometric forecasting for more than two decades, he has designed, built, and used economic models to produce more than 100 forecasts for state and local economies and completed more than 50 regional economic studies on topics including economic and workforce development, energy forecasting, and the impact of higher education on human capital accumulation.

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Episode two of the three-part series "The Economy: Inflation, the Fed, and You."

Inflation in America is happening for the first time in forty years, and the Federal Reserve has committed to fighting it. What tools can and does the Fed use to battle inflation, and what are its other economic duties beyond keeping prices stable? Who at the Federal Reserve makes decisions, and how do they make them? Brookings Institution economist Louise Sheiner joins Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for a discussion. Sheiner is the Robert S. Kerr Senior Fellow in Economic Studies and policy director for the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy. She previously served as a senior economist in the Fiscal Analysis Section for the Research and Statistics Division with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

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Episode one of the three-part series "The Economy: Inflation, the Fed, and You."

Inflation in America is happening for the first time in forty years. Why have prices gone up and when might they come down? What role do monetary policy, the Federal Reserve, and legislators play? And what is the fiscal theory of inflation? Hoover Institution economist John H. Cochrane joins Liam Julian, director of Public Policy at the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute, for a discussion. The Economist magazine wrote that Cochrane's new book, The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level, "builds a theory of inflation as ambitious as that proposed by John Maynard Keynes’s The General Theory or Milton Friedman’s and Anna Schwartz’s A Monetary History." Cochrane is the Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

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In September 1981, Senator Dennis DeConcini, a Democrat from Arizona, supported President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Sandra Day O’Connor as the first woman to take a seat seat on the United States Supreme Court.

Hear an eyewitness to history from that unprecedented time, Senator Dennis DeConcini himself, in a moderated conversation with his longtime friend Fred Duval, former U.S. deputy chief of protocol, and deputy assistant secretary of state in the 1990s. The Honorable Barry Goldwater, Jr. , former member of the U.S. House of Representatives provides the introduction.

"Senator Dennis DeConcini: Eyewitness To History" was produced by the Sandra Day O'Connor Institute for American Democracy in association with T Door Productions.

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