Justice

After the Civil War, Jefferson Davis, was to be tried for treason. Does the debacle hold lessons for the trials awaiting Donald Trump?

Judge the author of the “Feminine Mystique” not by the gains she made, but by her experience.

How fascists and authoritarians have used antisemitic conspiracy theories to harm Jewish communities and undermine democracy.

When we try to recover the “original meaning” of constitutional amendments, we begin with deeply engrained premises about the nature of what we're looking for.

In a recent Supreme Court oral argument about disarming domestic abusers, originalism itself was put to the test.

The black naturalist, astronomer, surveyor, and almanac-writer Benjamin Banneker took issue with Thomas Jefferson’s attitude toward “those of my complexion.”

Modern surveillance policing is rooted in approaches adopted a century ago.

Despite Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, a Colorado state judge stretches the word “officer,” permitting him to remain on the state’s ballot.

One of the biggest challenges for the NYPD, especially in the years following the turn of the twentieth century, was policing the newcomer immigrants.

John Brown and the Secret Six—the abolitionists who funded the raid on Harpers Ferry—confronted a question as old as America: When is violence justified?

The 1898 Wilmington massacre overthrew the elected government in the majority-Black city, killed many Black residents and torched a Black-run newspaper.

Originalism is all the rage on the right, but a gun case at the Supreme Court is exposing its absurdity—even to the conservative justices.

Environmental radicalism, left and right.

Government, wrote Alexander Hamilton, should substitute “the mild influence” of the law for “the violent and sanguinary agency of the sword.”

The civil-rights mastermind was sidelined by his own movement. Now he’s back in the spotlight. What can we learn from his strategies of resistance?

A new film finally spotlights Bayard Rustin, the gay civil rights activist who organized the 1963 March on Washington.

Wherever we find the state engaged in potentially lethal repression, we find prison.

Our political and cultural systems are obsessed with exploiting fears about crime. But it wasn’t always this way.

Characterised today by the noise of banging, buzzers, and the cries of inmates, solitary confinement was originally developed from Quaker ideas.

The UAW's patient organizing cemented an alliance that would bear fruit for decades.

Martin Scorsese's new film revisits the murders of wealthy Osages in Oklahoma in the 1920s

A new biography examines the life of the abolitionist, newspaper editor, activist, and globetrotter.

Black prosperity has provoked white resentment that has led to the undoing of policies that have nurtured Black advancement.

Despite depictions of the Underground Railroad, escaping over land was almost impossible in the South. Thousands of enslaved people found allies on the water.

The abortionist Madame Restell is central to the story of how American women’s reproductive freedom was dismantled in the second half of the nineteenth century.

It is time to recognize the power that organized labor can wield to fight for environmental, economic and social justice.

On Oct. 11, 1988, at the height of the AIDS crisis and a wave of homophobia, people were asked to take a daring step by declaring publicly that they were gay.

How can we most efficiently defend the imperiled academy?

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Siege of Wounded Knee, the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee by American Indian Movement (AIM) activists.

Sylvia Mendez’s role in setting the stage for Brown v. Board of Education has been forgotten and overlooked.