Justice

Donald Trump is showing us what an unaccountable class of corporate decision-makers looks like—and it looks like a lot of fear, and a terrible loss of freedom.

On the ongoing battle to desegregate schools across America throughout the 1960s.

Mahmoud Khalil’s case is eerily similar to that of the L.A. Eight when students were targeted not because of any criminal activity but because of their speech.

“The lesson of the Tinker case is: Speak up. Stand up,” Mary Beth Tinker told us.

Newly declassified records reveal how paranoia about subversion in conservative states resulted in major constitutional violations.

The United States Postal Service is under federal scrutiny. It’s not the first time.

This defense misconstrues both the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions relying on it.

Jimmy Carter is known for his defense of human rights worldwide. But in 1979, he threatened to deport thousands of Iranian student protesters.

The long battle against Title IX.

‘Operation Wetback’ and ‘Mexican Repatriation’ worked—until they didn’t.

Spencerism in America.

The story Frances Perkins, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary, highlights the importance of protecting due process.

If you think mass protests can’t combat evil, remember what we did in the 1980s.

The Trump administration’s attacks on DEI are aimed at reversing the civil rights movement.

Ida B. Wells-Barnett, whose January 1900 essay exposed the racist reasons given by mobs for their crimes, argued that lynch law was an American shame.

On the case that provoked the courts to decide if the federal government had jurisdiction to exercise American criminal law over Native peoples on Native lands.

A Black transgender woman’s testimony helped ratify the 14th Amendment. Then conservatives began attacking her identity.

Universal birthright citizenship was never the original intent.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, southern slaveholders were thinking about what a prison should look like for a society that was economically and socially dependent on slavery.

In the 19th century, John Conness defended the 14th Amendment and shut down proto-Trumpians.

For a century, Americans have embraced a punitive approach to addiction—one that has undermined treatment efforts.

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.

José ‘Cha Cha’ Jiménez and the Young Lords laid the groundwork for radical racial justice movements.

Standardized forensic exams are a useful tool for sexual-violence investigations—or they would be if police departments consistently tested their findings.

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.

The general’s campaign through the South is known for its brutality against civilians. For the enslaved who followed his army, though, it was a shot at freedom.

Efforts to target immigrants amid the 1992 L.A. Uprising point to what deportations might look like under Trump 2.0.

Supreme Court rulings on gun laws highlight the struggle to balance individual rights and public safety.

President Woodrow Wilson presided over the segregation of government workers, putting Black people behind screens and in cages in 1913.

On the slow path to federal action on emancipation during the Civil War.