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Articles tagged with this keyword discuss legal cases and the impact of specific legal decisions on federal and state laws.
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Three Black men having a conversation.

Recovering the Forgotten Past of Black Legal Lives

Dylan C. Penningroth challenges nearly every aspect of our traditional understanding of civil rights history.
by Ajay K. Mehrotra via Los Angeles Review of Books on April 3, 2025
Book cover of "Before the Movement" by Dylan C. Penningroth

What the Conventional Narrative Gets Wrong About the Civil Rights Movement

A new book illuminates how Black Americans used property ownership, common law and other methods to assert their rights.
by Matt Delmont via Washington Post on September 26, 2023
A portrait of Dred Scott.

The Importance of Teaching Dred Scott

By limiting discussion of the infamous Supreme Court decision, law-school professors risk minimizing the role of racism in American history.
by Jeannie Suk Gersen via The New Yorker on June 8, 2021
Crowds of people surrounding the General Land Office and accompanying tents

Hail to the Pencil Pusher

American bureaucracy's long and useful history.
by Mike Konczal via Boston Review on September 21, 2015
Supreme Court viewed through a window; Supreme Court justices' hands on their laps.

The Archaic Sex-Discrimination Case the Supreme Court Is Reviving

In Skrmetti, the Court turned to a decades-old decision once thought to be consigned to history.
by Leah Litman via The Atlantic on June 24, 2025
Children jump rope in the dirt yard of a Catholic school while their peers watch.

Pierce at 100

A century ago, the Court recognized the essential right of parents to direct the education of their children.
by Mark David Hall, Ernie Walton via Law & Liberty on May 30, 2025
Line drawings of related is school desegregation activism.

How Brown Came North and Failed

Half a century ago the civil rights movement’s effort to carry the campaign for school desegregation from the South to the urban North ended in failure.
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on May 8, 2025
Drawing of the fight between two congressional representatives titled "Congressional pugilists," 1798.

Alien Enemies, Alien Friends, and the Concept of “Allegiance”

With controversy raging over the Alien Enemies Act, how should we understand the concept it invoked?
by Robert Natelson via Law & Liberty on March 24, 2025
Flags of Native American tribes at Omaha Beach memorial.

No, Native American Citizenship Does Not Support Limits on Birthright Citizenship

This defense misconstrues both the Constitution and the Supreme Court decisions relying on it.
by Bethany Berger via Lawfare on March 12, 2025
Poster reading "Basta Buitres," or "Enough Vultures," calling for Argentina to unite against the United States.

How the US Courts Rewrote the Rules of International Trade

How the American legal system created an economic environment that subordinated the entire world to domestic business interests.
by Brett Christophers via The Nation on March 3, 2025
Woman in a hospital bed reading a pamphlet called "After the Abortion."

Her “Health and Thus Her Life”

Abortion exceptions in legal history.
by Alicia Gutierrez-Romine via Perspectives on History on January 29, 2025

The Case Against New York Times v. Sullivan

The malice test is the result of judicial activism and should be rejected by a Court that understands its task as the discovery, not the invention of law.
by Carson Holloway via Law & Liberty on November 1, 2024
William Rehnquist

The Late Supreme Court Chief Who Haunts Today’s Right-Wing Justices

William Rehnquist went from a lonely dissenter to an institutionalist chief—and his opinions are all the rage among the court’s current conservatives.
by Duncan Hosie via The New Republic on October 23, 2024
American Indian woman wearing a shirt that reads "You are on Indian land."
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The Ambivalent History of Indigenous Citizenship

A century ago, when Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act, key questions about Native sovereignty were left unresolved.
by Daniel R. Mandell via Made By History on October 14, 2024
Hideki Tojo in a courtroom testifying at the Tokyo Trial, guarded by American soldiers.

The Hypocrisies of International Justice

A recent history revisits the Tokyo trial.
by Colin Jones via The Nation on September 18, 2024
Political cartoon showing Supreme Court Justice Sutherland handing a woman worker a decision on minimum wage.

The Most Conservative Branch

Stephen Breyer criticizes recent Supreme Court decisions and argues for a more pragmatic jurisprudence.
by Jed S. Rakoff via New York Review of Books on August 29, 2024
A judge's gavel and the Capitol building, edited to look like the top of the Capitol is the other side of the gavel.

America Has Too Many Laws

An excess of restrictions has taken a very real toll on the lives of everyday Americans. Their stories must be told.
by Neil Gorsuch, Janie Nitze via The Atlantic on August 5, 2024
White men strapping a Black man into an electric chair.
original

Matters of Life and Death

Systemic racism and capital punishment have long been intertwined in Virginia, the South, and the nation.
by Janis Parker on July 10, 2024
Anti-death penalty protesters standing outside the Supreme Court.

The Hollowing of the Eighth Amendment

The Supreme Court’s Republican majority has been quietly rolling back a longstanding consensus over cruel and unusual punishment.
by Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on June 18, 2024

A First Case at Common Law

The case of Robinson and Roberts v. Wheble provides legal historians with the most thorough documentation of an eighteenth-century trademark dispute.
by Barbara Lauriat via Law & History Review on May 29, 2024
Stanford Law School.

Why the Right’s Mythical Version of the Past Dominates When It Comes to Legal “History”

They’re invested in legal education, creating an originalist industrial complex with outsize influence.
by Saul Cornell via Slate on May 14, 2024
Pro-Palestinian campus protest.
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Why Colleges Don’t Know What to Do About Campus Protests

Despite frequent litigation, U.S. courts have created a blurry line that puts administrators in an impossible situation.
by Jack Hodgson via Made By History on April 29, 2024
Cover of "The Black Tax"

Tax History Matters: A Q&A with the Author of ‘The Black Tax’

The history of the property tax system and its structural defects that have led to widespread discrimination against Black Americans.
by Andrew W. Kahrl, Brakeyshia Samms via Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy on April 24, 2024
"Temple of Liberty" immigration policy cartoon

How the Federal Government Came to Control Immigration Policy and Why It Matters

The newly empowered federal state created during Reconstruction could restrict immigration much more comprehensively than any state—as Chinese laborers soon discovered.
by Kevin Kenny via Muster on April 2, 2024
Nixon signing the 26th amendment.
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America’s Age-Based Laws Are Archaic

Our age-based laws have never made sense. With modern science, they make even less sense.
by Holly N. S. White via Made By History on February 28, 2024
Antonin Scalia speaking at a Federalist Society event.

How the Federalist Society Conquered the American Legal System

How the Federalist Society became the engine of the conservative legal movement—and where it might be headed next.
by Peter Shamshiri, Rhiannon Hamam, Michael Liroff, Amanda Hollis-Brusky via Balls And Strikes on February 13, 2024
Colorful abstract painting

The New Declaration of Sentiments

Four important court cases that have defined the landscape of women’s rights in the United States.
by Elizabeth L. Silver via Los Angeles Review of Books on January 23, 2024
Myisha Eatmon.

Break Every Chain

How black plaintiffs in the Jim Crow South sought justice.
by Max J. Krupnick via Harvard Magazine on January 5, 2024
A diagram of the parts of a flintlock pistol.

Bad Facts, Bad Law

In a recent Supreme Court oral argument about disarming domestic abusers, originalism itself was put to the test.
by Duncan Hosie via New York Review of Books on November 25, 2023
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Conservatives’ Favorite Legal Doctrine Crashes Into Reality

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.
by Matt Ford via The New Republic on November 9, 2023
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