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Chief Justice John Roberts.

The Supreme Court Has Murdered the Constitution

America’s founding document is now an all-but-meaningless scrap of paper. Happy Fourth!
by Ryan Cooper via The American Prospect on July 4, 2024
Image of a man distributing newspapers at a post office.

The Post Office and Privacy

We can thank the postal service for establishing the foundations of the American tradition of communications confidentiality.
by Matthew Wills, Anuj Desai via JSTOR Daily on May 19, 2024
Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley delivering the welcoming address to delegates at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on Aug. 26, 1968. BETTMANN ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES

How Chicago Got Its Gun Laws

It’s nearly impossible to separate modern-day gun laws from race.
by Lakeidra Chavis via The Marshall Project on March 24, 2023
Two people wearing sunglasses peeking over a fence

Privacy Isn't in the Constitution – But It's Everywhere in Constitutional Law

The Supreme Court has found protections for people’s privacy in several constitutional amendments – and used it as a basis for some fundamental protections.
by Scott Skinner-Thompson via The Conversation on June 15, 2022
A red gun and blue gun pointing in opposite directions, with flags spelling "We"

Originalism, Divided

The theory has not provided the clarity some of its early proponents had hoped it would.
by Harry Litman via The Atlantic on May 25, 2021

Why Do Police Drive Cars?

Since the invention of the automobile, police have used the dangers of America's roads to justify their growing oversight of motorists.
by Jackson Smith via Public Books on November 13, 2019

The Bad-Apple Myth of Policing

Violence perpetrated by cops doesn’t simply boil down to individual bad actors—it’s also a systemic, judicial failing.
by Osagie K Obasogie via The Atlantic on August 2, 2019

How Cars Transformed Policing

Most communities barely had a police force and citizens shared responsibility for enforcing laws. Then the car changed everything.
by Sarah A. Seo via Boston Review on June 3, 2019
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How the Fight Over Civil Forfeiture Lays Bare the Contradictions in Modern Conservatism

The brewing conflict between originalism and law-and-order politics.
by Sarah A. Seo via Made By History on July 24, 2017
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A Bullet Can Cross the Border. Can the Constitution? The Supreme Court Won’t Say.

The Supreme Court punts on Hernandez v. Mesa, leaving the Constitution lost in the borderlands.
by Sarah A. Seo via Made By History on June 27, 2017

Policing the Colony: From the American Revolution to Ferguson

King George's tax collectors abused police powers to fill his coffers. Sound familiar?
by Chris Hayes via The Nation on March 29, 2017
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
View of a Boston Street, circa 1778.

Commissary Notes and the Dark History of Revolutionary Financing

From the outset of the American Revolution, a lingering problem that plagued the minds of the Continental Congress dealt with its financing.
by Zach Thompson via Journal of the American Revolution on October 12, 2023
Abraham Lincoln.

The Two Constitutions

James Oakes’s deeply researched book argues that two very different readings of the 1787 charter put the United States on a course of all but inevitable conflict.
by David W. Blight via New York Review of Books on May 18, 2023
Painting of a person facing another person whose head is made up of sixteen little heads. Untitled (Study) by Geoff McFetridge.

Originalism’s Charade

Two new books make a devastating case against claims that the Constitution should be interpreted on the basis of its purported “original meaning.”
by David Cole via New York Review of Books on November 3, 2022
Person making call in telephone booth.

The Making of the Surveillance State

The public widely opposed wiretapping until the 1970s. What changed?
by Andrew Lanham via The New Republic on April 21, 2022
Artistic collage of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.

Was Emancipation Constitutional?

Did the Confederacy have a constitutional right to secede? And did Lincoln violate the Constitution in forcing them back into the Union and freeing the slaves?
by James Oakes via New York Review of Books on April 20, 2022
Chalk drawing of parent holding hands with child thinking about two-parent family

The “Benevolent Terror” of the Child Welfare System

The system's roots aren't in rescuing children, but in the policing of Black, Indigenous, and poor families.
by Dorothy E. Roberts, Nia T. Evans via Boston Review on March 31, 2022

Was the Automotive Era a Terrible Mistake?

For a century, we’ve loved our cars. They haven’t loved us back.
by Nathan Heller via The New Yorker on July 22, 2019

The Supreme Court’s Quiet Assault on Civil Rights

The Supreme Court is quietly gutting one of the United States’ most important civil rights statutes.
by Lynn Adelman via Dissent on September 1, 2017
Two members of a teenage street gang are taken into the 9th Precinct police station after their arrest in New York City.

The Forgotten Law That Gave Police Nearly Unlimited Power

The vagrancy law regime regulated so much more than what is generally considered “vagrancy.”
by Risa Goluboff via TIME on February 1, 2016
Men dumping a barrel of alcohol down the sewer during Prohibition.
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Dried Up

How nativism and racism shaped the national movement towards Prohibition.
via BackStory on January 1, 2016

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