Justice

America's home front was the site of internment, deportation, and vast property seizure.

At the time, ideas of race in America were quite literally black and white. But a few meters of cloth changed the way some people of color were treated.

Imagining a future that separates women from their biological identity seems so “drastic” as to be unimaginable—in 1962 and today.

The amendment, which brought an end to slavery in the U.S., could be used to begin a national debate on reparations.

Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech is widely known as one of the greatest abolitionist speeches ever.

Years before Stonewall, many clergy members were standing on the front lines for gay rights.

Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.

How a legal footnote in a Santa Clara County railroad case and the judges who built on it created modern models of corporate personhood.

Sixty years after the decision, it’s worth remembering it took Congress's Civil Rights Act to finally smash Jim Crow.

Nearly six million Americans are prohibited from voting in the United States today due to felony convictions.

Fifty years later, new accounts of its fraught passage reveal the era's real hero—and it isn’t the Supreme Court.

Policies of de jure racial segregation and a history of state-sponsored violence continue to have an impact on African Americans.

The Civil Rights movement ignored one very important, very difficult question. It’s time to answer it.

His story of coming out was so shrouded in scandal, so drenched in professional embarrassment, that its broader significance may forever be overshadowed.

Affirmative action doesn't work. It never did. It's time for a new solution.

The lady smoking caper of 1908.

How the liberal embrace of busing hurt the cause of integration.

The author's half-forgotten masterpiece, Benito Cereno, provides fascinating insight into issues of slavery, freedom, individualism—and Islamophobia.

In the 1970s, Ronald Reagan villainized a Chicago woman for bilking the government. Her other sins were far worse.

Six days after 9/11, the FBI raided a Detroit sleeper cell. But, despite a celebrated conviction, there was one problem — they’d gotten it wrong.

How Edith Windsor fell in love, got married, and won a landmark case for gay marriage.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's solo dissent from an affirmative action case was inspired by a footnote.

Exploring the origins and impacts of the "March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom," on that event's 50th anniversary.

How the Supreme Court got it wrong.

Two court cases that defined and changed the nature of personhood.

The Civil Rights movement led the way, soon followed by anti-war protests and activism for women’s issues and gay rights.

Despite her path-braking work as a litigator before the Court, she doesn't believe that large-scale social change should come from the courts.

A documentary website that tells the story of how young activists united with local people in the Deep South to build a grassroots movement that transformed the nation.

Thaddeus Stevens was a fearsome reformer who never backed down from a fight.

On the spectacular act of terrorism that took place in Manhattan a century ago.