Justice

On the TransAm Trucking case, legal reasoning, and the Fugitive Slave Act.

A new study of the national security apparatus finds the existing Bureau incompatible with republican government.

Abolitionist and writer John Swanson Jacobs on reclaiming liberty in a land of unfreedom.

Chinese immigration and the Immigration Act of 1924.

The City University of New York has long stood at once for meritocratic uplift and for civil disobedience.

When labor found a common cause — and enemy — with the abolition movement.

Fairly applying the rule of law to powerful politicians provides the stability that enables the U.S. to thrive politically and economically.

We can thank the postal service for establishing the foundations of the American tradition of communications confidentiality.

The rhetorically modest but functionally powerful ruling that ended segregation shouldn’t be misused to forestall other efforts at racial equality.

From Dow to now.

A new documentary chronicles efforts to keep rap lyrics from being used by prosecutors, combatting a long-standing trend of criminalizing this art form.

Reconsidering Earl Warren's place in U.S. history.

They’re invested in legal education, creating an originalist industrial complex with outsize influence.

A new book traces "the rise and fall of Pete Rose, and the last glory days of baseball."

With the Dow sit-ins of the 1960s, students drew attention to links between the campus, war, and imperialism.

Like student protesters today, Martin Luther King Jr. and other 1960s civil rights activists were criticized as disruptive and disorderly.

While some of the worst behavior has come from local and state police, university police have shown themselves to be just as capable of brutality.

What happened in 1970 after Richard Nixon was told, “I doubt that there would be any problem of student demonstrations in Tennessee.”

The response to college protests against the war on Gaza exemplifies the darkness of the Trumpocene.

At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”

An overlooked history of selective policing at Columbia has undermined the safety of those within as well as beyond campus walls.

Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.

The repressive machine currently arrayed against campus protests follows a familiar pattern.

Swarns’s book about a sale of enslaved people by Jesuit priests to save Georgetown University reminds us that the legacy of slavery is the legacy of resistance.

When "The Emancipator" was first published in 1820, its original owner had to answer for why he owned Nancy and her five children.

Revisiting the AAUP's 1971 UCLA investigation.

Despite frequent litigation, U.S. courts have created a blurry line that puts administrators in an impossible situation.

In a new book, Robert KD Colby of the University of Mississippi shows how the Confederacy remained committed to slavery.

The legendary actor left a mark in both film history and an industry fraught with self-regard.

Abortions happened in Arizona, despite a near-complete abortion ban enacted in 1864. But people also faced penalties for them, including a female doctor who went to prison.