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No Twang of Conscience Whatever

Patsy Sims reflects on her interview with the man who was instrumental in the death of three black men in Mississippi.
by Patsy Simms via Oxford American on November 6, 2014
Voters at the voting booths in 1945.

Felon Disfranchisement Preserves Slavery's Legacy

Nearly six million Americans are prohibited from voting in the United States today due to felony convictions.
by Pippa Holloway via OUPblog on April 28, 2014
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Wrongly Accused of Terrorism: The Sleeper Cell That Wasn't

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.
via Retro Report on November 19, 2013

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

Years after ALEC's Truth In Sentencing bills became law, its Prison Industries Act has quietly expanded prison labor nationwide.
by Mike Elk, Bob Sloan via The Nation on August 1, 2011
Lithograph of the 1871 massacre of Chinese workers in California.

How Los Angeles Covered Up the Massacre of 17 Chinese

The greatest unsolved murders in Los Angeles' history, bloodier than the Black Dahlia, more vicious than the hit on Bugsy Siegel, occurred on a night in 1871.
by John Johnson Jr. via LA Weekly on March 10, 2011

On the Death Sentence

David Garland makes a powerful argument that will persuade many readers that the death penalty is unwise and unjustified.
by John Paul Stevens via New York Review of Books on December 23, 2010
Bob Dylan.

Legacy of a Lonesome Death

Had Bob Dylan not written a song about it, the 1963 killing of a black servant by a white socialite’s cane might have been long forgotten.
by Ian Frazier via Mother Jones on May 8, 2010
Los Angeles Times building, after being bombed on October 1, 1910

How They Blew Up the L.A. Times

During the half-century between Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson, class warfare in the United States was always robust, usually ferocious, and often homicidal.
by Russell Baker via New York Review of Books on November 20, 2008

Bringing Rapes to Court

How sexual assault victims in colonial America navigated a legal system that was enormously stacked against them.
by Sharon Block via Commonplace on April 1, 2003

The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti

After Sacco and Vanzetti's final appeal was rejected, Felix Frankfurter, then a professor at Harvard Law School, laid out the many problems with their trials.
by Felix Frankfurter via The Atlantic on March 1, 1927
Frederic Remington painting of cowboys galloping through the desert, firing guns over their shoulders at their pursuers.

“Lord, Teach My Hands To War, My Fingers To Fight”

The cowboy apocalypse and American gun fandom.
by Rachel Wagner via Arc: Religion, Politics, Et Cetera on July 15, 2025
Silhouette of a man with smokestack smoke entering his brain.

Did Lead Poisoning Create a Generation of Serial Killers?

Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and many other notorious figures lived in and around Tacoma in the sixties. A new book argues that there was something in the water.
by Gideon Lewis-Kraus via The New Yorker on June 25, 2025
Nancy Pelosi and other Democrat members of Congress wearing kente cloth and kneeing in the capitol building.

Blinded by Righteous Outrage

From the 1994 Crime Act to Trump 2.0.
by Touré F. Reed via Nonsite on June 14, 2025

What Happens When You Try to Make History Vanish?

The White House’s decision to delete a DOJ database of Jan. 6 cases puts those who seek to preserve the historical record in opposition to their own government.
by Alec MacGillis via ProPublica on February 6, 2025
A group of three abolitonists standing in front of a man holding a bag of money and brandishing a chair as a weapon, with the caption "The Disappointed Abolitionists."

The Tedious Heroism of David Ruggles

History also changes because of strange, flawed, deeply human people doing unremarkable, tedious, and often boring work.
by Isaac Kolding via Commonplace on December 24, 2024
Cracked glass plate portrait of Andrew Johnson.

The Disastrous Pardons of a President

After the Civil War, Andrew Johnson issued the biggest act of presidential clemency in our history. It angered his party and led to his eventual impeachment.
by Jeff Nilsson via The Saturday Evening Post on December 23, 2024

Congress’s Power to Investigate Crime Is More Important Than Ever

A new historical study finds that Congress’s authority to investigate crime is “indispensable” to the system of checks and balances.
by Dave Rapallo via Lawfare on November 1, 2024
Medicine chest.

The Trial That Sparked Maine's 1840 Abortion Statute

Maine passed its first abortion statute in 1840, not long after the pardon of Dr. Call. Could there be a connection?
by Patricia Cline Cohen via Commonplace on October 22, 2024
Streetlamps and red trail lights glow in a dark city street.

A Nation of Cop Cities

The push to build large police training facilities follows on a long history of armories as both symbols and manifestations of state power.
by Matthew Guariglia via Inquest on September 26, 2024
President Gerald Ford announcing his decision to grant a pardon to former President Richard Nixon on Sept. 8, 1974.

Supreme Court Ruling in Trump v. United States Would Have Given Nixon Immunity for Watergate Crimes

President Ford’s pardon of Nixon is seen as a damaging precedent establishing presidential impunity. Now, the Supreme Court has affirmed that impunity.
by Ken Hughes via The Conversation on September 12, 2024
A large mob in Louisiana breaking down prison doors to lynch Italian immigrants.
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Attacking Italians in Louisiana

Italian immigrants had no qualms about working and living alongside Black Americans, which made them targets for violence by white vigilantes in Louisiana.
by Livia Gershon, Alan G. Gauthreaux via JSTOR Daily on July 15, 2024
Chief Justice Earl Warren (left), President Richard Nixon (center), and Chief Justice Warren E. Burger (right).

I Argued ‘U.S. v. Nixon.’ The Supreme Court’s New Ruling on Presidential Immunity Appalled Me.

Fifty years after ruling against a corrupt president, the Court has now decided that presidents are above the law.
by Philip Allen Lacovara via The Bulwark on July 8, 2024
Supreme Court building.
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Supreme Court Opinions Don't Have to Be the Final Word

The Supreme Court doesn't have the last word; the people do. How attorneys pushed back on the flawed 1987 McCleskey decision.
by Robert L. Tsai via Made By History on June 28, 2024
President Bill Clinton with then-Sen. Biden on Sept. 13, 1994, during a signing ceremony for the crime bill on the South Lawn of the White House.

The Biggest Myth About the 1994 Crime Bill Still Haunts Joe Biden. It Shouldn’t.

The law is routinely blamed for a very real problem it had nothing to do with.
by John Pfaff via Slate on June 20, 2024
A group of hip hop artists talking in the documentary “As We Speak.”

Rap Is Art, Not Evidence

A new documentary chronicles efforts to keep rap lyrics from being used by prosecutors, combatting a long-standing trend of criminalizing this art form.
by Kelsey Brown via YES! on May 14, 2024
The 19-year-old Indian elephant, Fritz-Frederic, favorite of the children of Paris, was put to death after he had gone mad for several days, c. 1910.
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Elephant Executions

At the height of circus animal acts in the late nineteenth century, animals who killed their captors might be publicly executed for their “crimes.”
by Amy Louise Wood, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on May 7, 2024
A field of cotton.

What a Series of Killings in Rural Georgia Revealed About Early 20th-Century America

On the continuing regime of racial terror in the post-Civil War American South.
by Earl Swift via Literary Hub on April 25, 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
Mother of school shooter enters courtroom
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The Problem With Punishing Parents for Their Kids' Crimes

Americans have long tried to hold parents responsible for their children’s misdeeds—but it never really works.
by Victoria E. M. Cain via Made By History on February 16, 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
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