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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.

The Roots of Segregation

"The Color of Law" offers an indicting critique of the progressive agenda.
An American flag flying in front of a large Christian cross.

The Religious-Liberty Attack on Transgender Rights

Conservative Christians are out to restore their historical legal privileges.

Donald Trump Meet Wong Kim Ark

He was the Chinese-American cook who became the father of ‘birthright citizenship.’
“Authority of Law” statue by James Earle Frasier in front of the United States Supreme Court building.

Which History in Obergefell v. Hodges?

The Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage by framing it as a historical evolution of liberty, dignity, and equality under the Constitution.

To Have and to Hold

Griswold v. Connecticut became about privacy; what if it had been about equality?
Photo of Jimmy Lee Jackson.

The Killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson

How a post-Civil War massacre impacted racial justice in America.
Caricature drawing of Charles Black

Pursuing the Pursuit of Happiness

Traditional Supreme Court precedent may depend too much on substantive due process to safeguard human rights.
Grover Cleveland

The Gilded Age Roots of American Austerity

Both Trump and Cleveland employed the rhetoric of worthiness and efficiency, anti-fraud and anti-corruption, as justifications for their austerity measures.
Illustration of armed and hooded Ku Klux Klan members.

Masked Terror

ICE officers are wearing masks to conceal their identities. The Ku Klux Klan also employed masks to avoid prosecution for its acts of racial violence.
Woodrow Wilson and a panel of red stars.

Surviving Bad Presidents

What the Constitution asks of us.
Historian Martha S. Jones and photos of her relatives.

How a Leading Black Historian Uncovered Her Own Family’s Painful Past

Martha S. Jones’ new memoir draws on genealogical research and memories shared by relatives.
Photo of Wong Kim Ark and document about Chinese Exclusion.

History’s Lessons on Anti-Immigrant Extremism

Even Trump’s recent assertion that he would use executive action to abolish birthright citizenship has a historical link to the Chinese American experience.
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.
A drawing of protestors wrestling a tax collector to the ground.

A Prudent First Amendment

Often, the proper scope of the First Amendment can be determined only by considering both text and context.
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.
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.
Donald Trump walking onstage, next to four American flags.

‘The Dred Scott of Our Time’

The Supreme Court has invested the presidency with quasi-monarchial powers, repudiating the foundational principle of the rule of law.
Edward Blum superimposed on the Supreme Court building.

The People Who Dismantled Affirmative Action Have a New Strategy to Crush Racial Justice

In throwing up new roadblocks to the use of private money to redress racial and economic inequality, the Fearless Fund ruling is antihistorical.
Woman holding up a pocket-sized copy of the U.S. Constitution.

Conservatives Don’t Have a Monopoly on Originalism

The text and historical context of the Constitution provide liberals with ample opportunities to advance their own vision of America.
Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane
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Birth of the Corporate Person

The defining of corporations as legal “persons” entitled to Fourteenth Amendment rights got a leg up from the fight over a California anti-Chinese immigrant law.
Black students from Alabama State College stage a mass rally on the steps of the Alabama State Capitol in 1960.
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What’s Behind the Fight Over Whether Nonprofits Can Be Forced to Disclose Donors’ Names

A reminder of how tricky it is to balance protecting transparency and freedom of association.
School house with Black children playing around it.

How Reconstruction Created American Public Education

Freedpeople and their advocates persuaded the nation to embrace schooling for all.
Picture of Frederick Douglass overlaid on a poster advertising a speech of his.

The Annotated Frederick Douglass

In 1866, the famous abolitionist laid out his vision for radically reshaping America in the pages of "The Atlantic."
The American flag on fire.

The Fight for Our America

There have always been two Americas. One based in religious zeal, mythology, and inequality; and one grounded in rule of the people and the pursuit of equality.
Black students walking a gauntlet of white students to enter Clinton High School.

Why Did They Bomb Clinton High School?

It was the first Southern school to be integrated by court order, and the town reluctantly prepared to comply. Then an acolyte of Ezra Pound’s showed up.
Demonstrators with signs supporting medication abortion.

Conservatives Are Turning to a 150-Year-Old Obscenity Law to Outlaw Abortion

With the Comstock Act of 1873 coming back to life, reproductive care, LGBTQ protections, and a host of other civil rights are now at risk.
Sketch of a gathering of African Americans gathering in a meetinghouse.

“Nativity Gives Citizenship”: Teaching Antislavery Constitutionalism Through Black Conventions

The demand of antislavery activists for accused fugitives to be guaranteed a jury trial was an implicit recognition of Black citizenship.
Illustrative grid rid of students with the faces represented by various colors, fabric patterns, and textures.

How Affirmative Action Was Derailed by Diversity

The Supreme Court has watered down the policy’s core justification: justice.
Execution Chamber with restraining bed
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50 Years Ago, a SCOTUS Decision Placed a Moratorium on Executions. It's Time to Revive it

Fifty years ago in 1972, as spring faded and summer arrived in late June, America (and the world) was a vastly different place.

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