legal history — Bunk History

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How the Republican Party Took Over the Supreme Court

The 50-year effort to advance a conservative legal agenda.

by John Fabian Witt via The New Republic on April 7, 2020

Fish in water next to rocks at the base of Kinzua Dam

Halted Waters

The Seneca Nation and the building of the Kinzua Dam.

by Maria Diaz-Gonzalez via Belt Magazine on January 30, 2020

The Legal Fight That Ended the Unjust Confinement of Mental Health Patients

Ayelet Waldman on the landmark case O’Connor v. Donaldson.

by Ayelet Waldman via Literary Hub on January 21, 2020

How Christians of Color in Colonial Virginia Became 'Black'

Although the British settlers imported Africans from the first as slaves, the earliest Virginians had yet to establish many basic rules regarding slavery.

by Alejandro de la Fuente, Ariela Gross via Religion News Service on December 13, 2019

Why Forbidding Asylum Seekers From Working Undermines the Right to Seek Asylum

A new Trump administration proposal would undermine the rights of all workers and harm asylum seekers.

by Yael Schacher via Made By History on November 18, 2019

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

Andrew Johnson impeachment.

The Common Misconception About ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’

The constitutional standard for impeachment is different from what’s at play in a regular criminal trial.

by Frank O. Bowman III via The Atlantic on October 22, 2019

Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruther Bader Ginsburg speaking at the Congrsssional Women's Caucus.

The First and Last of Her Kind

The legal academy has grown dismissive of Justice O’Connor, but the Supreme Court is not a law school faculty workshop. She saw herself as a problem-solver.

by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on October 17, 2019

Clarence Thomas.

The Conservative Black Nationalism of Clarence Thomas

A new book discusses the black nationalism at the heart of Thomas’s conservative jurisprudence.

by Corey Robin, Joshua Cohen via Boston Review on September 23, 2019

The Civil Rights Leader ‘Almost Nobody Knows About’ Gets a Statue in the U.S. Capitol

At a ceremony Wednesday, leaders remembered the Ponca chief whose court case established that Native Americans were people.

by Gillian Brockell via Retropolis on September 20, 2019

“A Most Damnable Fraud?” Public (Mis)conceptions and the Insanity Defense

An upcoming Supreme Court case will test the "not guilty by reason of insanity" plea.

by Steph Chevalier-Crockett via Nursing Clio on September 19, 2019

The Anti-Slavery Constitution

From the Framers on, Americans have understood our fundamental law to oppose ownership of persons.

by Timothy Sandefur via National Review on September 12, 2019

Political cartoon about Reconstruction.

The Buried Promise of the Reconstruction Amendments

The historical context of the amendments passed in the wake of the Civil War, Eric Foner argues, are widely misunderstood.

by Eric Foner, Isaac Chotiner via The New Yorker on September 9, 2019

The Contradictions of Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

The Supreme Court justice may have been heralded by many of his progressive peers, but the legacy he left behind is far more ambiguous.

by Brenda Wineapple via The Nation on August 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

Supreme Court building under dark rainclouds.

Critics of the Administrative State Have a History Problem

If they return governance to its 19th century roots, they will also do away with courts' ability to review agency action.

by Sophia Z. Lee via LPE Project on August 1, 2019

The Radical Roots of Free Speech

Conservatives like to claim that leftists are opponents of free speech. But that’s nonsense.

by Chase Burghgrave, Laura Weinrib via Jacobin on July 25, 2019

The Supreme Court Decision That Kept Suburban Schools Segregated

A 1974 Supreme Court decision found that school segregation was allowable if it wasn’t being done on purpose.

by Jon Hale via The Conversation on July 24, 2019

Biden’s Defense Of Anti-Busing Past Distorts History Of Segregation In Delaware

Like other northern liberals in the 1970s, Biden worked to restrict federal civil rights enforcement to the Jim Crow South.

by Matthew D. Lassiter via Talking Points Memo on July 18, 2019

Americans Shouldn’t Have to Drive, but the Law Insists on It

The automobile took over because the legal system helped squeeze out the alternatives.

by Gregory H. Shill via The Atlantic on July 9, 2019

Political cartoon of Columbia giving the Civil Rights bill to a Black man.

What Are These Civil Rights Laws?

The context and aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to kill the Civil Rights Act of 1875.

by Daniel Brook via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 27, 2019

The Theory That Justified Anti-Gay Crime

Fifty years after Stonewall, the gay-panic defense seems absurd. But, for decades, it had the power of law.

by Caleb Crain via The New Yorker on June 26, 2019

A Bureaucratic Prologue to Same-Sex Marriage

The weddings made possible by local government and broad legal language.

by Michael Waters via Lapham’s Quarterly on June 24, 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

Two people studying law books.

Repository of Historical Gun Laws

The Duke Center for Firearms Law's efforts to catalog the history of gun laws.

via Duke Center For Firearms Law on June 1, 2019

How Mandatory Vaccination Fueled the Anti-Vaxxer Movement

To better understand the controversy over New York’s measles outbreak, you have to go back to the late 19th century.

by Linda Poon via CityLab on April 24, 2019

Sandra Day O'Connor

How the Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor Helped Preserve Abortion Rights

When Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to be the first woman on the Supreme Court, her views on abortion became a source of intense speculation.

by Evan Thomas via The New Yorker on March 27, 2019

Wayward Leviathans

How America's corporations lost their public purpose.

by David Ciepley via The Hedgehog Review on March 1, 2019

Migrant Children in Custody: The Long Battle for Protection

The number of detained migrant youth has reached record highs and led to lawsuits over the Trump government’s treatment of minors.

by Sarah Weiser, Noah Madoff via Retro Report on February 20, 2019

The Supreme Court Case That Enshrined White Supremacy in Law

How Plessy v. Ferguson shaped the history of racial discrimination in America.

by Louis Menand via The New Yorker on February 4, 2019

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