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Justice

On the struggles to achieve and maintain it.

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Drawing of Supreme Court in ruins.

Look at What John Roberts and His Court Have Wrought Over 18 Years

The constitutional world is profoundly different from when John Roberts became chief justice 18 years ago.
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Times on July 9, 2023
Women at National Organization for Women demonstration

Betty Friedan and the Movement That Outgrew Her

Friedan was indispensable to second-wave feminism. And yet she was difficult to like.
by Moira Donegan via The New Yorker on September 11, 2023
Men wielding muskets.

America’s Original Gun Control

Early in our history, firearms laws were everywhere.
by Robert J. Spitzer via The Atlantic on August 12, 2023
Police with face shields in street

Why Aren’t Cops Held to Account?

Decades of Supreme Court decisions have converted qualified immunity from a commonsense rule into a powerful doctrine that deprives people injured by police misconduct of recourse.
by Linda Greenhouse via New York Review of Books on August 30, 2023

Exhibits

Children play basketball in front of boarded-up houses in Baltimore.
Exhibit

Housing Injustice

This exhibit explores the complex legacies of redlining, urban renewal, and financial deregulation to explain the persistence – and costs – of residential segregation today.

Exhibit

Guns in America

Reflections on the Second Amendment's original meaning, and how views about gun rights, gun ownership, and gun violence have evolved in the centuries since.

Exhibit

MLK's Three Evils

Probing the social ills that King warned were plaguing the nation: "the sickness of racism, excessive materialism and militarism."

Exhibit

Abortion in America

How women terminated pregnancies in the past, and how contemporary understandings of that history shape today's battles over reproductive rights.

Exhibit

Supreme Thwart

Ever since the Supreme Court gave itself the power of judicial review in 1803, its role in the federal government and its influence on American life has been bitterly contested.

Demonstrators protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, March 26, 2024.

The Truth About the Comstock Act

The anti-obscenity law is unenforceable and probably unconstitutional. Conservatives still want to use it to ban medication abortions.
by Hassan Ali Kanu via The American Prospect on April 9, 2024
Police officer sitting at the front of a classroom of kids.

Police Used the DARE Program to Get Inside of U.S. Schools

It was never very effective at preventing drug use.
by Max Felker-Kantor via Teen Vogue on April 4, 2024
Women march for free abortion on demand.

More than Missionary: Abortion On Demand

The surprising history of a politically charged phrase.
by Gillian Frank via The Revealer on April 4, 2024
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.
by Simon Lazarus via The New Republic on March 29, 2024
Packets of Mifepristone, the abortion pill.
partner

Judge Kacsmaryk’s Medication Abortion Decision Distorts a Key Precedent

One of the cases on which the judge relies said the opposite of what he claims it did.
by Donna J. Drucker via Made by History on March 29, 2024
A Black woman swearing the oath to join the Navy.

A New ERA for Women in the Navy

Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr, z-grams, and the all-volunteer force.
by Heather M. Haley via U.S. Navy History on March 28, 2024
Three women standing in front of a 1915 automobile with a suffragist banner hanging on the side.

How Women Used Cars To Fuel Female Empowerment

From a 1915 suffragist road trip to the “First Lady of Drag Racing.”
by Nancy A. Nichols via Atlas Obscura on March 20, 2024
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar slam dunking basketball

How Lew Alcindor Became Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

The early years of a future basketball icon.
by Scott Howard-Cooper via Literary Hub on March 18, 2024
Tiburcio Parrott sitting holding cane
partner

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.
by Evelyn Atkinson, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on March 16, 2024
The Branch Davidian compound, Mount Carmel, Waco, Texas.

I Will Give Thee Madonna

Kevin Cook and Jeff Guinn on David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and the 1993 siege of Waco.
by Richard Beck via London Review of Books on March 15, 2024
Map of routes of the Underground Railroad, 1850-1865

Marronage & Police Abolition

Marronage as a placemaking practice, pointing to histories that shape and inspire abolitionist struggles.
by Elijah Levine, Celeste Winston via Edge Effects on March 14, 2024
Tobias Menzies (right) as Secretary of War Edwin Stanton in "Manhunt."

The Real History Behind Apple TV+'s 'Manhunt' and the Search for Abraham Lincoln's Killer

A new series dramatizes Edwin Stanton's hunt for John Wilkes Booth and his co-conspirators in the aftermath of the president’s 1865 assassination.
by Vanessa Armstrong via Smithsonian on March 14, 2024

The Forgotten Lessons of Truly Effective Protest

Organizing is a kind of alchemy: it turns alienation into connection, despair into dedication, and oppression into strength.
by Astra Taylor, Leah Hunt-Hendrix via The Guardian on March 14, 2024
Spectators and witnesses at the trial for a case involving an automobile accident, Oxford, North Carolina, 1939.

A ‘Wary Faith’ in the Courts

A groundbreaking new book demonstrates that even during the days of slavery, African Americans knew a lot more about legal principles than has been imagined.
by Eric Foner via New York Review of Books on March 14, 2024
Fr. Daniel Berrigan, left, and his brother, Fr. Philip Berrigan, outside the Montgomery County Court House in Norristown, Pennsylvania, 1981 (AP Photo/Paul Shane).

When the FBI Feared the Catholic Left

Even if today's anti-war protestors couldn’t tell you who the Berrigan brothers were, the Catholic Left’s shadow looms large.
by Arvin Alaigh via Commonweal on March 11, 2024
Portrait of Creek men.
partner

A Federal Court Has Ruled Blood Cannot Determine Tribal Citizenship. Here’s Why That Matters.

The struggle over blood and belonging in American Indian communities.
by Alaina E. Roberts via Made by History on March 9, 2024
Black man making V symbol near posters for war bonds.
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Beyond the Battlefield: Double V and Black Americans’ Fight for Equality

A civil rights initiative during World War II known as the Double V campaign advocated for dual victories: over fascism abroad, and racial injustice in the U.S.
via Retro Report on March 7, 2024
James Baldwin.

What James Baldwin Saw

A documentary that follows the writer’s late-in-life journey to the South chronicles his vision for Black politics in a post–Civil Rights era world.
by Kelli Weston via The Nation on March 5, 2024
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators holding signs

A ‘Black-Jewish Alliance’ in the US? Israel-Gaza War Shows It’s More Myth Than Special Relationship

It has been an article of faith that Jews and Black Americans have a natural bond, but a ‘Black-Jewish alliance’ is not, or at least not reliably, a thing.
by Jeff Melnick via The Guardian on February 27, 2024
Image of a joint sticking out of the sidewalk in a suburban neighborhood.

The Suburbs Made the War on Drugs in Their Own Image

Matthew Lassiter’s history plays out in ranch houses, high school parking lots, and courtrooms from Shaker Heights to Westchester to Orange County.
by Claire Bond Potter via The New Republic on February 27, 2024
Law and Political Economy Project logo

What Centuries of Common Law Can Teach Us About Regulating Social Media

Today, tech platforms, including social media, are the new common carriers.
by Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks via LPE Project on February 26, 2024
A Buddhist monk stands next to a banner with a picture of monk Thich Quang Duc who set fire to himself to protest the Vietnam War.

Why Would Anyone Kill Themselves to Stop A War?

In the past 3 months, two people in the US have taken or risked taking their own lives in an attempt to change US policies on Palestine and call for a cease-fire.
by Ann Wright via Common Dreams on February 26, 2024
Endesha Ida Mae Holland in the documentary “Freedom on My Mind.

“Freedom on My Mind”: A Symphony of Voices for Civil Rights

This 1994 documentary brings the passions and agonies of Mississippi’s voter-registration drive into the present tense.
by Richard Brody via The New Yorker on February 22, 2024
Demonstrators show support for Palestine.

How the ADL’s Anti-Palestinian Advocacy Helped Shape U.S. Terror Laws

Long before 9/11, Zionist groups like the Anti-Defamation League lobbied for counterterror legislation that singled out Palestinians.
by Alice Speri via The Intercept on February 21, 2024
1970 Map of the United States Interstate Highway Plan

How Black Activists Have Long Used Mapmaking to Document Culture and Racism in the U.S.

The neglected history of Black mapmaking in America and the creative ways in which Black people have historically used mapping to tell stories.
by Derek H. Alderman, Joshua F. J. Inwood via PBS NewsHour on February 17, 2024
Mother of school shooter enters courtroom
partner

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
Ida B. Wells
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Ida B. Wells and the Long Crusade to Outlaw Lynching

Journalist, civil rights activist and suffragist, she dedicated her life to documenting injustices against Black Americans and calling for change.
via Retro Report on February 15, 2024
New York City draft riots.

The 1863 Draft Riots and the Birth of the New York City Police

With low police morale, limited peacekeeping ability and agitated immigrants, the city only needed a match to set it ablaze.
by Timothy Brown via The Mob Museum on February 12, 2024
Oil pumpjack in the rural southwest.

Public Universities Are Profiting In Billions From Industries On Stolen Indigenous Land

Extractive industries filling public university coffers on stolen land. Here's how 14 land-grant colleges took 8.2 million acres from 123 Indigenous nations.
by Robert Lee, Tristan Ahtone, Amanda Tachine, An Garagiola, Audrianna Goodwin, Maria Parazo Rose, Clayton Aldern via Grist on February 7, 2024

Why the Long Shadow of Bush v. Gore Looms Over the Supreme Court’s Colorado Case

In the fight over keeping Trump’s name on the ballot, the 2000 decision is a warning but not a precedent.
by E. Tammy Kim via The New Yorker on February 7, 2024
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