Legal History

William H. Williams operated a slave pen in Washington, DC, known as the Yellow House, and actively trafficked in enslaved men, women, and children...

From the trial of Socrates to the post-9/11 military commissions, trials have always been useful instruments of politics. Yet there is still much t...

In 1783, a stamp duty was imposed on proprietary or 'quack' medicines. These largely useless but often dangerous remedies were immensely popular. T...

It is a fundamental term of the social contract that people trade allegiance for protection. In the nineteenth century, as millions of people made ...

How will Ireland redress its legacy of institutional abuse? What constitutes justice? What is Transitional Justice? How might democracy evolve if s...

Congressman James Mitchell Ashley, a member of the House of Representatives from 1858 to 1868, was the main sponsor of the Thirteenth Amendment to ...

Laws against Holocaust denial are perhaps the best-known manifestation of the present-day politics of historical memory. In Memory Laws, Memory War...

Talmudic legislation prescribed penalty for a Jew to testify in a non-Jewish court, against a fellow Jew, to benefit a gentile - for breach of a du...

The Great Christian Jurists series comprises a library of national volumes of detailed biographies of leading jurists, judges and practitioners, as...

2022 International Labor History Association Book of the YearA dramatic, deeply researched account of how legal repression and vigilantism brought ...

This book takes an unflinching look at the roles and functions played by the idea of universality in international legal discourses, as well as the...

A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States.   Too often, scholars and pundits arg...

A searing chronicle of how racist violence became an ingrained facet of law enforcement in the United States.   Too often, scholars and pundits arg...

In the years following the landmark United States Supreme Court decision on libel law in New York Times v. Sullivan, the court ruled on a number of...

Featuring contributions from leading lawyers, historians and social scientists, this path-breaking volume explores encounters of laws, people, and ...

Foregrounding religious, racialized and gendered disputes, Decision Making and Controversies in State Supreme Courts examines state supreme court d...

In The Geography of Injustice, Barak Kushner argues that the war crimes tribunals in East Asia formed and cemented national divides that persist in...

The evolution of China's legal tradition was one of the most striking aspects of the transformation of Chinese civilization under Mongolian dominat...

A Smithsonian Best History Book of the YearWinner of the Littleton-Griswold PrizeWinner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson AwardWinner of the Order of the ...

Fred Korematsus decision to resist F.D.R.s Executive Order 9066, which provided authority for the internment of Japanese Americans during World War...

First comprehensive survey of how kinship rules were discussed and applied in medieval England. Two separate legal jurisdictions concerned with fa...

Building Justice draws on the inspiring life of former Canadian Supreme Court Justice Frank Iacobucci to offer insight into the meaning of engaged ...

The Choson state (13921910) is typically portrayed as a rigid society because of its hereditary status system, slavery, and Confucian gender norms....

In the mid-twentieth century, gay life flourished in American cities even as the state repression of queer communities reached its peak. Liquor inv...