In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supreme Court's controversial and much-debated stances on capital punishment-in the landmark case of Furman v. Georgia. Career criminal William Furman shot and killed a homeowner during a 1967 burglary in Savannah, Georgia. Because it was a "black-on-white" crime in the racially troubled South, it also was an open-and-shut case. The trial took less than a day, and the nearly all-white jury rendered a death sentence. Aided by the NAACP's...
In his first book since the Pulitzer Prize-winning Polio: An American Story, renowned historian David Oshinsky takes a new and closer look at the Supr...
What began as a standoff between competing steamship entrepreneurs ended as one of the Supreme Court's most significant cases. Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824 brought into sharp relief the ongoing tug-of-war for power between individual states and the federal government. By applying the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Court set a key precedent for federal authority. But, behind the scenes, the "Steamboat Case" also demonstrated Chief Justice John Marshall's instrumental role as mediator on the bench. Untangling the issues and the arguments in Gibbons, Herbert Johnson reveals the lasting...
What began as a standoff between competing steamship entrepreneurs ended as one of the Supreme Court's most significant cases. Gibbons v. Ogden in 182...
What began as a standoff between competing steamship entrepreneurs ended as one of the Supreme Court's most significant cases. Gibbons v. Ogden in 1824 brought into sharp relief the ongoing tug-of-war for power between individual states and the federal government. By applying the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Court set a key precedent for federal authority. But, behind the scenes, the "Steamboat Case" also demonstrated Chief Justice John Marshall's instrumental role as mediator on the bench. Untangling the issues and the arguments in Gibbons, Herbert Johnson reveals the lasting...
What began as a standoff between competing steamship entrepreneurs ended as one of the Supreme Court's most significant cases. Gibbons v. Ogden in 182...
When runaway slave Anthony Burns was tracked to Boston by his owner Charles Suttle, the struggle over his fate became a focal point for national controversy. Boston, a hotbed of antislavery sentiment, provided the venue for the 1854 hearing that determined Burns's legal status, one of the most dramatic and widely publicized events in the long-running conflict over the issue of fugitive slaves. Earl Maltz's compelling chronicle of this case shows how the violent emotions surrounding it played out at both the local and national levels, focusing especially on the awkward position in which...
When runaway slave Anthony Burns was tracked to Boston by his owner Charles Suttle, the struggle over his fate became a focal point for national contr...
What began as a neighborhood party during the summer of 1942 led to the largest mass murder trial in California's history. After young Jose Diaz was found murdered near Los Angeles' Sleepy Lagoon reservoir, 600 Mexican Americans were rounded up by the police, 24 were indicted, and 17 were convicted. But thanks to the efforts of crusading lawyers, Hollywood celebrities, and Mexican Americans throughout the nation, all 17 convictions were thrown out in an appellate decision that cited lack of evidence, coerced testimony, deprivation of the right to counsel, and judicial misconduct. Mark...
What began as a neighborhood party during the summer of 1942 led to the largest mass murder trial in California's history. After young Jose Diaz was f...
What began as a neighborhood party during the summer of 1942 led to the largest mass murder trial in California's history. After young Jose Diaz was found murdered near Los Angeles' Sleepy Lagoon reservoir, 600 Mexican Americans were rounded up by the police, 24 were indicted, and 17 were convicted. But thanks to the efforts of crusading lawyers, Hollywood celebrities, and Mexican Americans throughout the nation, all 17 convictions were thrown out in an appellate decision that cited lack of evidence, coerced testimony, deprivation of the right to counsel, and judicial misconduct. Mark...
What began as a neighborhood party during the summer of 1942 led to the largest mass murder trial in California's history. After young Jose Diaz was f...
In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, racial equality in American public education appeared to have a bright future. But, for many, that brightness dimmed considerably following the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Milliken v. Bradley (1974). While the literature on Brown is voluminous, Joyce Baugh's measured and insightful study offers the only available book-length analysis of Milliken, the first major desegregation case to originate outside the South. As Baugh chronicles, when the city of Detroit sought to address school segregation by busing white students to...
In the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, racial equality in American public education appeared to have a bright future. But, for many, that ...
When the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians--a small tribe of only 25 members--first opened a high-stakes bingo parlor, the operation was shut down by the State of California as a violation of its gambling laws. It took a Supreme Court decision to overturn the state's action, confirm the autonomy of tribes, and pave the way for other tribes to operate gaming centers throughout America. Ralph Rossum explores the origins, arguments, and impact of California v. Cabazon Band of Mission Indians, the 1987 Supreme Court decision that reasserted the unique federally supported sovereignty of...
When the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians--a small tribe of only 25 members--first opened a high-stakes bingo parlor, the operation was shut down by th...
Illuminating a classic case from the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s, two of America's foremost legal historians--Kermit Hall and Melvin Urofsky--provide a compact and highly readable updating of one of the most memorable decisions in the Supreme Court's canon. When the New York Times published an advertisement that accused Alabama officials of willfully abusing civil rights activists, Montgomery police commissioner Lester Sullivan filed suit for defamation. Alabama courts, citing factual errors in the ad, ordered the Times to pay half a million dollars in damages....
Illuminating a classic case from the turbulent civil rights era of the 1960s, two of America's foremost legal historians--Kermit Hall and Melvin Urofs...
Six decades before Rosa Parks boarded her fateful bus, another traveler in the Deep South tried to strike a blow against racial discrimination--but ultimately fell short of that goal, leading to the Supreme Court's landmark 1896 decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. Now Williamjames Hull Hoffer vividly details the origins, litigation, opinions, and aftermath of this notorious case. In response to the passage of the Louisiana Separate Car Act of 1890, which prescribed "equal but separate accommodations" on public transportation, a group called the Committee of Citizens decided to...
Six decades before Rosa Parks boarded her fateful bus, another traveler in the Deep South tried to strike a blow against racial discrimination--but ul...
