In late seventeenth-century New England, the eternal battle between God and Satan was brought into the courtroom. Between January 1692 and May 1693 in Salem, Massachusetts, neighbors turned against neighbors and children against parents with accusations of witchcraft, and nineteen people were hanged for having made pacts with the devil. Peter Charles Hoffer, a historian long familiar with the Salem witchcraft trials, now reexamines this notorious episode in American history and presents many of its legal details in correct perspective for the first time. He tells the real story of how...
In late seventeenth-century New England, the eternal battle between God and Satan was brought into the courtroom. Between January 1692 and May 1693 in...
When the American Railway Union went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894, it set into motion a chain of events whose repercussions are still felt today. The strike pitted America's largest industrial union against twenty-four railroads, paralyzed rail traffic in half the country, and in the end was broken up by federal troops and suppressed by the courts, with union leader Eugene Debs incarcerated. But behind the Pullman case lay a conflict of ideologies at a watershed time in our nation's history. David Ray Papke reexamines the events and personalities surrounding...
When the American Railway Union went on strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company in 1894, it set into motion a chain of events whose repercussion...
Twice denied admission to a California medical school despite better grades and test scores than successful minority applicants, Allan Bakke took his grievance to court and set off a major controversy over affirmative action. Bakke claimed that he was a victim of reverse discrimination, and his case has been considered by many as the most important civil rights decision since the end of segregation--and also one of the most difficult ever heard by the Supreme Court. Howard Ball now reviews the many issues raised by this case that placed affirmative action on trial. He examines the law and...
Twice denied admission to a California medical school despite better grades and test scores than successful minority applicants, Allan Bakke took his ...
In a free society where it often seems nothing is sacred, many feel that one thing at least should be: that despite constitutional guarantees of free speech, it should be illegal to desecrate the American flag. For most Americans, no symbol is more charged with emotion, and incidents of its abuse have led many to declare that freedom of expression has its limits. When Gregory Lee Johnson burned a flag as part of a political protest, he was convicted for flag desecration under Texas law, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the conviction on First Amendment grounds and the...
In a free society where it often seems nothing is sacred, many feel that one thing at least should be: that despite constitutional guarantees of free ...
The Supreme Court's controversial decision in Oregon v. Smith sharply departed from previous expansive readings of the First Amendment's religious freedom clause and ignited a firestorm of protest from legal scholars, religious groups, legislators, and Native Americans. Carolyn Long provides the first book-length analysis of Smith and shows why it continues to resonate so deeply in the American psyche. In 1983, Klamath Indian Alfred Smith and his co-worker Galen Black were fired as counselors from a drug rehabilitation agency for using peyote, a controlled substance under Oregon law, in a...
The Supreme Court's controversial decision in Oregon v. Smith sharply departed from previous expansive readings of the First Amendment's religious fre...
Three and a half decades before the city of New York witnessed the first great battle waged by the new United States of America for its independence, rumors of a massive conspiracy among the city's slaves spread panic throughout the colony. On the testimony of frightened bondsmen and a handful of whites, over seventy slaves were convicted and a third of these were executed. The suspected conspiracy in New York prompted one of the most extensive slave trials in colonial history and some of the most grisly punishments ever meted out to individuals. Peter Hoffer now retells the dramatic...
Three and a half decades before the city of New York witnessed the first great battle waged by the new United States of America for its independence, ...
Mention the term witch hunt, and Salem, Massachusetts, springs to mind--and with it the power of superstition, the danger of mob mentality, and our natural fear of gross injustice. For more than a year, between January 1692 and May 1693, the men and women of Salem village lived in heightened fear of witches and their master, the Devil. Hundreds were accused of practicing witchcraft. Many suspects languished in jail for months. Nineteen men and women were hanged; one was pressed to death. Neighbors turned against neighbors, children informed on their parents, and ministers denounced...
Mention the term witch hunt, and Salem, Massachusetts, springs to mind--and with it the power of superstition, the danger of mob mentality, ...
The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to creation of the new nation. With its exploration of the places and peoples of early America, this comprehensive, lively narrative brings together the most recent scholarship on the colonial and revolutionary eras, Native Americans, slavery, politics, war, and the daily lives of ordinary people. The revised, enlarged edition includes a new chapter carrying the story through the American Revolution, the War for Independence, and the creation of the...
The Brave New World covers the span of early American history, from 30,000 years before Europeans ever landed on North American shores to c...
The Law's Conscience is a history of equity in Anglo-American juris-prudence from the inception of the chancellor's court in medieval England to the recent civil rights and affirmative action decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Peter Hoffer argues that equity embodies a way of looking at law, including constitutions, based on ideas of mutual fairness, public trusteeship, and equal protection. His central theme is the tension between the ideal of equity and the actual availability of equitable remedies.
Hoffer examines this tension in the trusteeship constitutionalism...
The Law's Conscience is a history of equity in Anglo-American juris-prudence from the inception of the chancellor's court in medieval England t...
N. E. H. Hull Peter Charles Hoffer William James Hoffer
Beginning with the introduction of abortion law in the nineteenth century, this reader includes important documents from nearly two hundred years of debate over abortion. These legal briefs, oral arguments, court opinions, newspaper reports, opinion pieces, and contemporary essays are introduced with headnotes that place them in historical context. Chapters cover the birth control movement, changes in abortion law in the 1960s, Roe v. Wade, the Hyde Amendment and the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, state and federal regulation of abortion practices, and the freedom of...
Beginning with the introduction of abortion law in the nineteenth century, this reader includes important documents from nearly two hundred years of d...
