It is with some reticence I bring up the subject of witch hunts given the tenor of recent politics, but I run across a contemporaneous account of the Salem witch trials while attending the Harry…
Read More
Alternative Legal Careers, 1700s Caribbean Edition As one who most definitely chose an unconventional path for the use of my law degree, I tend to collect the stories of others who have done the same….
Standing outside the gates to the small courthouse in Concepción de Ataco, El Salvador, one cannot help but think about the role of courts and how architecture and design reinforce that role, or not. Should…
“Everything in the island speaks of evanescence and the lapse of time,” Patrick Leigh Fermor wrote of Antigua in his 1950 book, The Traveller’s Tree, and the 1750s Antigua courthouse in St. John’s is no…
Appreciating Phyllis Randolph Frye The American Bar Association’s Commission on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity has announced that Phyllis Randolph Frye, a City of Houston Municipal Courts associate judge who reportedly is the first openly…
Who Was John McClellan, and Why Is His Office in Old Sturbridge Village? A desk, a fireplace, and a bookcase full of volumes of American Jurist mark the 1796 office of lawyer John McClellan of…
An Approachable Courthouse in County Mayo The Old Courthouse on Abbey Street in Cong, Ireland now serves as a tourist office. The Proclamation of the Irish Republic is displayed outside, as it is at other…
The Life and Death of Roe v. Wade Class Action Plaintiff Norma McCorvey Obituaries of the recently deceased Norma McCorvey, perhaps best known as the class action plaintiff pseudonymously named Jane Roe in the Supreme Court…
Marking the Passing of E. Clinton Bamberger Say you happen to be standing trial for murder. Let’s suppose that somehow you got yourself entangled in a bit of a mess and that you weren’t alone when…
More than 125 years ago, the first Judiciary Act was passed by the first Congress. The first president—George Washington—signed it the same day. The Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 73 (Sept. 24, 1789) establishes district…
