Legal History

A cautionary tale about personal ads.

From naval service to the first federal copyright. Maybe?

Dillinger had the "Lady in Red." His associate, Henry Pierpont, had this lady in law.

Sometimes criminal defense work means you have to defend a monster.

Rosa Parks set off a civil rights firestorm. Learn about the person who lit the match.

The tale of the legal woes of the man who printed one of the world's most famous bibles.

Every American law student knows Hawkins v. McGee...but is the "hairy hand case" much ado about nothing?

The complicated story of "Tokyo Rose," the seventh person convicted and sentenced for treason in the United States.

Noah Webster wove a web of words...and created the United States' first dictionary.

Who is John Smithson? And what does he have to do with preserving history?

Suffragist and Temperance Movement leader Amanda Way predated many better-known figures of both movements...and did it her way.

A tale of Wild West murder...and legal proceedings.

Who you gonna call when you're trying to sell a haunted house?

Did a ghost solve her own murder?

Dracula v. The Copyright

If Jackie Robinson was not the first African American MLB player...then who was?

Robert Carter III did something the Founding Fathers never did - he manumitted his enslaved people almost 100 years before the Emancipation Proclamation.

While Houdini was a magician by trade, he had several other interests such as film and aviation. He was also an innovator, seeking to improve existing items with an escapist twist. In 1921, Houdini invented a special diving suit which would allow wearers to get out of the suit faster if their air supplies failed by using a locking joint in the middle of the suit.

On April 18, 1857, Clarence Darrow was born in Kinsman, Ohio.  The name is likely familiar, as Darrow was one of the most famous lawyers of his day.  In his early years as a lawyer, Darrow was involved in the Labor Movement, defending Labor leaders including Eugene V. Debs.  Later in his career, he defended the infamous Leopold and Loeb, wealthy teenagers (18 and 17, respectively) who were accused of killing Bobby Franks, reportedly for “pure love of excitement. . . [and] the satisfaction and the ego of putting something over.” 

In the early 1800s, as settlers from the newly-formed United States set forth into the lands west of the original colonies, their plans of manifest destiny were delayed by the people who had called those lands their home for many generations – the indigenous peoples of North America.