The collected papers of late U.S. Supreme Court justices are typically of interest primarily to judicial biographers, legal researchers and a few journalists. On Dec. 1, during oral arguments in one of the most consequential cases of the term, a new aficionado of the genre revealed himself: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Does the weight and meaning of a U.S. Supreme Court decision turn on the arguments presented beforehand? Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. appeared to suggest that the answer was yes during oral arguments on the constitutionality of a Mississippi abortion law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The U.S. Department of Justice has closed its reopened investigation into the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black youth tortured and shot…
On the morning of July 12, 1917, Mrs. H.R. McLellan was startled by the sight of hundreds of men marching just below her Bisbee, Arizona, home. From her house on Chihuahua Hill, she could see them filing down Naco Road, escorted by men carrying rifles. Her husband immediately surmised what was happening: a roundup of the mining town’s striking smelter workers.
Like the legal profession, the practice of medicine in the United States is highly regulated. But it hasn't always been, and the idea that a person has the right to try the medical therapies of their choice has a much longer history. In Choose Your Medicine: Freedom of Therapeutic Choice in America, law professor Lewis A. Grossman introduces readers to a fractious history with some unexpected combatants—and comrades.
Updated: A New York judge tossed the convictions of two men in the murder of Malcolm X on Thursday following a 22-month investigation finding that key evidence had been withheld from the defense.
Whenever the ABA Journal has conducted a survey to find the best legal movies or the best legal plays, 12 Angry Men has made the list. But the path to becoming a classic was not a simple one, and the man behind the script was not a simple man.
The University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco will press California lawmakers to change the school’s name because of its founder’s role in the massacres of hundreds of Native Americans.
A Florida prosecutor has filed a motion to clear the names of four young Black men known as "the Groveland Four," who were wrongly accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman in Lake County, Florida, in 1949.
Corrected: The chancellor and dean of the University of California's Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco is grappling with calls for a school name change after revelations that its namesake, Serranus Clinton Hastings, helped organize the massacres of hundreds of Native Americans.
A tiny typographical error in a 1928 U.S. Supreme Court opinion had a big impact after it was picked up in subsequent opinions and used to bolster arguments for property rights, a law professor has found.
Former President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday that calls the U.S. House of Representative's Jan. 6 committee’s request for records in connection with the U.S. Capitol riot “a vexatious, illegal fishing expedition.”
Much has been said about police officers and departments who violate civil rights or enforce the law in discriminatory ways. But not as much attention has been paid to the ways in which the U.S. Supreme Court has enabled police excesses and insulated police from civil or criminal responsibility, says Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the University of California at Berkeley School of Law and author of the new book Presumed Guilty: How the Supreme Court Empowered the Police and Subverted Civil Rights.
Former President Donald Trump is asserting executive privilege to fight a request for presidential records sought by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol riot. Can he do that after his presidential term ends?
The ABA Journal wants to host and facilitate conversations among lawyers about their profession. We are now accepting thoughtful, non-promotional articles and commentary by unpaid contributors.
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