ABA Journal

Legal History

1235 ABA Journal Legal History articles.

Board of UC Hastings law school recommends name change in response to founder’s role in massacres

The University of California’s Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco would get a name change under a recommendation approved Wednesday by the school’s board of directors.

Courtroom sketch artist Art Lien retires after momentous SCOTUS term

It wasn’t the momentous U.S. Supreme Court term ending in June that spurred courtroom sketch artist Art Lien to retire.

Chemerinsky: This SCOTUS term moved the law ‘dramatically in a conservative direction’

The U.S. Supreme Court's October 2021 term was one of the momentous in history. The only analogy I can think of is 1937 for its dramatic changes in constitutional law. This is the first full term with Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the high court, and we saw the enormous effects of having a 6-3 conservative majority.

Weekly Briefs: Old arrest warrant found in Emmett Till case; former White House counsel subpoenaed

Emmett Till’s family seeks arrest after warrant found

Researchers have found an unserved 1955 arrest warrant in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse that accuses Carolyn Bryant Donham in the…

America’s Lost Children

When researchers began the painstaking work of identifying Indigenous children who died at the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School in Nebraska, they kept making chilling discoveries.

June 30, 1983: Closing the books on Peoples Temple

On June 30, 1983, attorney Robert H. Fabian literally closed the books on one of the most painful proceedings in American jurisprudence: the court-ordered liquidation of assets owned by Peoples Temple, the organized following of the Rev. Jim Jones.

John Lennon’s lawyer turns paperback writer to recount little-known case

Jay Bergen’s representation of Lennon always made for a good story, last month he shared the case on a grander scale. He published Lennon, the Mobster & the Lawyer—The Untold Story, which recounts his representation of Lennon.

Could SCOTUS leaker be charged with crime? Espionage Act wouldn’t apply, but other laws might

Could the person who leaked U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft abortion opinion be charged with a crime? It’s possible, even though the Espionage Act wouldn’t apply, according to experts.

Wiretapping’s origins might surprise you

On the cover of author Brian Hochman’s book is a martini cocktail complete with a skewered olive. Hochman shares the real story that inspired the cover in this new podcast episode.

Rare but not unprecedented Supreme Court leak considered ‘staggering’

The leak of a draft majority opinion in a pending case is “staggering,” says law professor Jonathan Peters. “It’s the most significant leak in the Supreme Court’s history, not only because of the draft’s release but also because of the current political moment (charged as it is) and the personal and social consequences of the decision itself.”

Is Alito right about the ‘unbroken tradition of prohibiting abortion’? Scholars disagree on the history

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s draft abortion opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade says the 1973 decision “either ignored or misstated” the history of abortion laws.

Legal experts fear loss of abortion right could usher in end of same-sex marriage, other rights

In the two days since Politico published a draft U.S. Supreme Court opinion that seems to strike down Roe v. Wade, several legal experts have expressed concerns that the same reasoning that eliminates the right to abortion could also put other constitutional rights at risk.

What does the original Roe v. Wade really say?

The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to strike down Roe v. Wade, a landmark decision from 1973 that established a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Norma McCorvey, a single, pregnant woman in Texas, brought a federal lawsuit in 1970 against district attorney Henry Wade, alleging that Texas criminal abortion statutes that originated in 1854 were unconstitutional.

How is ‘amicus’ pronounced? Justice Breyer and Judge Jackson disagree with each other and the majority view

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was once a law clerk for the justice she will replace, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, but she didn’t adopt his pronunciation of “amicus.”

How and why Kazakhstan gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons

When the Soviet Union dissolved and Kazakhstan became a sovereign state, it now had a conundrum: Should the country retain the nuclear weapons and become the world’s fourth largest nuclear power or relinquish them in return for international commitments?

Read more ...