Legal History

Student winners of ABA’s Magna Carta video competition are named

Four Arizona high school students have won first place in an ABA video competition with the theme “Magna Carta: What’s So Great about the ‘Great Charter’?” The students will get a free three-day trip to Washington, D.C., for winning the competition commemorating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. They…

Mar 16, 2015 2:11 PM CDT

Winston Churchill wanted to give rare Magna Carta manuscript to US, documents show

Great Britain’s prime minister and other officials wanted to give the U.S. a rare historic manuscript of the Magna Carta during World War II, as a thank-you for America’s anticipated help during the war effort. However, the would-be donation discussed by Winston Churchill in documents unearthed less than a decade…

Mar 11, 2015 1:10 PM CDT

Manslaughter case video shows actor Wyatt Russell running for life as train hurtles toward movie set

The movie was never completed. But a video clip showing actor Wyatt Russell and crew members, who had been filming Midnight Rider, running for their lives down a train trestle high above a Georgia river in real life, as a whistle-blowing train barreled down on them at 55 mph, became…

Mar 11, 2015 11:00 AM CDT

Pardon convicted paleontologist who found famous dinosaur fossil Sue, Senate committee urges

Saying that he believes paleontologist Peter Larson didn’t realize he was committing any crime and was overzealously prosecuted for conduct linked to his discovery of a famous Tyrannosaurus rex fossil decades ago, a lawmaker urged the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday to call for President Barack Obama to pardon Larson.…

Mar 6, 2015 9:00 AM CST

March 9, 1953: A state secrets doctrine is born

A B-29 Superfortress bomber took off from Robins Air Force Base on Oct. 6, 1948. As it reached 18,500 feet, an engine caught fire and the plane crashed 2 miles south of Waycross, Georgia. Of the 13 men on board, nine were killed, including three civilian employees of the Radio…

Mar 1, 2015 1:10 AM CST

US offers $3M bounty for alleged Russian hacker, a record reward for a cybersecurity case

Federal officials announced this week that they are offering a $3 million bounty for information leading to the arrest and/or conviction of Evgeniy Bogachev, a Russian national believed to be somewhere in his home country. The reward by the State Department and the FBI is the highest ever offered in…

Feb 26, 2015 4:05 PM CST

Convicted in wife slaying, profiled in book and TV miniseries, Robert Marshall dies in prison

A former insurance salesman profiled in a best-selling book and television miniseries about the contract killing of his wife has died in prison. Robert Marshall, 75, was convicted in 1986 for conspiring to murder his wife, Maria, who was shot to death in 1984 at a isolated picnic area off…

Feb 24, 2015 12:10 PM CST

Another Magna Carta is found

A small-town historian has found an ancient edition of the Magna Carta tucked away in a scrapbook compiled at the end of the 19th Century. The newly found Magna Carta was issued by royal decree in 1300, report the Washington Post, BBC News and the Guardian. Historian Mark Bateson found…

Feb 9, 2015 8:07 AM CST

Sarah Weddington on being a young, female lawyer in a watershed SCOTUS case that reverberates today

Sarah Weddington wasn’t the first to know that she’d won the landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade at the U.S. Supreme Court. Giving the keynote speech at Saturday’s American Bar Foundation Awards Reception and Banquet, Weddington recalled a call her assistant received on Jan. 22, 1973. A reporter from the…

Feb 8, 2015 10:52 AM CST

Court says Aaron Hernandez defense team must remove new items from his home before jury tour

Prosecutors trying a first-degree murder case against former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez learned an important lesson from a famous first-degree murder trial 20 years ago against another former NFL star, an ESPN legal analyst says. Apparently alerted by the way OJ Simpson’s home was staged prior to a…

Feb 6, 2015 1:25 PM CST

How Dewey management's rosy picture masked an ugly truth

In December 2011, Dewey & LeBoeuf chair Steven Davis used a calm, matter-of-fact tone in a phone interview about his firm's uncharacteristically aggressive streak of lateral partner hiring during the previous year. It was all part of the plan, Davis said.

Feb 1, 2015 4:30 AM CST

Early involvement, education are keys to keeping kids on track for productive lives

A close friend and law partner, Steve Morrison, devoted 10 years of his life and significant pro bono time to a landmark public education case, Abbeville v. State of South Carolina. Plaintiffs brought the original suit in 1993 on behalf of poor, rural school districts, seeking to hold the state…

Feb 1, 2015 3:50 AM CST

New project rewrites SCOTUS opinions from a feminist perspective

More than 50 law professors and lawyers are collaborating to analyze how U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence would look if seminal cases had been adjudicated from a feminist perspective. The book Feminist Judgments: Rewritten Opinions of the United States Supreme Court will contain 24 rewritten decisions on topics such as reproductive…

Feb 1, 2015 3:30 AM CST

ABA to hold first midyear meeting in Houston since 1981

Recent incidents in which black men died during confrontations with police officers—most notably in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City—have put the issue of race relations in the United States back at the top of the news. Paradoxically, this attention comes at a time when at least two important anniversaries…

Feb 1, 2015 12:50 AM CST

Feb. 20, 1967: Muhammad Ali’s appeal rejected by draft board

In February 1967, Muhammad Ali was 25 years old, undefeated in 28 fights and the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. His trademark was a brash, instinctively complex demeanor that made his public persona fundamentally controversial and imbued his reign as champion with the inferences of race. As Cassius Marcellus…

Feb 1, 2015 12:20 AM CST