The Dred Scott Case

The Dred Scott Case PDF Author: Roger Brooke Taney
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781017251265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Washington University Libraries presents an online exhibit of documents regarding the Dred Scott case. American slave Dred Scott (1795?-1858) and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the Saint Louis Circuit Court in 1846. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1857 that the Scotts must remain slaves.

The Dred Scott Case

The Dred Scott Case PDF Author: Roger Brooke Taney
Publisher: Legare Street Press
ISBN: 9781017251265
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The Washington University Libraries presents an online exhibit of documents regarding the Dred Scott case. American slave Dred Scott (1795?-1858) and his wife Harriet filed suit for their freedom in the Saint Louis Circuit Court in 1846. The U.S. Supreme Court decided in 1857 that the Scotts must remain slaves.

Justice Curtis in the Civil War Era

Justice Curtis in the Civil War Era PDF Author: Stuart Streichler
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional history
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Broken Constitution

The Broken Constitution PDF Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations

Perilous Times

Perilous Times PDF Author: Geoffrey R. Stone
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393058802
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 758

Get Book Here

Book Description
Geoffrey Stone's Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America during wartime. Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil liberties in the Bush era. Full of fresh legal and historical insight, Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from the presidents—Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon—to the Supreme Court justices—Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren—to the resisters—Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs, posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its call for a new approach in our response to grave crises.

No State Shall Abridge

No State Shall Abridge PDF Author: Michael Kent Curtis
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822310358
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Get Book Here

Book Description
“The book is carefully organized and well written, and it deals with a question that is still of great importance—what is the relationship of the Bill of Rights to the states.”—Journal of American History “Curtis effectively settles a serious legal debate: whether the framers of the 14th Amendment intended to incorporate the Bill of Rights guarantees and thereby inhibit state action. Taking on a formidable array of constitutional scholars, . . . he rebuts their argument with vigor and effectiveness, conclusively demonstrating the legitimacy of the incorporation thesis. . . . A bold, forcefully argued, important study.”—Library Journal

Supreme Injustice

Supreme Injustice PDF Author: Paul Finkelman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674982088
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
The three most important Supreme Court Justices before the Civil War—Chief Justices John Marshall and Roger B. Taney and Associate Justice Joseph Story—upheld the institution of slavery in ruling after ruling. These opinions cast a shadow over the Court and the legacies of these men, but historians have rarely delved deeply into the personal and political ideas and motivations they held. In Supreme Injustice, the distinguished legal historian Paul Finkelman establishes an authoritative account of each justice’s proslavery position, the reasoning behind his opposition to black freedom, and the incentives created by circumstances in his private life. Finkelman uses census data and other sources to reveal that Justice Marshall aggressively bought and sold slaves throughout his lifetime—a fact that biographers have ignored. Justice Story never owned slaves and condemned slavery while riding circuit, and yet on the high court he remained silent on slave trade cases and ruled against blacks who sued for freedom. Although Justice Taney freed many of his own slaves, he zealously and consistently opposed black freedom, arguing in Dred Scott that free blacks had no Constitutional rights and that slave owners could move slaves into the Western territories. Finkelman situates this infamous holding within a solid record of support for slavery and hostility to free blacks. Supreme Injustice boldly documents the entanglements that alienated three major justices from America’s founding ideals and embedded racism ever deeper in American civic life.

The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies

The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies PDF Author: Clare Cushman
Publisher: CQ Press
ISBN: 1608718336
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 585

Get Book Here

Book Description
Book Description: The Supreme Court Justices: Illustrated Biographies 1789-2012, Third Edition provides a single-volume reference profiling every Supreme Court justice from John Jay through Elena Kagan. An original essay on each justice paints a vivid picture of his or her individuality as shaped by family, education, pre-Court career, and the times in which he or she lived. Each biographical essay also presents the major issues on which the justice presided. Essays are arranged in the order of the justices' appointments. Lively anecdotes along with portraits, photographs, and political cartoons enrich the text and deepen readers' understanding of the justices and of the Court. The volume includes an extensive bibliography and is indexed for easy research access. New in this edition are: a foreword by Chief Justice John G. Roberts; a revised essay on Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist; updated essays on sitting or recently retired members of the court; new biographies for Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Associate Justices Samuel A. Alito, Elena Kagan, and Sonia M. Sotomayor; an updated listing of members of the Supreme Court with appointment and confirmation dates; and an updated bibliography with key sources on the Supreme Court and the justices. For insightful background and lively commentary on the individuals who have served on the Supreme Court of the United States, there is no better reference than this updated new volume. This is a vital reference work for researchers, students, and others interested in the Supreme Court's past, present, and future.

Muslim Americans in the Military

Muslim Americans in the Military PDF Author: Edward E. Curtis
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253027217
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 102

Get Book Here

Book Description
Stories of Muslims who have served, dating back to the Revolutionary War. Since the Revolutionary War, Muslim Americans have served in the United States military, risking their lives to defend a country that increasingly looks at them with suspicion and fear. In Muslim Americans in the Military: Centuries of Service, Edward E. Curtis illuminates the long history of Muslim service members who have defended their country and struggled to practice their faith. With profiles of soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors since the dawn of our country, Curtis showcases the real stories of Muslim Americans, from Omer Otmen, who fought fiercely against German forces during World War I, to Captain Humayun Khan, who gave his life in Iraq in 2004. These true stories contradict the narratives of hate and fear that have dominated recent headlines, revealing the contributions and sacrifices that these soldiers have made to the United States.

A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era

A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era PDF Author: Thomas C. Mackey
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1621900231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 574

Get Book Here

Book Description
A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is the first comprehensive collection of public policy actions, political speeches, and judicial decisions related to the American Civil War. Collectively, the four volumes in this series give scholars, teachers, and students easy access to the full texts of the most important, fundamental documents as well as hard-to-find, rarely published primary sources on this critical period in U.S. history. The first two volumes of the series, Legislative Achievements and Political Arguments, were released last year. The final installments, Judicial Decisions, is split into two volumes, with this one, volume 3, spanning from 1857 to 1866. It contains some of the classic judicial decisions of the time such as the 1857 decision in Dred Scott and the 1861 Ex parte Merryman decision. Other decisions are well known to specialists but deserve wider readership and discussion, such as the October 1859 Jefferson County, Virginia, indictment of John Brown and the decision in the 1864 case of political and seditious activity in Ex parte Vallandigham. These judicial voices constitute a lasting and often overlooked aspect of the age of Abraham Lincoln. Mackey’s headnotes and introductory essays situate cases within their historical context and trace their lasting significance. In contrast to the war, these judicial decisions lasted well past their immediate political and legal moment and deserve continued scholarship and scrutiny. This document collection presents the raw “stuff” of the Civil War era so that students, scholars, and interested readers can measure and gauge how that generation met Lincoln’s challenge to “think anew, and act anew.” A Documentary History of the American Civil War Era is an essential acquisition for academic and public libraries in addition to being a valuable resource for courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction, legal history, political history, and nineteenth-century American history. Thomas C. Mackey is a professor of history at the University of Louisville and adjunct Professor of Law at Brandeis School of Law. He is the author of Pornography on Trial and Pursuing Johns.

Uncivil Warriors

Uncivil Warriors PDF Author: Peter Hoffer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190851775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the Civil War, the United States and the Confederate States of America engaged in combat to defend distinct legal regimes and the social order they embodied and protected. Depending on whose side's arguments one accepted, the Constitution either demanded the Union's continuance or allowed for its dissolution. After the war began, rival legal concepts of insurrection (a civil war within a nation) and belligerency (war between sovereign enemies) vied for adherents in federal and Confederate councils. In a "nation of laws," such martial legalism was not surprising. Moreover, many of the political leaders of both the North and the South were lawyers themselves, including Abraham Lincoln. These lawyers now found themselves at the center of this violent maelstrom. For these men, as for their countrymen in the years following the conflict, the sacrifices of the war gave legitimacy to new kinds of laws defining citizenship and civil rights. The eminent legal historian Peter Charles Hoffer's Uncivil Warriors focuses on these lawyers' civil war: on the legal professionals who plotted the course of the war from seats of power, the scenes of battle, and the home front. Both the North and the South had their complement of lawyers, and Hoffer provides coverage of each side's leading lawyers. In positions of leadership, they struggled to make sense of the conflict, and in the course of that struggle, began to glimpse of new world of law. It was a law that empowered as well as limited government, a law that conferred personal dignity and rights on those who, at the war's beginning, could claim neither in law. Comprehensive in coverage, Uncivil Warriors' focus on the central of lawyers and the law in America's worst conflict will transform how we think about the Civil War itself.