History

John Grisham’s first work of nonfiction: a true crime story that will terrify anyone who believes in the presumption of innocence....

On February 4, 1974, Patty Hearst, a sophomore in college and heiress to the Hearst family fortune, was kidnapped by a ragtag group of self-styled revolutionaries calling itself the Symbionese Liberation Army....

Winner of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. The story of Thurgood Marshall's defense - depsite death threats and KKK intimidation - of four Black youths falsely accused of rape....

The definitive account of the O. J. Simpson trial, The Run of His Life is a prodigious feat of reporting....

A rallying cry for a more just approach to the law that bolsters social justice movements by throwing out originalism—the theory that judges should interpret the Constitution exactly as conservatives say the Founders meant it....

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime was committed in the back room of a New York brothel—the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, seventeen-year-old seamstress Lanah Sawyer did what virtually no one in US history had done before....

A documentary drawn from testimony at the Coast Guard’s official inquiry looks anew at one of the most storied, and mysterious, shipwrecks in American history....

On May 3, 1946, in St. Martinsville, Louisiana, a 17-year-old Black boy was scheduled for execution by electric chair. Willie Francis had been charged with murder; his trial had been brief; his death sentence never in doubt....

How much do you know about the Constitution of the United States or even about those brave men who are considered Founding Fathers? Sure, you may have been forced to read the Declaration of Independence in elementary school but do you even remember its intent? Listen to find out more….

New York Times bestselling authors Dan Abrams and David Fisher bring to life the incredible story of one of America's most publicized—and most surprising—criminal trials in history....

Brenda Wineapple brings to life the 1925 Scopes trial and how the teaching of evolution in public schools exposed profound divisions in America about morals, freedom, censorship, religion, and the meaning of democracy that still resonate today....

Since the Supreme Court's 1984 decision in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council, this judicial review has been highly deferential: courts must uphold agency interpretations of unclear laws as long as these interpretations are "reasonable"....

John Yoo and Robert Delahunty detail in sprightly, slightly irreverent manner how the black-robed judges who make up the U.S. Supreme Court have swung like a pendulum from saviors of the Republic to super-legislators who usurp the roll of Congress....

Most Americans still see Brown as a triumph - but was it? James T. Patterson shrewdly explores the provocative questions that still swirl around the case....

Scorpions tells the story of four great justices: their relationships with FDR, with each other, and with the turbulent world of the Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War....

There are moments in American history when all eyes are focused on a federal court: when its bench speaks for millions of Americans, and when its decision changes the course of history.

Americans are deeply divided over the Second Amendment. Some passionately assert that the Amendment protects an individual's right to own guns. Others, that it does no more than protect the right of states to maintain militias....

Autumn 1945 saw the start of the Nuremberg trials, in which high ranking representatives of the Nazi government were called to account for their war crimes....

From Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court, comes this fascinating book about the history and evolution of the highest court in the land....

The Nuremberg Trials were the most important criminal proceedings ever held. They established the principle that individuals will always be held responsible for their actions under international law....

The remarkable story of John Marshall who, as chief justice, statesman, and diplomat, played a pivotal role in the founding of the United States....

In The Court v. The Voters, law professor Josh Douglas takes us behind the scenes of significant cases in voting rights—some surprising and unknown and some familiar—to investigate the historic crossroads that have changed our elections, and therefore the nation, irrevocably....

The life of John Marshall, founding father and America's premier chief justice....

Beginning in January 1692, Salem Village in colonial Massachusetts witnessed the largest and most lethal outbreak of witchcraft in early America....

In The Words That Made Us, Akhil Reed Amar unites history and law in a vivid narrative of the biggest constitutional questions early Americans confronted, and he expertly assesses the answers they offered....

New Deal Law and Order follows President Franklin Roosevelt, Attorney General Homer Cummings, and their war on crime coalition, which overcame the institutional and political challenges to the legitimacy of national law enforcement. Promises of law and order helped to manage tensions among key Democratic Party factions—organized labor, Black Americans, and white Southerners. Their anticrime program, featuring a strengthened criminal code, an empowered FBI, and the first federal war on marijuana, was essential to the expansion of national authority previously stymied on constitutional grounds.

Fights over history are at the heart of most important constitutional disputes in America. The Supreme Court's current embrace of originalism is only the most recent example of how lawyers and judges try to use history to establish authority for their positions. Jack M. Balkin argues that fights over constitutional interpretation are often fights over collective memory. Balkin shows how lawyers and judges channel history through standard forms of legal argument that shape how they use history and even what they see in history.

In this book, author Orde Kittrie draws on his experiences as a lawfare practitioner, US State Department attorney, and international law scholar in analyzing the theory and practice of lawfare. Kittrie explains how factors including the increased reach of international laws and tribunals and the rise of economic globalization and information technology have fueled lawfare's increasing power and prevalence.

Lawyers don’t often admit this in mixed company, but Madiba Dennie wants to let you in on a secret: There's no one true way to interpret the Constitution. Americans saw just how subjective it can be when the Supreme Court denied basic bodily autonomy to millions of people in its Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision, suggesting that our rights and liberties are frozen in a cherry-picked version of history. This is a line of constitutional interpretation called originalism—a framework that says we must be constrained by the meaning of the Constitution's text when it was written.

John Montgomery analyzes and critiques "deconstructionism" in the field of law, and examines sometimes hilarious examples of lawyers' reasoning.