Law and Politics Documents

What the law requires (or allows) is not always fair or just or honorable. Politics is often polarizing. Stories in this collection help us to examine the highs and lows of "the law" over the centuries.

Image of the "Grand Inquest" court minutes and proceedings for the District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania - 1860. Click on the image for a better vie...

Image of the "Grand Inquest" court minutes and proceedings for the District Court of Eastern Pennsylvania - 1860. Click on the image for a better vie...

President Truman's staff prepared a daily account of his activities during the Potsdam Conference (in July of 1945).  This image depicts a page f...

Image of the telegram from Ho Chi Minh to President Harry S. Truman dated February 28, 1946.  In this message, he asks the American president to...

Thomas Jefferson represented a slave named Samuel Howell in the man’s quest to gain freedom from his “master,” Wade Netherland. ...

In 1770, Thomas Jefferson - then a practicing lawyer (and a slave owner) in Virginia - represented a slave named Samuel Howell.  Accepting the ca...

Thomas Jefferson represented a slave named Samuel Howell in the man’s quest to gain freedom from his “master,” Wade Netherland. ...

In April of 1770, Thomas Jefferson did his best to help free a slave whose mother was white.  Jefferson's client was Samuel Howell. Without ch...

Jacob Cook purchased slaves, then those slaves ran away.  Under America's "Fugitive Slave Law of 1850," he had the right to seek-out-and-find tho...

As noted in the book which tells the story of the Amistad captives - compiled by John W. Barber and published by himself and E.L. Barber in 1840 - Jam...

James Otis wrote that the "lust of power" leads to an abuse of political power.

This is an excerpt from Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland - James VI's Demonology and the North Berwick Witches - by Lawrence Normand and Gareth Rob...

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