Law and Politics Story Briefs

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.

How did Charles Dickens, who released his famous Christmas story on 13 December 1843, become such a famous writer?

Son of a beheaded British monarch, Charles II was Prince of Wales when his father was executed. At the time, he was living on the Continent.

On the 4th of June, 1940, Winston Churchill addressed Parliament about the rescue of surrounded British and French soldiers at Dunkirk. It was the la...

If you get in trouble with the king, go there, you will be safe. The goddess releases the wrath.

Religious leaders in Cleveland protest the buidling of a segregated school, but a deadly accident fails to stop its construction.

Although the Supreme Court was very busy, during the last part of the 19th century, the Justices overturned a key law providing civil-rights protectio...

Even before the Civil War was over, President Lincoln wanted an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which freed slaves throughout the country. The Amen...

America's Civil War significantly impacted Missouri, then a ''Slave State'' (but one that remained in the Union). Refugees, from Missouri's northern-b...

FromThe Chronicles of Froissart, this image depicts a masked ball attended by nobility (including King Charles VI). Based on an actual event - called...

The Bay of Pigs fueled Castro's worry of an American invasion and his desire for missiles from the Soviet Union.

The Catholic Church bans Nicolaus Copernicus's book on the 5th of March, 1616 (decades after his death). Why ban a book which Catholic Universities ha...

Who risked all to aid those in need during the Holocaust? Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman living in the town of Haarlem with her father and sister, dec...

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