See how a 19th-century spending law evolved into today’s government shutdowns, halting aid, closing agencies, and impacting millions of Americans.
The City of Washington, D.C. occupies a unique legal position, as both the seat of government to the United States, and the home of more than 700,000 residents, who are subject to a distinctive set of laws and restrictions.
When Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle, he was hoping for a revolution. We got the Food and Drug Administration instead.
In 1852, a fleet of American warships known as the Perry Expedition arrived in Tokyo Bay, demanding the admittance of American trade to Japan. The resulting treaties, signed under threat of force, would forever transform the global power structure.
On November 4, 1825, a group of dignitaries gathered aboard a boat in New York Harbor to watch Governor De Witt Clinton dump a barrel of lake water into the sea. Thus was born the Erie Canal.
In the wake of the Civil War, Reconstruction sought to reshape America. Its legacy remains contested.
The five United States territories of Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands are home to 3.62 million people. The people of these islands lack voting representatives in Congress, and are provided with only a fraction of the Constitutional protections afforded to U.S. citizens in the States.
As Texas City longshoremen labored on the morning of April 16, 1947, they had no idea their cargo—all 2,300 tons of it—was so dangerous. The packaging only said “fertilizer grade ammonium nitrate.”
Founded in 1802, Jenkins Law Library continues to provide the legal community with access to information and a welcoming place to gather in the City of Philadelphia.
In 1994, the system of apartheid came to an end in South Africa, as the nation held its first free and fair democratic elections. The end of apartheid came after decades of struggle by activists in South Africa, combined with an international campaign of boycotts and divestment.
