Senate Judiciary Committee issues subpoena to Harlan Crow after he refuses to provide information about gifts to Clarence Thomas, marking escalation in corruption investigation
Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are exposed for accepting $2.8 million in illegal payments from the builder and co-owner of PA Child Care, a for-profit juvenile detention facility. From 2003 to 2008, the judges altered the lives of more than 2,500 …
Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship pours over $3 million into West Virginia’s 2004 judicial election to elect Brent Benjamin to the state Supreme Court of Appeals, successfully defeating incumbent justice Warren McGraw. Blankenship’s spending—equivalent to “a dollar for every West …
Ten Irish-American coal miners were hanged in Pennsylvania on “Black Thursday,” the first mass execution in a coordinated corporate-state campaign against labor organizing. In 1873, Reading Railroad President Franklin B. Gowen hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to infiltrate the Molly …
Chief Justice Roger B. Taney delivers the Supreme Court’s 7-2 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruling that African Americans “are not and could not be citizens” of the United States and therefore have no standing to sue in federal court, and that Congress lacks authority to …
The Supreme Court issues its decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), with Justice Joseph Story writing for an 8-1 majority that strikes down Pennsylvania’s “personal liberty law” and establishes sweeping protections for slave catchers that enable systematic …
The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Fletcher v. Peck that Georgia’s attempt to rescind the fraudulent 1795 Yazoo land sale violates the Constitution’s contract clause, marking the first time the Court strikes down a state law. Chief Justice John Marshall writes that while the bribery of …