Yesterday I highlighted 14 Nobel Peace Prize winners who were leaders of their country before, during, or after they won the prize. Today, I will highlight 19 more winners with legal backgrounds. Many of these laureates were leaders in international law, disarmament policies, or helped to broker peace in time of conflict. Elihu Root was …
As Elin mentioned yesterday, the Nobel Peace Prize will be given out on Thursday in Oslo, Norway. I was interested in the recipients this year, the National Dialogue Quartet, and while researching I found that one quarter of this organization was the Tunisian Order of Lawyers. That piqued my interest as to how many other …
On this day, 215 years ago, Congress met in the Capitol Building for the first time. The Sixth Congress established the residence of the Congress and seat of the United States government in Washington, D.C. with the move on November 17, 1800. The newly established United States had nine capitals between 1776 and 1800: Philadelphia, …
On a recent trip to Philadelphia, I stopped at the Eastern State Penitentiary. Opened in 1829, this was the most famous and expensive prison of its time. Tourists and researchers came from around the world to study this innovative prison system, including Alexis de Tocqueville and Charles Dickens. Eastern State Penitentiary was famous because it …
Last year, we added Statutes at Large to our Digitized Material page. Initially, each Congress from 1789-1950 had a webpage that included a large PDF file of all statutes for that congressional session. Then we began splitting the large PDF documents into smaller pieces, which meant that we had to browse each statute, add metadata to …
In Stafford County, about 45 miles southwest of Capitol Hill is a 17-acre park that is also on the National Register of Historic Places. It is the site from which the stone was quarried to construct part of the Capitol and White House, as well as many other Virginian buildings in the early 1800s. …
Magna Carta has had a great influence both on the United States Constitution and on the constitutions of the various states. Sharing in Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary, the Library of Congress celebrated with an exhibition and a year-long program of events. On a recent trip southeast, I stopped at Jamestown in the Colonial National Historical Park …
In an effort to highlight the legal reports produced by the Law Library of Congress, I have revamped our display of the reports on our website. The new Comprehensive Index of Legal Reports will house all reports available on our website. This will also be the exclusive location to find reports written before 2011, including some of our …