On Wednesday, I gave a gallery talk for the Magna Carta: Muse and Mentor Exhibition. I focused the talk around King John and his rapacious habits as a ruler: demanding extraordinary fees from his feudal vassals, seizing hostages, and losing battles. I also included some information on the Constitutions of Clarendon (more on that in …
It is that time of year again – the National Book Festival! This year the Festival will be taking place on Saturday, August 30th at the Washington National Convention Center. Once again, Law Library staff are participating in the Book Festival with six staff members manning our booth. We will have some familiar faces at …
This is a guest post by Jim Martin, senior legal information analyst at the Law Library of Congress. Jim has written some of our most popular posts over the years including The Articles of Confederation. On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Hapsburg presumptive heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his …
This is a guest post by Anne Guha who was an intern with the Law Library’s Public Services Division this spring and is now working in Public Services for the summer. As I’m collecting degrees (and acronyms) throughout my 20s and 30s, moving from my joint-degree J.D./M.A. (Juris Doctor / Masters of Arts) at the …
Throughout the year, the Library of Congress provides information about a number of commemorative observances. May is always a busy month with the Asian/Pacific American Heritage and Jewish American Heritage observances while in the Law Library we also observe Law Day. In June we observe a more recently added commemorative observance for Lesbian Bisexual Gay …
As an adult, I still enjoy reading children’s books. Indeed, now that I am an adult, I probably read more children’s books than I did as a kid–when I was trying to persuade the authorities to let me read adult biographies of the Tudor monarchs. One of the reasons I enjoy reading children’s books so much is …
April 2014 marks the 450th anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth. As a way of combining a salute to Shakespeare and continuing our fascination with all things Magna Carta, I thought I would take a look at Shakespeare’s play, “King John.” The play is believed to have been written in the 1590s, but it was not …
The following post is cross posted on the From the Catbird Seat: Poetry & Literature blog. Magna Carta is coming to the Library of Congress in November 2014! This document is regarded as being one of the foundations of representative government and at the same time marked a defeat of the king by his barons. But long before 1215, …
At 2 a.m. on Sunday, March 9, it will once again be time to reset our clocks an hour ahead for daylight saving time (DST). Under the Energy Policy Act of 2005, Pub. L. 109-58, daylight saving time was extended by several weeks. Previously, DST ran from the first Sunday in April to the last …