As we approach the last day of the spooky season, I find myself rereading Robert Kirk’s 17th-century classic of fairy lore, The Secret Commonwealth. This book describes what people in Kirk’s time and community believed fairies were, where and how they lived, what they were able to do, and how they interacted with human beings. …
The following is a guest post by Margaret Daab, a foreign intern with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. I recently learned of an unlikely enemy in American history. When it threatened livelihoods in the early 20th century, the government vowed to end its destructive ways. The villain of this story? …
A brief history of how the promotion of homespun clothing in the American colonies traces its origin to resistance on the part of colonists to several British laws that required the taxation of imported goods.
The following is a guest post by Sarah Friedman, a Presidential Management Fellow working in the Public Services Division at the Law Library of Congress. I recently joined the Law Library of Congress for a developmental detail as part of the Presidential Management Fellows (PMF) program. I have benefited from a number of early career …
Join us for the 2022 Frederic R. and Molly S. Kellogg Biennial Lecture in Jurisprudence! Dr. Jeffrey Stout will be the featured speaker of the event on October 27th from 3:30 – 5 p.m. EDT. His lecture will be titled, “The Tree of Democratic Liberty.” As Dr. Stout explains: At a time when the United …
The following is a guest post by Mattie Aguero, a former intern with the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library of Congress. While cultural customs surrounding death may differ, every society practices some form of ritual for the final disposition of the deceased. In the United States, this ritual is referred to as funeral rites. …
Last September, I published a post on this blog about Chancellor James Kent in which I wrote about Chancellor Kent’s role in promoting the professionalization of court reporting in America. In this post, I thought I would expand on the subject of legal research in early America by highlighting the first American author to publish …
A few months ago, I read an absolutely fascinating book on early human societies, “The Dawn of Everything.” Co-authored by David Graeber and David Wengrow, this book offers a critique of popular views on western civilization and the traditional narratives of mankind’s linear development from primitivism to civilization. It is a long book, but I …