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Archive for February 2015 (15 posts)

Snow Fight on the Capitol Plaza – Pic of the Week

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As winter winds its way to a close, snow has continued to fall this week in Washington.  Kelly sent me a link to today’s Pic of the Week suggesting I tweet it.  I liked it so much I thought it deserved to be today’s post.

Senate page boys stage their first snow battle on the Capitol plaza. between 1909 and 1932. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.09408.

Senate page boys stage their first snow battle on the Capitol plaza. between 1909 and 1932. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ppmsca.09408.

Not only is it a fun photo, but it has Congressional pages!  As a former House page during the summer of 1994 (more than twenty years ago? That can’t be right!), I still have an affinity for the program that helped lead me to Washington, DC, where I continue to work for Congress at their Library.

The History, Art & Archives website of the House of Representatives has a great publication on the History of the House Page Program.  Although the House program no longer exists, the Senate program is still going strong.

School Desegregation for All Children – The Legacy of Méndez v. Westminster

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Gonzalo Méndez, William Guzmán, Frank Palomino, Thomas Estrada, and Lorenzo Ramírez, as citizens of the United States, and on behalf of their minor children, and as they allege in the petition, on behalf of ‘some 5000’ persons similarly affected, all of Mexican or Latin descent, have filed a class suit pursuant to Rule 23 of […]

Senator Hiram Revels

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In celebration of African American History Month, our picture of the week is of Hiram Revels, the first African American to serve in the United States Senate. Revels was born a free man in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1827.  He was first apprenticed as a barber, learning the trade from an older brother, and later […]

An Interview with Kenneth W. Mack, Inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law

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Today’s interview is with Kenneth W. Mack, inaugural Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard University.  Prof. Mack was a speaker at the 2013 Library of Congress National Book Festival, where he discussed his book, Representing the Race:  The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer.  He is also the co-editor of The New Black:  […]

FALQs: Nigeria’s 2015 Election

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It is election season in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation.  This is the fifth election cycle in the country since democracy was restored in 1999 after many years of military rule.  Elections conducted since then, particularly presidential elections, had been marred with various controversies, including violence and poll rigging.  Nonetheless, the country has reportedly shown […]

Love, Adultery, and Madness

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It is often said that love can drive you mad. As further evidence, take the 19th Century case (see page 494) that is said to have introduced the defense of temporary insanity in American jurisprudence. This case resulted from an affair between the wife of a member of Congress and one of Francis Scott Key’s sons. In 1859, […]

An Interview with Michele Chisholm, Copyright Licensing Specialist

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Today’s interview is with Michele Chisholm, a copyright licensing specialist at the U.S. Copyright Office and the current president of the Library of Congress chapter of Blacks in Government (BIG).   Describe your background. I am a native Washingtonian, who grew up in the segregated South during the peak of the civil rights movement. My […]

FALQs: Soviet Investigation of Nazi War Crimes

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The following is a guest post by the Director of the Global Legal Research Center Peter Roudik. Peter is a frequent contributor to In Custodia Legis. He has written a number of posts, including on “Ukraine: Two Understandings of Lustration,” “Crimean History, Status, and Referendum,” “Regulating the Winter Olympics in Russia,” “Soviet Law and the Assassination […]