I remember the first time I watched political conventions on TV. It was the summer of 1964 and I was 9 years old. That year the Republicans had a contentious primary fight as Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller battled for the nomination. Other candidates also emerged (William Scranton from my hometown, and Margaret Chase Smith) as moderates in the party tried to stop the conservative Goldwater. The Democrats did not have any question about who their candidate would be – Lyndon Johnson was completing the term after taking office following President Kennedy’s assassination and was unopposed – but he did have to select a vice president in Hubert Humphrey. And there was controversy over w

I have a good buddy who's a huge baseball fan. A real purist. He loves the game for the love of the game. Back in the early 1980's, when free agency was becoming a thing, and the players' union and the league were constantly fighting, and players were leaving teams for more money and longer contracts, he was furious. He hated the unions and the players and the agents for ruining "the game" for the fans and for turning it into "a business." "Buddy (not his real name)," I told him. "The game has always been a business. The owners have always known that. The players are just starting to realize it and they want their share of the business, too." My friend thought about that and said, "I know.

Upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Ben Franklin famously said: "[W]e must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately." That was a great line for the time and accurately if pithily reflected the dangerous course to which the signers had just committed themselves. But if Franklin were alive today, I think he might modify that admonition just a bit. I think, looking at the events of the last two days and reflecting upon the increasing sense of polarization, division, mistrust, and fear in this country, he might say: "We must all come together or most assuredly we will come apart."

The topics of states' rights, racism, and federal judges have been coming up a lot lately in the news and in social media, in a variety of contexts. So perhaps it was particularly propitious that I came across a law review symposium tribute to the late Judge J. Skelly Wright, who as many of you know was the federal judge who struck down the Louisiana laws that segregated that state's schools. That was not a popular decision for him to make in 1960, and he and his family wereostracized, threatened, and had to live under protection. Judge Wright was one of a number of Southern judges who made such courageous but unpopular desegregation decisions during the 50's and 60's, including John Minor W

The story is pretty well known. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the voice and the pen (respectively) of the American Revolution, two of the three surviving signers of the Declaration of Independence (and first person who can tell me who the third one was wins a free signed book from me), and the second and third Presidents of the United States both died within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of Independence Day. It was perceived as a momentous event. Imagine, two of the Big Four Founding Fathers (along with George Washington and Benjamin Franklin), members of the “Brothers of ’76,” arguably the two intellectual leaders of the Revolutionary Generation, both gone on