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Victim Personal Statements: Are We Restoring a Wrong Right?

By Kevin Bendesky Beginning in the 1960s, the Victims’ Rights Movement had profound impacts on English law. One result, Victim Personal Statements (VPS), raised the important question of whether the victim should have the chance to say how the crime affected them. A VPS happens after the adjudication of guilt, but before the sentence is…
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Reckoning with Britain’s Colonial Past: The Mau Mau Detention Camps and Dedan Kimathi

By Lauren Brown @LaurenBroon Britain has a complicated colonial history. Sadly, thousands of descendants from former colonial territories, still face the legacies of Britain’s hegemony. This is true for the Kikuyu, Embu and Neru people of Kenya. During the Mau Mau rebellion of 1952-1964, the British colonial government placed some 80,000 people from these ethnic…
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Courtroom to Classroom: Teaching with Old Bailey Online

By Dr. Stephanie Brown (Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stephemmabrown.bsky.social) Old Bailey Online is a vast and searchable digital collection of nearly 200,000 trial accounts from London’s central criminal court from 1674 to 1913. A pioneer of digital humanities, Old Bailey Online also holds remarkable pedagogical value. In my teaching, I have found it to be an unparalleled resource…
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The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitutional Conversation, 1776-1861

By Joseph Opp Every year, more than one million visitors queue for over an hour to enter the rotunda at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. Under its imposing dome and two brilliant murals — flanked by columns, flags, and uniformed security — are the ‘Charters of Freedom’: The Declaration of Independence, the United States…

