Trials That Shaped Us

In the first episode of our new series on the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas begins with one of the biggest questions in American history: how do you end a devastating war without creating the next crisis? He traces Johnson’s rise from poverty and illiteracy to political power, examines the resentments and contradictions that shaped him, and explains why Abraham Lincoln saw...

In this bonus episode, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas steps away from the courtroom to explore the patriotic songs Americans return to in very different moments: victory, crisis, resolve, and reflection. Beginning with The Star-Spangled Banner and Francis Scott Key, he traces the stories behind four songs that have come to function as national anthems in American life: The Star-Spangled Banner, The Battl...

In Part 10 of the Freedom Trials, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas turns to Dred Scott, the case that became one of the most infamous Supreme Court decisions in American history. Beginning with Strader v. Graham and moving through Scott v. Sandford, he traces how decades of precedent were upended as courts embraced an increasingly aggressive pro-slavery vision of the law. The episode follows Dred and Harri...

Judge Stephen J. Sfekas begins with the ordeal of Solomon Northup, a free Black man from upstate New York who was lured to Washington, D.C., kidnapped, and sold into slavery in Louisiana. Using Northup’s own first person account, the episode follows how he survived twelve years in captivity, stayed silent about his identity to avoid deadly punishment, and finally got word to allies in New York. Th...

In this episode of the Freedom Trials series, Judge Stephen J. Sfekas returns to St. Louis to tell the story of Polly Berry and her daughter Lucy Ann Berry, later known as Lucy Delaney. Polly Berry, an enslaved woman who had once lived in a free state, won her own freedom in court in 1843. She then took the extraordinary step of suing for the freedom of her daughter. The case would become one of t...

Parts 5 and 6 shift to the “middle period” of freedom suits, when St. Louis became one of the busiest places in the country for enslaved people to sue for their freedom. Judge Stephen Sfekas explains why Missouri’s geography mattered, a slave state bordered by free states and territories, with the Mississippi River as a literal line between bondage and freedom. He traces how the cotton gin and the...

Part 4 follows two freedom suits that grew out of the Atlantic slave trade after formal bans were on the books but smuggling and corruption kept the traffic alive. We begin with The Antelope (1825), a case that starts with a Baltimore clipper that changes its name and flag, captures slave ships off the coast of Angola, and ends with 258 surviving captives, most of them children, landed in Savannah...

Part 2 follows the first major freedom case in the English speaking world, Somerset v. Stewart, as abolitionist Granville Sharp searches for a test case and uses habeas corpus to stop James Somerset from being shipped to Jamaica for sale. We track Lord Mansfield’s long delay, his final ruling that slavery is “so odious” it can exist only by “positive law,” and why the decision was widely understoo...

Part 1 introduces the Freedom Trials, cases in which enslaved people sued their enslavers in court before the Civil War and, more often than most people expect, sometimes won. We start with the basic fact pattern and the scope of the phenomenon, including how historians have traced hundreds of appellate decisions and thousands of suits, then we lay out the roadmap for the full series, from Somerse...

Part V follows the fallout after the Alien and Sedition Act era ends, and tracks how the key players carry the fight forward. We revisit John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Aaron Burr as the political landscape reshapes, then move into the judicial aftermath through Samuel Chase, Thomas Iredell, and John Marshall as the courts absorb the collision between federal p...

Part IV follows the Democratic-Republicans as the prosecutions widen and the question becomes practical as much as constitutional: who gets to decide if the Alien and Sedition Acts are unconstitutional when the federal courts and Congress are controlled by Federalists. With few options left, Jefferson and Madison turn to state power through the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, triggering a natio...

Part 2 follows Congress as the Quasi-War fears peak and the Federalists move a package of laws aimed at immigrants and political opposition: the Naturalization Act, the Alien Enemies Act, the Alien Friends Act, and the Sedition Act. We break down what each law did, the penalties and sunset clauses, and the core constitutional fight over whether criminalizing criticism of the government could coexi...

Part I sets the stage for the Alien and Sedition Act crisis by tracing the young republic’s first decade: the new Constitution and Bill of Rights, Washington’s cabinet, and the birth of political parties as Hamilton and Jefferson clash over finance and federal power. As the French, Haitian, and Irish revolutions convulse the Atlantic world and Britain responds with crackdowns on dissent, refugees...

Part VIII follows the collapse of the witch trials and traces how Massachusetts tried to live with the knowledge that it had shed innocent blood. Competing narratives emerged right away, with Cotton Mather defending the proceedings in print and Boston merchant Robert Calef dismantling them in a meticulous critique that helped fix public judgment against the trials. Key participants stepped forward...

Parts VI and VII trace the moment Salem's local panic becomes a legal machine, and then a colony-wide catastrophe. With the charter revoked and Massachusetts lacking a functioning high court, the early proceedings unfold through improvised inquests run by local magistrates, marked by public spectacle, presumption of guilt, and the dangerous absence of procedural restraints. Accusations multiply, a...

Parts IV and V move the story into Salem Village itself, a small farming community tethered to prosperous, merchant-driven Salem Town and increasingly at war with it. Geographic isolation, a stream of traumatized refugees from brutal frontier violence, and constant fear of nearby raids all sharpened the village’s anxiety. Inside the village, long-simmering factionalism hardened into a battle for p...

Parts II and III introduce the Puritans who built Massachusetts Bay as a “city on a hill,” a model godly society meant to inspire the world. Their theology centered on covenant and predestination, with church, marriage, and community all understood as binding covenants before God. They rejected most secular amusements, saw the supernatural as ever present, and prized self-discipline and communal d...

In 1692, the otherwise unremarkable town of Salem, Massachusetts became the site of one of the most notorious episodes in American legal history: the Salem Witch Trials. By the end of the trials, more than 20 people had been executed or died in prison and more than 200 imprisoned in an atmosphere of hysteria. This series will explore this episode and will discuss the course of the trials and the c...

In Part 5 of The Trials of the Judges at Nuremberg, 1947 , Host Judge Stephen Sfekas explains how the tribunal in United States v. Alstoetter defined and applied the new category of crimes against humanity. He walks through the court’s reasoning on ex post facto concerns, judicial immunity, obedience to German law, and the use of decrees such as Night and Fog and the Law Against Poles and Jews as...

In this episode Judge Sfekas describes the trial including the motions to dismiss and the testimony. In particular, he will describe the cases against Schlegelberger and the Night and fog programs and the "law against Poles and Jews", as well as the cases against Rothaug and Oeschey. He will read portions of the transcript, and play a recording of Telford Taylor's eloquent opening statement.

This is part three of The Trials of Nuremberg, 1947. Host Judge Stephen Sfekas outlines howGermany’s legal system—once considered among the most advanced in the world—gradually became an instrument of tyranny. He traces the roots from Bismarck’s judicial reforms to Hitler’s Enabling Act, showing how civil law traditions, social class, and career incentives helped create a judiciary loyal to the st...

In Part 2 of The Trial of the Nazi Judges at Nuremberg, host Judge Stephen Sfekas traces the shift from the international IMT to the U.S.-run Nuremberg Military Tribunals. After debate over more international trials, Robert Jackson said no, and the Allies agreed each occupier would pursue justice in its own zone, opening the door for the American program in Nuremberg. We explain how the NMTs widen...

In 1947, a group of German judges stood before an American tribunal in Nuremberg, accused of war crimes committed under the Nazi regime. How did it come to this — judges, once entrusted with justice, now on trial for betraying it? In Part 1 of The Trial of the Nazi Judges at Nuremberg 1947 , host Judge Stephen J. Sfekas (Circuit Court for Baltimore City) sets the stage for one of the most conseque...