Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.

Kenneth H. Winn is the author or co-editor of a number of books and articles on Missouri political and cultural history, including Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846. He has taught history at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Columbia and ran a legal history internship program for the Missouri Supreme Court.