Topic: Law
McNeil Island, located in southern Puget Sound, was named in 1841 by Lt. Charles Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition in honor of William Henry McNeill. McNeill (the name, but not the isla...
The McNeil Island Corrections Center, located in southern Puget Sound, 2.8 miles from Steilacoom, Washington, was the oldest prison facility in the Northwest. Built in 1875, it began as the first fede...
From its founding in 1852, Seattle has been confronted by the scourge of homelessness. The city's first official homeless person was Edward Moore, a Massachusetts-born sailor who, having been rescued ...
Former Teamsters Union leader Dave Beck (1894-1993) was tried in federal court in Tacoma on charges of income-tax evasion. Murray Morgan (1916-2000) covered the trial for his daily radio news program....
Robert C. Nickels gave up a comfortable career at Boeing to found a successful nonprofit law firm dedicated to representing children who needed an advocate in King County Juvenile Court. He did so at ...
Pinball machines were introduced nearly a century ago and immediately became wildly popular. Unlike today's versions, though, early pinball games were played for gambling purposes, which proved to be ...
John Edmondson Prim was the first African American to serve as deputy prosecuting attorney for King County and the first African American judge in the state.
Five years before the 18th Amendment kicked off national Prohibition, Washington voters approved a state initiative banning the sale and manufacture of alcohol. Within days of this new state law, a th...
In the mid-1970s, civil rights advocates painted a red line on the street in Seattle's Central District, running along 14th Avenue from Yesler Way north to Union Street. The protest action aimed to dr...
Lelia Robinson is a celebrated feminist pioneer in American legal history. Among her achievements, she was the first woman to earn admission to the Massachusetts State Bar. While those who know of Rob...
William E. Barr wrote this account of an early environmental lawsuit brought by a Spokane-area citizen that alleged air pollution for the Autumn 1987 issue of The Pacific Northwesterner. It is reprint...
The Seattle Liberation Front (SLF) was one of the more flamboyant, if short-lived, radical organizations to rise out of the student movement of the 1960s. Organized in January 1970 by University of Wa...
Throughout its history, Seattle has often been a hotbed for narcotic and stimulant drugs. In recent times, heroin was a popular drug in the city’s music scene and caused several notable deaths. ...
Elizabeth Shackleford, a lifelong Tacoman, was a lawyer and judge in her hometown for 60 years. She was the second female justice of the peace in Pierce County and for several years the only female la...
Washington resident Frank Shaffer was a storekeeper, postmaster, farmer, inventor, and member of the International Bible Students Association in Everett. He was also involved in two important court ca...
Charles Z. Smith was the first African American and the first person of color to serve on the Washington State Supreme Court. He was appointed by Governor Booth Gardner (1936-2013) in 1988, and was th...
Elmer Stuart Smith was a central figure in the Centralia Massacre that occurred on November 11, 1919. Smith had advised a group of Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members that they had a right t...
Palmer Smith, a Seattle lawyer for more than 40 years, was a passionate advocate for the rule of law, social justice, civil rights, and education. He saw government as the path to these goals. He and ...
A 1967 proposal to build a seven-story, 168-unit condominium on a 480-by-100-foot concrete platform to be constructed above the waters of Lake Union at the foot of East Roanoke Street in Seattle's Eas...
Dr. Carl Schlicke, M.D., wrote this article about Spokane surgeon Dr. William Witten Robinson, M.D. (1897-1957), whose career and practice were almost destroyed in 1929 when he testified against anoth...
In February 1970, a group of young Vietnam war protestors calling themselves the Seattle Liberation Front found themselves in legal hot water when they were charged with inciting a riot through the st...
The Treaty of Medicine Creek was made on December 26, 1854, at Medicine Creek in present-day Thurston County between the United States and members of the Puyallup, Nisqually, Steilacoom, and Squaxin I...
Viretta Park is located in the Denny Blaine neighborhood in Seattle and has elicited more attention, both locally and internationally, than its tiny size should warrant. The 1.8-acre site is on a stee...
The Central Washington communities of Wenatchee, in Chelan County, and East Wenatchee, across the Columbia River in Douglas County, got world attention in 1994 and 1995, when they found themselves in ...