U.S. Statutes at Large

December 15 marks Bill of Rights Day, commemorating the 1791 ratification of the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, collectively known as the Bill of Rights. Today, these rights—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to due process, right to a fair trial, etc.—are engrained in American culture as pillars of liberty and democracy. However, crafting a Bill of Rights was highly controversial at the time. Take a trip back to the early days of American history with us while we explore the creation and passage of the Bill of Rights using resources you can find in HeinOnline.

Every presidential election matters. But the election of 1876 had repercussions that still reverberate today. Barely a decade after the end of the American Civil War, the country was in a precarious state. Outgoing President Ulysses S. Grant’s time in the White House had been marred by rampant scandal and corruption.[1] The economy groaned under an ongoing worldwide financial crisis, known as the Panic of 1873.

The wildfires that ravaged the Hawai‘ian island of Maui and completely destroyed the city of Lahaina last month have rekindled conversations about the ethicality of tourism in Hawai‘i, a state where many of the world’s richest people have properties while many natives can no longer afford to live, as well as the controversial history of how Hawai‘i came to be an American state in the first place.

Minimum wage has been a major conversation among politicians, activists, employers, and employees in recent years. Millions of Americans live paycheck to paycheck or struggle to make ends meet, working multiple jobs to make up for the fact that the federal minimum wage has not kept up with the rate of inflation. Today, federal minimum wage is $7.25—it has not increased since 2009. However, it hasn’t always been difficult to live off of a minimum wage job.

New York State’s Adirondack Park is the largest state park outside of Alaska, consisting of six million acres of protected land in Upstate New York. Centering on the Adirondack Mountains, the park encompasses vast areas of forest, including some of the largest old growth forests East of the Mississippi, dotted with hundreds of glacial lakes. The balancing act between preservation and exploitation has been one of the defining characteristics of the park since its establishment in 1892. Keep reading, as we explore the history of the Adirondack Park

In 2020, former President Trump issued an executive order prohibiting transactions with the China-based company ByteDance, owners of TikTok, under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. TikTok later filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, but the ban was later fully blocked by Judge Nichols. In 2021, TikTok became the world’s most visited website and the most downloaded app in 2022. As 2023 unfolds, concerns persist within the Biden Administration regarding the potential for Beijing to gain access to sensitive data of American users or exploit its algorithm to disseminate propaganda via TikTok.

Silicon Valley Bank’s recent failure immediately brought to mind the 2008 financial crisis, both in pundit talking points and in the minds of ordinary citizens. Terms like “bank run” may have brought to mind a specific scene in It’s a Wonderful Life, and may have caused some to wonder: weren’t laws passed to prevent this exact scenario after the Great Depression? The banking world did undergo a major transformation as a result of the Great Depression. Let’s explore the monumental New Deal legislation that created today’s banking world, all of which was passed within the first 100 days of Roosevelt’s presidency.

It’s a topic that is brought up in the news weekly, if not daily: student loan debt. President Biden made cancelling student loan debt a major part of his presidential campaign, and he recently announced a plan to cancel a significant amount of debt—but it is being fought tooth and nail in Congress and the courts. Today, student loan debt adds up to more than $1.6 trillion. So how did we get here, with so many Americans drowning in debt? Let’s use the resources in HeinOnline to find out.

Most people agree that guns should not be in the hands of unsupervised children. However, each year in the United States, children access firearms and accidentally—or purposefully—hurt themselves or others. The laws protecting children from accessing firearms are referred to as safe storage and Child Access Prevention (CAP) laws, but these differ from state to state. In this post, we’ll use HeinOnline to review laws that currently exist, as well as the devastating results of when these laws are not followed or enforced.

March 3, was National Anthem Day in the United States. Why is that, you may ask? Well, March 3, 1931 was the day that “The Star-Spangled Banner” by Francis Scott Key was officially designated the national anthem. However, the lyrics to the song had been penned more than 100 years earlier, during the War of 1812. Join us as we use HeinOnline to explore the meaning behind the anthem and how it came to be the one song that basically every American can recite in their sleep.