Back at the Archives.

The first and last time I visited the National Archives was on August 5th with Phil. Today I was there for about two hours, and went through three of these:

They're dockets of civil cases filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, and we're going through through every single one from 1959 onwards and scanning the ones that involve lawsuits against the police. Here's the last one I scanned, for instance:

This case, Jones v. Valentine (1962), is about some guys who apparently were hurt by a group of police officers and had their stuff taken, so they sued the cops for some money.

Judge Robson must not have felt sorry for them though, because their case got thrown out of court.

About 98% of these cases had nothing to do with the police, so we go through them pretty quickly. Sometimes they're pretty funny, like this one where the defendant was a dude who literally slipped on a banana peel in 1961:

Or this one, where the defendant fell into a "grease pit":

The sixties were wild.

From looking at these cases, you also get to see evidence of a little legal evolution. Here's a real case from a time where you could sue someone in federal court for stealing your wife (alienation of affection):

Society evolves a bit, too. This is a lawsuit against Chicago's Board of Education for discriminating against black kids:

I think this case was actually dismissed, but it's worth noting that one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, George N. Leighton, actually ended up becoming a federal judge himself. The Cook County Criminal Courthouse was even named in his honor.

But right now we're still looking at the cops.