A columnist must write concisely. Concision forced me to omit much from my previous column, in which I discussed the mechanics of white privilege. I got to tell readers privilege can be rolled along from one generation to another, as ...

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Beachheads and enclaves, whether social, legal, or military, can resemble each other a lot. Each is a small pocket where the norms of the outside world don’t apply.

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Hudson County Superior Court in Jersey City, N.J., sure was the perfect place to hear about the recent flap over the Coca Cola Super Bowl commercial.

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In a recent Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Daniel Hannan posits that America is indeed exceptional, and that what makes it so is its adherence to law.

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The picture of Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler in the midst of a beach house party full of clearly inebriated just-graduated high school seniors has drawn national attention and provoked national amusement, including a mention on Leno.

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In another era, Uncle Burt would have been more of a paradox. His stock-in-trade was a dangerous and addictive substance sold to the public in full awareness of the danger.

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Sen. John McCain recently expressed surprise that young people see Edward Snowden as a hero. It’s surprising he’s surprised. When, thanks almost exclusively to Snowden, we have learned of the existence of huge government programs that impinge drastically upon everyone’s privacy (in their Internet communications, their telephone calls, their mail and their own computers), and we see the price Snowden has had to pay, is it any wonder there are people who think of him as a hero?

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On Nov. 22, 1944, the United States Army hanged Privates Arthur Davis and Charles Jordan for the crime of rape. They were likely not guilty. But they were African American. What happened to them happened to many others, their real transgression being soldiering while black, in a racist army, in a racist part of France. Mary Louise Roberts, who teaches history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has put before us Davis’ and Jordan’s story and those of many of their compatriots, in her recent book, “What Soldiers Do.”

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Last time I focused on two lawyers named Thomas; this time, on lawyers Thurgood and Perry.

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King Henry VIII of England and his intimates have recently been brought to televised life in The Tudors and revivified in Hilary Mantel’s trilogy of historical novels, now two-thirds complete, about Lord Chamberlain Thomas Cromwell. The books and the television show run us through all the same events and from a surprisingly similar perspective. A picture emerges.

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