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Celia, the property of Robert Newsom, stood trial in Fulton, Missouri, in 1855 for the murder of her master, a…

A portrait of Alexander Doniphan, painted by George Caleb Bingham around 1850

Born on July 9, 1808, in Mason County, Kentucky, Alexander William Doniphan was the son of…

Lloyd Gaines. [University of Missouri School of Law, Lloyd Gaines Collection]

Lloyd Gaines’s efforts to obtain a legal education in Missouri resulted in a Supreme Court…

Henry S. Geyer. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Prints and Photographs Collection, P0004-002099]

Henry S. Geyer was born in Frederick, Maryland, on December 9, 1790. He received a private…

Arnold Krekel. [State Historical Society of Missouri, Mit Feder und Hammer! The German Experience in St. Louis Records, S0941-079]

Arnold Krekel, who served from 1865 to 1888 as a US judge for the Western District of…

Abiel Leonard. The Green Bag (April 1891): 167.

Abiel Leonard, a lawyer, jurist, and political leader, was born in Windsor, Vermont, on May…

John B. C. Lucas. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Photographs and Prints Collection, N29998]

When John B. C. Lucas died in St. Louis in 1842 at the age of eighty-four, his obituary…

Virginia Minor. [Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USZ62-95372]

Decided in 1873 by the Supreme Court of Missouri and in 1874 by the US Supreme Court,

Homer G. Phillips. Painting by Vernon Smith. [Missouri Historical Society, St. Louis, Objects Collection, 2016-058-0001]

Homer G. Phillips was born in Sedalia, Missouri, on April 1, 1880. He was raised by an aunt…

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Roper v. Simmons was a landmark case heard in the Supreme Court of…