The price of imprecision
The language of the law You have to love the way the law works. Okay, okay, so if you’re The Legal Genealogist, you’re gonna love it no matter what — but c’mon, now. Any genealogist has to love the records that get created because of the law....Courting South Carolina
… with some help from a friend … Reader Frank T. Jones found himself deep in the weeds of South Carolina legal research — and lost in its labyrinthine 19th century court structure. In tracing part of his in-laws’ family, he was focusing on...On the high seas
Citizenship for those born at sea Reader Douglas Burnett got to thinking after reading about the question of the impact marrying into one of the tribes had on a woman’s U.S. citizenship last week. “Your Friday Blog1 got me wondering about ‘what if’ cases,” he...A question of citizenship
…or no federal court for you! It started out as a juicy divorce case, filed in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indian Territory in October 1894. It ended up as a major fight over citizenship and what court had the right to hear the...Bailing out
…of a different stripe… The case was heard in the December 1800 term of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania — and it’s exactly the kind of thing a genealogist hopes to find. George Keppele and Henry Zantzinger had been business partners in...Silly suit season
Ancestry sued again The Legal Genealogist is going to go out on a limb here and declare that it must officially be silly suit season. Because a lawsuit just filed against Ancestry is really really really silly. Just filed in federal court in southern Illinois, the...That lie under oath…
Perjury… or false swearing? A lie under oath is a lie under oath. But that doesn’t mean all lies under oath are equal in the eyes of the law. The issue came up for The Legal Genealogist in a pair of reported court cases. One is kind of an oddball case, out...Case closed
Ancestry wins yearbook lawsuit A lawsuit claiming that Ancestry was causing legal injury by posting yearbook photos on its website and using them in advertising and promotional materials has been thrown out by a California federal court. The case, brought in late 2020...Ancestry sued for yearbooks
Case filed in California Where’s the line between making material available for genealogical research, and using private data for commercial gain? A lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco on Monday may help define the answer to that question. The case,...Subscribe by Email
