Criminal law in the Waite Court
Open-knowledge reference entry
During the tenure of Morrison Waite as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States (March 4, 1874 through March 23, 1888), the Supreme Court heard an unprecedented volume and frequency of criminal cases. In just fourteen years, the Court heard 106 criminal cases, almost as many cases as the Supreme Court had heard in the period from its creation to the appointment of Waite as Chief Justice. Notable cases include United States v. Cruikshank (1875), United States v. Reese (1875), Reynolds v. United States (1878), Wilkerson v. Utah (1879), the Trade-Mark Cases (1879), Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), Pace v. Alabama (1883), United States v. Harris (1883), Ex parte Crow Dog (1883), Hurtado v.
“Criminal law in the Waite Court” enters the record as open-knowledge reference entry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Criminal, Waite and Court can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Criminal law in the Waite Court” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Criminal, Waite and Court provides the most credible route into that argument.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5185631. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1874, 1888, 1875 and 1878.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.
- Subject orientation
- Search vocabulary
- Locating named sources
The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Criminal law in the Waite Court”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Criminal law in the Waite Court primary sources, Criminal law in the Waite Court archive and Criminal research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Criminal law in the Waite Court”?
- Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
- What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Criminal law in the Waite Court” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.