Historic U.S. Court Cases offers 201 signed essays by political scientists, historians, and legal scholars that highlight major legal issues in five thematic areas: crime and criminal law; governmental organization, power, and procedure; economics and economic regulation; race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability; and civil liberties. Essays generally focus on one or two U.S. Supreme Court cases, although influential cases decided by lower federal courts, the colonial courts, and state courts are also covered. These range from the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials to the O.J. Simpson criminal and civil trials in California state court in the mid-1990s. Landmark cases are the subject of a number of the essays (e.g., Miranda v. Arizona, Roe v. Wade), but many lesser-known cases that are representative of a large body of litigation are included, as well as some, like Jerry Tarkanian's suit against the NCAA, that show "eccentricities in the American legal past."