This Just In: Bills, Quills, and Stills

Sometimes you just need a fun book to flip through, a book you don’t need to read cover to cover (what law student has time for that?), a book with plenty of pictures.

That’s what you’ll find in Robert J. McWhirter’s book Bills, Quills, and Stills: An Annotated, Illustrated, and Illuminated History of the Bill of Rights. [Find it] This fun and informative book takes you through a visual history of the Bill of Rights, with tidbits for history buffs and pop culture aficionados thrown in along the way. For example, in the chapter on the Seventh Amendment on trial by jury, you learn that the term “chattel” included “royal fish” and that the word “cattle” derives from “chattel” and originally referred to a wide range of domesticated quadrupeds including sheep, goats, horses, pigs, and mules.