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Hiller B. Zobel

Hiller B. Zobel is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and a retired Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Superior Court. Zobel has also published books on the both legal and historical subjects including The Boston Massacre, released in 1996, and Doctors and the Law: Defendants and Expert Witnesses, published in 1993. He was recalled from retirement in 2006 and now serves the Middlesex Superior Court. 

Articles by this Author

A century ago, a skilled and fearless stunt pilot landed a wire-and-wood aircraft on a ship's deck -- and introduced the era of naval aviation
As the 2000 election made very clear, we are torn between revering judges and despising them. It’s in the nature of the job.
Can it be fair? Humane? Deter crime? These very current questions troubled Americans just as much in the day of the Salem witch trials as in the day of Timothy McVeigh
Is trial by jury the essential underpinning of our system of justice or—as more and more critics charge—a relic so flawed it should perhaps even be abolished? An experienced trial judge examines the historical evidence in the case.
Why Litigiousness Is a National Character Trait
Naming A Justice, October 1991 | Vol. 42, No. 6
It has always been politics as usual
Every one of the Founding Fathers was a historian—a historian who believed that only history could protect us from tyranny and coercion. In their reactions to the long, bloody pageant of the English past, we can see mirrored the framers’ intent.
Oliver Wendell Holmes was wounded three times in some of the worst fighting of the Civil War. But for him, the most terrible battles were the ones he had missed.