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

Those Magnificent Men: 100 Years Of Naval Aviation, Winter 2011 | Vol. 60, No. 4

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.

Why We Hate to Love Judges, May 2001 | Vol. 52, No. 3

As the 2000 election made very clear, we are torn between revering judges and despising them. It’s in the nature of the job.

The Electrocution of Luigi Storti, December 1997 | Vol. 48, No. 8

Can it be fair? Humane? Does it 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.

The Jury on Trial, July/August 1995 | Vol. 46, No. 4

Is trial by jury the essential underpinning of our system of justice or, as more and more critics charge, a relic so flawed that it should perhaps even be abolished? An experienced trial judge examines the historical evidence in the case.

In Love with Lawsuits, November 1994 | Vol. 45, No. 7

Why litigiousness Is a national character trait

Naming a Justice, October 1991 | Vol. 42, No. 6

It has always been politics as usual.

How History Made the Constitution, March 1988 | Vol. 39, No. 2

Every one of the founders was 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 the framers’ intentions.

Enlisted for Life, June/July 1986 | Vol. 37, No. 4

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.

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