Table of Contents of this Website

• Historical and chronological background
• The Amistad revolt (1839)
• A brief guide to Sierra Leone
• The original Amistad case (1841)
• United States v. The Amistad, 40 U.S. 518 (1841)
• Biographies of the key Supreme Court Justices involved in the historic Amistad case (and in the film)
• The full text of John Quincy Adams' argument before the Supreme Court
• Biographical resourceson Roger Sherman Baldwin
• Barbara Chase-Riboud's book, Echo of Lions (1988)
• Who is Barbara Chase-Riboud?
• Other books about the Amistad incident
• Dreamworks' film Amistad (1997) (now including reviews)
  • Who is Steven Spielberg? What is Dreamworks SKG?
• The second Amistad case
• What are Ms. Chase-Riboud's chief arguments?
• What are Dreamworks' chief arguments?
• Late-breaking Monday, December 8th events (preliminary injunction hearing)
• New events in January 1998 (updated Jan. 29th)
• Legal issues - Amistad I
• The law of salvage
• The law of slavery in 1841
• The development of the law since United States v. The Amistad
• Legal issues - Amistad II
• Copyright law
• Internet copyright references from the Legal Information Institute
• The exclusive rights of an author (17 U.S.C. §106)
• But what about historic facts, ideas, etc. (17 U.S.C. §102(b))
• Remedies available to a copyright holder in cases of infringement (17 U.S.C. §§ 501-511)
• Recent copyright decisions involving analogous disputes (decisions courtesy of the LOIS Law Library)
• Hoehling v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 618 F.2d 972 (2d Cir. 1980)
• Miller v. Universal City Studios, Inc., 650 F.2d 1365 (5th Cir. 1981)
• Nash v. CBS, Inc., 899 F.2d 1537 (7th Cir. 1990)
• Civil procedure: What is a preliminary injunction?
  • Apple Computer, Inc. v. Formula International, Inc., 725 F.2d 521 (9th Cir. 1984).
• Civil procedure: What are the pleadings (complaint and answer)?
• Public documents from Chase-Riboud v. Dreamworks, Inc.
  • Plaintiff's (Chase-Riboud) complaint (incomplete version)
  • Plaintiff's complaint (complete version) (requires Acrobat Reader)
  • Plaintiff's reply in support of her preliminary injunction motion (requires Acrobat Reader
  • Plaintiff's reply to alleged similarities between Echo of Lions and Black Mutiny (requires Acrobat Reader
  • A tentative draft of the District Court's December 8 ruling, denying Ms. Chase-Riboud's motion for a preliminary injunction
  • Coming soon: other documents pertaining to the next stage of the litigation: pretrial
• Related links
• Special thanks

Prepared by Michael Peil for the Legal Information Institute. Last edited 29 January 1998 at 07:11.