It isn't often that lawyers arguing before the US Supreme Court reach back 400 years for a case upon which to frame a modern-day legal dispute.
Indeed, the US Constitution is only half that old.But that is what is happening in a potential landmark case set for oral argument Monday involving the Sixth Amendment right of an accused criminal to confront witnesses against him.
Although Crawford v. Washington deals with the trial of Michael Crawford for a 1999 knife attack in Washington State, his lawyers' legal briefs take the justices all the way back to 1603 England and the treason trial of Sir Walter Raleigh.
The Christian Science Monitor has the story here.