Legal History category: 1513 books
by Paul Kens, Herbert A. Johnson
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2012
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2012
In The Supreme Court under Morrison R. Waite, 1874-1888, Paul Kens provides a history of the Court during a time that began in the shadow of the Civil War and ended with America on the verge of establishing itself as an industrial world power. Morrison R. Waite (1816-1888) led the Court through a...
The Clamor of Lawyers
The American Revolution and Crisis in the Legal Profession
Language: English
Release Date: October 15, 2018
The Clamor of Lawyers explores a series of extended public pronouncements that British North American colonial lawyers crafted between 1761 and 1776. Most, though not all, were composed outside of the courtroom and detached from on-going litigation. While they have been studied as political theory,...
Jim Crow’s Last Stand
Nonunanimous Criminal Jury Verdicts in Louisiana
Language: English
Release Date: September 2, 2019
A remnant of the racist post-Reconstruction Redeemer sociopolitical agenda, Louisiana’s nonunanimous jury-verdict law permitted juries to convict criminal defendants with only nine, and later ten, out of twelve votes: a legal oddity. On the surface, it was meant to speed convictions. In practice,...
The Spaces of Justice
The Architecture of the Scottish Court
Language: English
Release Date: August 13, 2017
This book looks at the architecture of the courts in Scotland and the importance of these civic spaces. Given the importance of courts to the legal experience it starts by exploring why scholars have been so reticent in examining spaces in which the administration of justice takes place. It notes...
By Birth or Consent
Children, Law, and the Anglo-American Revolution in Authority
Language: English
Release Date: December 1, 2012
In mid-sixteenth-century England, people were born into authority and responsibility based on their social status. Thus elite children could designate property or serve in Parliament, while children of the poorer sort might be forced to sign labor contracts or be hanged for arson or picking pockets....
The Politics of Piracy
Crime and Civil Disobedience in Colonial America
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2014
The seventeenth-century war on piracy is remembered as a triumph for the English state and her Atlantic colonies. Yet it was piracy and illicit trade that drove a wedge between them, imperiling the American enterprise and bringing the colonies to the verge of rebellion. In The Politics of Piracy,...
The Emotions of Justice
Gender, Status, and Legal Performance in Choson Korea
Language: English
Release Date: January 27, 2016
The Choson state (1392–1910) is typically portrayed as a rigid society because of its hereditary status system, slavery, and Confucian gender norms. However, The Emotions of Justice reveals a surprisingly complex picture of a judicial system that operated in a contradictory fashion by discriminating...
by Isaac Kramnick, R. Laurence Moore
Language: English
Release Date: August 21, 2018
Language: English
Release Date: August 21, 2018
If the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects religious liberty, why doesn’t it protect atheists?
God occupies our nation’s consciousness, even defining to many what it means to be American. Nonbelievers have often had second-class legal status and have had to fight for their...
The INS on the Line
Making Immigration Law on the US-Mexico Border, 1917-1954
Language: English
Release Date: December 1, 2016
For much of the twentieth century, Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) officials recognized that the US-Mexico border region was different. Here, they confronted a set of political, social, and environmental obstacles that prevented them from replicating their achievements on Angel Island...
Searching for Subversives
The Story of Italian Internment in Wartime America
Language: English
Release Date: October 3, 2017
When the United States entered World War II, Italian nationals living in this country were declared enemy aliens and faced with legal restrictions. Several thousand aliens and a few U.S. citizens were arrested and underwent flawed hearings, and hundreds were interned. Shedding new light on an injustice...
Equal Citizenship, Civil Rights, and the Constitution
The Original Sense of the Privileges or Immunities Clause
Language: English
Release Date: November 19, 2015
The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is arguably the most historically important clause of the most significant part of the US Constitution. Designed to be a central guarantor of civil rights and civil liberties following Reconstruction, this clause could have been at the...
Curious Case of Kiryas Joel
The Rise of a Village Theocracy and the Battle to Defend the Separation of Church and State
Language: English
Release Date: April 1, 2016
Twenty years ago, in the middle of the night and on the last day of the legislative session, the New York State Legislature created a publicly funded school district to cater to the interests of a religious sect called the Satmar, an insular group of Hasidic Jews that objects to, among other things,...
The Grasping Hand
"Kelo v. City of New London" and the Limits of Eminent Domain
Language: English
Release Date: November 29, 2016
In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for “public use,” the Court ruled that the transfer...
Fair Labor Lawyer
The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin
Language: English
Release Date: March 1, 2016
Through a life that spanned every decade of the twentieth century, Supreme Court advocate Bessie Margolin shaped modern American labor policy while creating a place for female lawyers in the nation's highest courts. Despite her beginnings in an orphanage and her rare position as a southern, Jewish...