Ab Initio: Law in Early America is a conference to be held June 16-17, 2010, at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, 3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA. It is jointly sponsored by the Penn Legal History Consortium, the McNeil Center, the American Society for Legal History, the University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Minnesota Law School. An attractive flier is here.
Wednesday, June 16
"Race, Servitude and Family”
Chair: Elaine Crane, Fordham University
Greg Ablavsky, Departments of History and Law School, University of Pennsylvania, “Making Indians White: The Judicial Abolition of Native Slavery in Post-Revolutionary Virginia”
Honor Sachs, Department of History, Southern Connecticut State University, “‘Freedom By a Judgment’: The Legal History of an Afro-Indian Family”
Terri Snyder, Department of American Studies, California State University, Fullerton, “Local Legal Culture, Women and the Margins of Freedom in Early Virginia”
Commentators: David Waldstreicher, Department of History, Temple University; Martha Jones, Department of History, University of Michigan
Keynote: Bruce Mann, Harvard Law School
Thursday, June 17
“Borders and National Interests”
Chair: Richard Ross, University of Illinois College of Law
Kevin Arlyck, Department of History, New York University, “Prosecutors, Plaintiffs, and Privateers: Litigation and Diplomacy in the Federal Courts, 1816-1822”
Jill Fraley, Yale Law School, “Boundaries, Territory and Jurisdiction: Making Nation-States, Borders and International Law in Eighteenth Century Appalachia”
Vanessa Mongey, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, “Pirates, Traitors, and Patriots: Redefining National Affiliation in the Early 19th century Atlantic World”
Commentators: Lauren Benton, Department of History, New York University; Charles McCurdy, Departments of History and Law, University of Virginia
“Nation Building in the Early Republic”
Chair: David Tanenhaus, James E. Rogers Professor of History and Law, William S. Boyd School of Law, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Justin Simard, Departments of History and Law School, University of Pennsylvania, “Law for Lawyers: Legal Training at America’s First Law School”
Christopher Tomlins, University of California, Irvine School of Law, “Republican Law, 1770-1820”
Gautham Rao, Rutgers University-Newark and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, “The Founders and Public Healthcare: Marine Hospitals and the Law of Administration in the Early American Republic”
Commentators: David Konig, Departments of History and Law, Washington University in St. Louis; Barbara Welke, University of Minnesota Law School
“Democracy and Access to Government”
Chair: Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania
David Keenan, Department of History, Northwestern University, “Congress as a Court: Legislative Adjudication in the Early Republic, 1789-1801”
Scott King-Owen, Department of History, The Ohio State University, “Rhetoric of Rights in North Carolina Petitions, 1780-1789”
Kirsten Nussbaumer, University of Minnesota Law School, “The Founding Understanding of the U. S. Suffrage as Fixed and Fundamental Law”
Commentators: William Novak, University of Michigan Law School; Michael Zuckerman, University of Pennsylvania
"Control of the Courts in the Early Republic”
Chair: William Pencak, Department of History & Religious Studies Program, Penn State University
Mark Schmeller, Department of History, Northeastern Illinois University, “Twelve Hungry Men: The Reform of Juries – and Jurors – in the Early Republic”
Alison LaCroix, University of Chicago Law School, “Federalists, Federalism, and Federal Jurisdiction”
Commentators: Holly Brewer, Department of History, NC State University; William Nelson, NYU School of Law
