Tuesday, April 8, 2014

The Law in Action: A Graduate Student Conference at Northwestern

The Law in Action: Re-Thinking the Boundaries of Law and Society, a graduate student conference, sponsored by the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University, will take place in Northwestern’s Leopold Room (Harris 108) on Friday, April 18. 

9:00- 10:45 Session One—Embodying Law: The Legal Construction of the Individual
Chair. Paul Ramirez (NU)
• Evelyn Atkinson (University of Chicago), "The Right to Bodily Integrity: Pratt v. Davis and the Origins of Informed Consent"
• Rachel Boyle (Loyola University), “From Hysteria to Insanity: Feminine Criminality and Husband Slaying in Chicago, 1870-1919”
• Jason Morgan (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Suehiro Izutaro, Hozumi Shigeto, and the Case Law Revolution in Japan: Domesticating Taisho Democracy”
Commentator: Kate Masur (NU)

11:00- 12:45 Session Two—The Law, Violence, and the State
Chair: Joanna Grisinger (NU)
• Jesse Nasta (NU), “Navigating Freedom: African American Mobility and Legal Status on the Antebellum Mississippi”
• Matthew June (NU), “A History in Two Acts: Uses and Abuses of the Constitution's Commerce Power from the New Deal to Civil Rights and Controlled Substances”
• Andrew Baer (NU), "Police Torture and Other Pervasive Practices: The Role of Official Misconduct in the Rise of Mass Incarceration in the United States after 1970."
Commentator: Beth Lew-Williams (NU)

1:30- 3:00: Keynote Address
—Rebecca Scott (University of Michigan)
“Free or Not? Eulalie Oliveau, the Kidnapped Midwife from False River”

3:00- 4:45: Session Three—Law in Culture and Culture in Law
Chair: Helen Tilley (NU)
• Melissa Vise (NU), “Free Speech, the Law, and Republican Ethics: The Medieval Case”
• Ian Saxine (NU), “Imperial Properties: Land Deeds and Anglo-Wabanaki Relations in Eighteenth-Century Maine”
• GĂ©raldine Gudefin (Brandeis University), “Jewish Bigamists?: Rabbinical Divorces and Trials for Bigamy in New York at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"
Commentator: Mitra Sharafi (University of Wisconsin-Madison)