Program from Conference on "The Law and the Child in Historical Perspective"

Earlier this year we noted a conference on "The Law and the Child in Historical Perspective," co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota Law School and History Department, the Childhood and Youth Studies Across the Disciplines IAS Research Collaborative at the University of Minnesota, the Indiana University School of Law, the University of Pennsylvania Law School and History Department, the University of Illinois College of Law, the University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Chicago Department of History. The conference took place in early June and included an exciting set of papers and comments. Here's the full schedule:

Sunday, June 1 

Panel 1: Age, Consent & Rights to Oneself

-Will Smiley “Three Fatwas and a Treaty: A Historical Perspective on Childhood, Apostacy, and Islamic Law”

-Kristin McCabe Lashua “Charitable Kidnappers? Children, Consent, and the Early English Empire”

-Serena Mayeri “’Hapless’ and ‘Innocent’ Children: Child-Centered Arguments in the Law of the Non-Marital Family”

Commentator: Susanna Blumenthal

Keynote Address

Michael Grossberg “Why Kids Matter: Age as a Useful Category of Analysis in Legal History”

Monday, June 2

Panel 2: The Problem of Unattached Children

-Juandrea Bates “I Am Only a Boy in These Courts: Immigration, Minority and Civil Law in Turn of the Century Buenos Aires”

-Shani Roper “Childhood, Delinquency and Social Control: Explorations of Legislation Tracking Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Jamaica, 1881-1904”

-Sharon Park “The Legal Categorization of Child Refugees as Dependents & Recipients of U.S. Aid, 1945-1953”

Commentator: Michael Grossberg

Panel 3:

Parental & Children’s Rights & the Consolidation of State Power

-Heather Hawkins “Getting Them Back: Child Welfare, Parental Rights, and Administrative Power in 19^th Century Minnesota”

-Julia Bowes “The Limits of Liberalism: Compulsory Schooling, Mandatory Vaccination and the End of Laissez-Faire Parenting, 1870-1920”

-Kathryn Schumaker “Discipline and Due Process: The Civil Rights Struggle and the Expansion of Students’ Rights”

Commentator: Nick Syrett

Panel 4: Children, Families, & Colonialism

-Yen-Chi Liu “Colonial Childhoods: Children and the Law under Japanese Colonial Rule in Taiwan (1895-1945)”

-Tadashi Ishikawa “How Can Adopted Daughters Be Treated in and between Households? Parental Authority, Incomplete Transfers, and Japanese Courts in Colonial Taiwan, 1919-1936”

-Nurfadzilah Yahaya “Question of Guardianship in Colonial Southeast Asia: Arab Children under British and Dutch Rule”

Commentator: MJ Maynes & Barbara Young Welke

Panel 5: Class, Sexuality, Race and Social Order

-Cynthia Greenlee “Due to Her Tender Age: African-Americans, Child Rape and South Carolina Courts, 1885-1905”

-Sara Mayeux “Car Trouble: Adolescence, Automobility, and the Law, 1890-1930”

-Marcia Chatelain “’Questions We Cannot Answer’: The Brown v. Board Decision and Girl Scouts of the United States”

Commentator: Martha Jones

Closing Comments: Sarah Barringer Gordon