This conference will celebrate and explore the legacy of Charles W. McCurdy on a scholarly and personal level. It will also serve to inaugurate the Charles W. McCurdy Fellowship in Legal History at the Miller Center and School of Law. During a 40-year career in the Corcoran Department of History and the School of Law, McCurdy has been the intellectual and pedagogical heart of legal history at the University of Virginia. His scholarship earned him the 2003 Order of the Coif Triennial Book Award for “The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865.” His teaching has earned him not only official recognition but, more importantly, claim to having directed or advised more than 200 doctoral dissertations, master’s theses, and undergraduate theses.
To RSVP and for information about logistics in Charlottesville, contact Renee Branson at rb4um@eservices.virginia.edu. The conference has reserved rooms at the Omni Hotel, which can be contacted directly: Omni Hotel, 212 Ridge McIntire Road, Charlottesville, Virginia 22903. (434) 971-5500 or 1-800-THE-OMNI. Ask for the McCurdy Conference Rate (139/night). Rates good Nov. 1-3, 2015.
Sunday, November 1
6 p.m. Dinner and Personal Reflections (Law School)
Registered Guests
Hosts: Brian Balogh, University of Virginia Miller Center and Corcoran Department of History
Risa Goluboff, University of Virginia School of Law
Monday, November 2
8 a.m. Breakfast (Miller Center)
8:30 a.m. Welcome and Introductory Remarks
G. Edward White, University of Virginia School of Law
9-10:30 a.m. Panel 1: Federalism and Ideas of Sovereignty
Kate Brown, Huntington University Department of History and Political Science, “Founding Federalism: Alexander Hamilton’s Concurrent Constitutionalism”
Lindsay Robertson, University of Oklahoma College of Law, “Restoring Relations with Five Nations after the Civil War: The Fort Smith Conference and the Legal Complexities of Post-Civil War Indian Treaty Rights”
Cynthia L. Nicoletti, University of Virginia School of Law, "Reimagining the Union: The Contours of Federalism after the Civil War”
J. Gordon Hylton, University of Virginia School of Law, “The Fuller Court and the State Police Power: A Quantitation Study in the History of Federalism”
Bernie D. Jones, Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, “The ‘New Federalism’ and Current Challenges to Legal Historiography”
Moderator: Hendrik Hartog, Princeton University History Department
10:45 a.m.-12:15 p.m. Panel 2: McCurdy Fellow Panel
Sarah Seo, Princeton University Department of History, “The Automobile and the Cold War Fourth Amendment”
Nora Krinitsky, University of Michigan Department of History, “Beer Wars and Black Votes: Policing the Color Line in Interwar Chicago”
Jessica Lowe, University of Virginia School of Law, Comment
David Sklansky, Stanford Law School, Comment
Moderator: Sarah Barringer Gordon, University of Pennsylvania Law School
12:30-1:45 p.m. Lunch (Law School)
2-3:30 p.m. Panel 3: Federalism, Law, and the Economy
Barry Cushman, Notre Dame Law School, “The Constitutional Foundations of the New Deal Securities Laws”
Stephanie Hunter McMahon, University of Cincinnati College of Law, “Federalizing the Federal Income Tax”
Logan Everett Sawyer, University of Georgia School of Law, “The Beveridge Child Labor Bill in Progressive Era Law and Politics, 1906-08”
Victoria Saker Woeste, American Bar Foundation, “Capitalism and Agriculture: The Fate of American Democracy”
Moderator: Sarah Milov, University of Virginia Corcoran Department of History
3:45-5:15 p.m. Panel 4: Adjudicating Rights and Interests in a Changing Nation
J. Herbie DiFonzo, Hofstra Law School, “Before the ‘Best Interests of the Child’: Child Custody Presumptions in Nineteenth-Century America”
Richard F. Hamm, State University of New York at Albany Department of History, “A Challenge to the Segregated Draft: The Lynn Case and Civil Rights Activism during World War II”
Reuel E. Schiller, University of California, Hastings College of the Law, “Trouble in the ‘Peaceful Garden’: Litigating Fair Housing in Multi-Racial San Francisco”
Patricia Hagler Minter, Western Kentucky University Department of History, “‘Marriage is between one man and one woman”: Competing Visions of Rights and Theology in Kentucky’s 2004 Marriage Amendment”
Moderator: Claudrena Harold, University of Virginia Corcoran Department of History
