Erica Robison, a J.D. Candidate in the Class of 2025 at the Stanford Law School, has published
Confronting the ghost of Elizabeth Gillam: A new look at Ex parte Crouse (1839) in the Juvenile & Family Court Journal 74 (June 2023): 43-60, where it appears open access. Ms. Robison is a recent graduate of the University of Notre Dame, where Linda Przybyszewski, advised her on the writing of the paper.
This article revisits the 1839 Pennsylvania Supreme Court case Ex parte Crouse in light of new historical information. While most legal scholars and historians have analyzed Ex parte Crouse with the assumption that Mary Ann Crouse was sent to the Philadelphia House of Refuge without committing any crime, a search at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania revealed the existence of Crouse's admission record detailing how she had killed a two-year-old child. This finding undermines the extensive conclusions that scholars have drawn about the case's significance and highlights the importance of archival work in legal studies.
--Dan Ernst
