Legal History Blog

Imprisonment in Early Modern England: Politics, Debt and the Origins of a Carceral Society (Cambridge University Press), by Richard Thomas ...

Con Reynolds , Counsel to the Chair, U.S. Sentencing Commission, has posted The Original Role of Article III in Federal Imprisonment .  The ...

Matthew Ritger, Dartmouth College , has published Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England ...

Judith Resnik, Yale Law School , has published Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (University of Chicago ...

[The latest issue of the Journal of American History , 112:2 (September 2025), includes much legal history.  Here’s the JAH ’s summary .  ...

Wynne Muscatine Graham , Lecturer in Law, UCLA , has published The Forgotten History of Prison Law: Judicial Oversight of Detention Faciliti...

Continuing our round-up of the prizes and award announced at the recent meeting of the American Society for Legal History , we turn now to t...

Ion Meyn, University of Wisconsin Law School , has posted White-on-Black Crime: Revisiting the Convict Leasing Narrative , which is forthcom...

Now on YouTube : the National Constitution Center’s panel on “the history of the African American fight for freedom during the Civil War and...

 [We have the following announcemen t.  DRE.] The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar on “ Just Policing: Transnational Perspectives ...

"Although the U.S. Congressional Record has been in a digital format for some time, a version that can easily be searched is now avai...

Philip Rawlings, Queen Mary University of London, School of Law, has posted The Highwayman's Case: John Everett - Soldier, Robber, Publi...

Just announced: On "Thursday, November 4, immediately before the main conference begins, the American Society for Legal History is ho...

Courtney E. Thompson (Mississippi State University) has published An Organ of Murder: Crime, Violence, and Phrenology in Nineteenth-Century...

A new episode of Talking Legal History , a podcast hosted by Siobhan M. M. Barco , is now up on the website of the American Society of Legal...

Alison Adam (Sheffield Hallam University, UK) has edited Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850 ,  now out with Palgr...

Erin Braatz, Suffolk Law School , will present in the of the Boston College Legal History Roundtable Thursday, February 27, at 4:30 in BC La...

Ashley T. Rubin, University of Hawaii Mānoa, Hawaiʻi has published " Early US Prison History Beyond Rothman: Revisiting The Discovery...

Due out in November 2019 by  Renaud Morieux, University of Cambridge  is  The Society of Prisoners: Anglo-French Wars and Incarceration in ...

We’ve recently learned that the conference Towards New Histories of Imprisonment in England, 1500-1850 , will be held July 15-16 at Keble Co...