Nelson's "Concise History of American Law"

We note the posthumous publication of the late William E. Nelson's Concise History of American Law (Oxford University Press):

A Concise History of American Law traces the development of the US legal order from the colonial era to the twenty-first century. Emphasizing the essential role of the common law--derived from judicial precedent, rather than legislation--eminent legal historian William E. Nelson examines the foundations of the American rule of law and its interactions over time with political, economic, and societal transformations. Synthesizing the broad structural, institutional, and ideological changes embedded within American legal history illuminates the significant role courts have played in structuring politics and society. Nelson's accessible chronological narrative details how the rule of law has both facilitated change, by protecting the rights of those who advocate for it, and inhibited change, by acting as a conservative bulwark protecting the rights and property of the rich and powerful. Weaving this fundamental tension between law and politics into his pithy account of how the law was made and practiced over three centuries of American history, Nelson has produced an invaluable guide to the intricate evolution of the modern US legal system.

--Dan Ernst 

Li's "Translating Weimar"

[We have the following announcement from our friends at the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory of a new open access publication in its series, Global Perspectives on Legal History.  DRE]

Fupeng Li, Translating Weimar: The Cultural Translation of the Weimar Constitution in China (1919-1949).  Global Perspectives on Legal History. Vol. 28

How can a constitution imagine social revolution? This book answers this question by placing social rights at the center of the Weimar Constitution's long journey to China. It tells a global legal history of how jurists and legislators used constitutional language to conceptualize 20th-century projects of social transformation.

Moving between Germany and China, the book follows the Weimarer Reichsverfassung as it was read, translated, and rewritten by Chinese actors. Rather than treating the Weimar Constitution's influence as a simple "reception" of foreign ideas, it reconstructs how Chinese jurists used debates on labor, welfare, and economic order to rethink what a social constitution could be - and what kind of social revolution it might legitimately guide.

At the core of the analysis lies a structural shift: from the Weimar Constitution's rights-based model of social order to the policy-oriented constitutionalism that came to characterize modern China. Drawing on multilingual archives and constitutional drafts, the study traces how the Weimar Constitution's catalog of fundamental social rights was progressively reframed as Fundamental National Policies, transforming social rights into state programs, planning targets, and ideological commitments.

Organized around the triad of space, time, and tradition, the book maps the routes by which German Staatsrechtslehre and the Weimar Constitution's concept of social rights entered Chinese debates, shows how they were positioned within changing temporal narratives of crisis and revolution, and examines how they were negotiated in the encounter with Confucian statecraft, revolutionary nationalism, and socialist planning. In doing so, it offers a new framework for understanding how constitutions mediate social revolution through the cultural translation of rights into policies.

The book will interest scholars and students of constitutional law, global legal history, and modern Chinese history who seek to understand how social rights traveled across borders - and how, in the process, they quietly remade the meaning of both "constitution" and "revolution" in the 20th century.

Casagrande on the Counter-Concepts Constitution and Arbitrariness

[We have word of the following open-access publication in the Global Perspectives on Legal History series of the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal History.  DRE.]

Agustín E. Casagrande, Constitución y Arbitrariedad: Conceptos e imaginarios del constitucionalismo argentinoo (Global Perspectives on Legal History, Vol. 26)

The discourse of constitutionalism emerged out of the entanglement of three strands: legal theory, political philosophy, and historical narratives. Its structure revolves around the tension between the counter-concepts (Gegenbegriffe) of arbitrariness (to be denounced) and constitution (to be legitimized). This book presents a threefold genealogical analysis to access the logic of Argentine constitutionalism. First, a conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) exposes the distance between recent narratives of the development of Argentine constitutionalism as constructed by political historians, on the one hand, and constitutional scientists, on the other. The second genealogy explores the theoretical rupture between modern law and the traditional knowledge of ius commune in the shift from arbitrium iuris to “legicentric” logic – that is, the preeminence of written law enacted by the state. The narrowing of the concept of arbitrium to arbitrariness was central to the formation of constitutional law’s conception of the political order. Finally, this rupture went hand-in-hand with the establishment of new political imaginaries, including autocratic caudillos, suggestible masas, anarchic tendencies of a people, etc. During the 19th century, these fueled the sense among the elites that a new order was needed; but they also still remain part of current narratives. Revealing these emotional imaginaries that guided, and continue to guide, constitutional practice enables a dialogue between the history of law as written by historians and as written by constitutionalists, with the purpose of understanding the recurrent crises that still afflict Argentine constitutionalism in the 21st century.

Probert's "Double Trouble" and "Double Lives"

Rebecca Probert, University of Exeter, has published two companion volumes with Hart/Bloomsbury.  The first is Double Trouble: Bigamy and the Law in England and Wales, 1604-2024:

Between 1604 and 2024, around 30,000 individuals were prosecuted for bigamy in England and Wales. A few were able to establish a defence to the charge, but most were convicted. How they were punished varied hugely across the centuries – from execution, branding, whipping, transportation, and imprisonment through to fines and community service.

Double Trouble details the legal framework that underpinned such prosecutions. As a companion volume to Double Lives: Stories of Bigamy in England and Wales, 1604–2024, it sets the offence in the context of the changing laws on marriage and divorce, and examines the consequences of bigamy for those involved, including the remedies that were available to the often-deceived second spouse.

Drawing on a wide array of sources from the 17th century to the present day, including formal law reports, legal treatises, newspapers, censuses, parish registers, divorce petitions and Parliamentary debates, this book shows how bigamy should be taken seriously as an offence that all too often involved deception, abandonment and heartbreak.

The second is Double Lives: Stories of Bigamy in England and Wales, 1604-2024:

A woman remarries after hearing that her husband has drowned, only for him to turn up alive and well. Is she now a criminal? A deserted husband, unable to afford a divorce, finds happiness in a new union. How many did the same? A conman advertises for a wife and then disappears with her life savings; he has already done the same to many other women. How was he brought to justice?

These are just a few of the hundreds of bigamous remarriages put under the microscope in Double Lives. As a companion volume to Double Trouble: Bigamy and the Law in England and Wales, 1604–2024, this book goes behind the law reports to reconstruct the stories of those involved. Drawing on archival sources, pamphlets, newspapers, census data, parish registers, divorce petitions and family histories, it shows the different forms that bigamy might take – accidental, consensual, deceptive or exploitative – and how bigamists' stories in turn helped to shape the law.

Double Lives shows how bigamy should not be dismissed as a comical or victimless crime. Every case had its own complex mix of desire and deception, and, all too often, heartbreak for someone.

--Dan Ernst 

Ewing and Moretta on the Cold War and the UK Right to Strike

K.D. Ewing and Andrew Moretta have published Labour Law, the Cold War, and the Right to Strike: A Legal and Political History of Order 1305 (Hart/Bloomsbury):

Surprisingly, the prohibition on the right to strike was retained by the Attlee administration after the Second World War, and was transformed to become a weapon of government during the Cold War to deal with what were wrongly claimed by ministers to be Communist-inspired strikes engineered for subversive purposes.

In a deep analysis of Order 1305, the authors provide a reassessment of the role of the State in industrial relations. Challenging much contemporary learning in labour law, the book is informed by a very detailed engagement with Cabinet and ministerial papers, which highlight the contradictions on the part of government in simultaneously promoting and containing trade union power. These sources also highlight the extent to which trade unions both relied on and were co-opted by the State.

The main focus of the book, however, is the role of Order 1305 in the control of trade union activists, with the continuing presence of the criminal law and allegations of communist inspired strikes ensuring an important role for MI5 and Special Branch in post-war industrial relations. Material unearthed at the National Archives demonstrates unequivocally not only that trade unions were deeply penetrated, but also that trade union activists were the subject of extensive surveillance, as the authors fully reveal.

–Dan Ernst.  TOC after the jump.

Cambridge History of the American Revolution

The three-volume Cambridge History of the American Revolution, edited Marjoleine Kars, Michael A. McDonnell, Andrew M. Schocket, was published online on February 3 and has a print publication date of October 30. 

Volume 1: Revolutionary Contexts

The first volume delves into how the context of the American Revolution was set, taking readers across North America and the world to reveal the far-flung people, events, institutions, cultures, and ideas that led to its inception. Through a global lens, the volume shows how empires struggled with political and economic reforms, as well as popular protest, while competing and warring with each other. On a continental scale, long-term environmental and economic structures, native peoples, colonial settlers, and their interactions set the parameters for revolutionary conflict. Focusing on the thirteen colonies, -particularly groups who are traditionally overlooked- the essays shed light on the specific milieus in which the Revolution took place, examining and reinterpreting the iconic events leading up to independence and war. A mixture of broad topical essays and short innovative “viewpoints”, together the essays question notions of American exceptionalism while emphasizing both change and continuity.

Volume 2: Revolution

The second volume focuses on the years of upheaval during the American Revolution between 1775 and 1789. It breaks new ground by surveying a wide range of internal conflicts in the thirteen colonies, the trauma of a bloody war and its consequences, as well as the continental, hemispheric, and global forces shaping warfare and politics in this era. Together, the essays expand our understanding of how various people navigated military occupation, community conflict, governmental paralysis, interpersonal relationships, institutional collapse, and the slipperiness of allegiances. Through sweeping interpretative essays and micro-history viewpoints, the volume highlights the interplay of class, race, and gender in a wartime context and how these dynamics played out and were influenced by broader geopolitical developments. The depths of division and grand possibilities are explored – and interrupt our long-standing notions of traditional linear narratives of nation-making in this era.

Volume 3: Continuities, Changes, and Legacies

The third and final volume examines the American Revolution and its consequences, continuities, and legacies. Across thirty essays, ranging from broad, topical chapters to innovative, shorter 'viewpoints', the volume sheds light on how the American Revolution reverberated worldwide from the Constitution's ratification to twenty-first century cultural battles over the Revolution's meanings. Americans of all stripes adapted old rituals and structures to national independence, new rights, and republican politics, while enslaved and Indigenous peoples contended with the nation's intensification of the exploitation of humans and land. The Revolution's global shockwaves buffeted empires and the people who resisted them. From the eighteenth century to today, Americans and people across the world have contested how we remember the American Revolution. 

Richard J. Ross, University of Illinois, and Steven Wilf, University of Connecticut School of Law, have posted their contribution to volume 1, Legal Orders:

This chapter explores how the Patriots deployed law in order to mobilize fellow citizens towards rebellion.  In the decade before the Revolution, Patriots fashioned law in innovative ways as a language that could cross geographical and social borders in order to rally citizens to a cause.  What made their appeals effective?  First, the chapter asks how the settlers’ growing competence in formulating constitutional argument favored the Whigs.  Second, a look at early nineteenth-century Spanish American independence movements helps explain how and why the Whigs could plausibly believe one of their core ideas—that a colony was a polity representing the rights of an underlying people.  Finally, attention to the vernacular legal culture of the streets and taverns shows how Patriot legal appeals could be appropriated by ordinary people.  The remarkable capacity of Whig law to bridge social and geographical distances helped make it a powerful instrument of revolutionary mobilization.

--Dan Ernst 

Parkinson's "Tyrants and Rogues"

Robert G. Parkinson, Binghamton University, has published Tyrants and Rogues: Understanding the Declaration of Independence (Norton):

We think of the Declaration of Independence as timeless. We know the sacred phrases: “all men are created equal,” “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” “self-evident truths,” “certain inalienable rights.” These are some of the most important words human beings have ever written. And they are all from the Declaration’s preamble, which has inspired people for centuries, including generations of revolutionaries all over the world.

But as historian Robert G. Parkinson points out, the Declaration was not written as a timeless statement of political philosophy. It was, rather, produced in the heat of a confusing, bloody, and desperate war. And in that moment, it wasn’t high ideals alone that drove the patriots forward. Parkinson’s great innovation is to allow us, 250 years on, to see the Declaration as its authors did. For them, the opening paragraphs were not the main event. It was the body of the Declaration—the twenty-seven grievances against King George—that formed the essential part. Even Thomas Jefferson would have been puzzled by history’s fixation on his opening sentences.

Parkinson takes us into the grievances, giving us stories of the Revolutionary era that are little known today but loomed large for the patriots. As the leaders of the Revolution saw it, they had been pushed to the breaking point by British officials who undermined colonial legislatures and courts, corrupted the judiciary, turned military power against civilians, inflamed slave revolts, forced colonists to fight one another—ultimately, waging war on their own people.

In his brilliantly original reading of the Declaration, Parkinson asks fundamental questions that have too often been overlooked: Why did the colonies declare independence when they did? What were their nonnegotiable demands? Who were the individuals whose actions made reconciliation impossible? By recovering the people and conflicts behind the Declaration’s grievances, Parkinson offers a strikingly new account of the American Revolution—and shows that the issues that most alarmed colonists in 1776 are urgent once again today.

--Dan Ernst

Altschuler's "Before Disability"

Sari Altschuler, Northeastern University, has published Before Disability: A History of American Citizenship (University of Pennsylvania Press):

The history of disability rights is often told as a recent one, but it is not. In the wake of the American Revolution, many of the differences we now call disabilities could be accommodated into citizenship—and for some even exemplified its promises. By the antebellum period, however, disability was becoming a powerful, racialized tool of civic exclusion and, by the century’s end, a target for eugenic elimination. In Before Disability, Sari Altschuler tells the story of how this dramatic transformation occurred.

Before Disability is a literary, legal, and cultural history of the relationship between disability, race, and citizenship. It shows how disability helped to shape US citizenship and, in turn, how the formation of US citizenship shaped disability. There were two key drivers of the transformation from accommodation to exclusion and eugenics: the difficulty aligning the reality with the rhetoric of civic inclusion and the co-opting of mental and physical difference as evidence in debates about Black citizenship. The stigmatizing ways race came together with mental and physical difference to deny Americans rights were, however, not inevitable.

Before citizenship was federally defined in the late 1860s, Americans were still working out what it meant. They used the narrative forms available to them—from melodrama and the gothic to the slave narrative and the criminal confession—to do this work. While possibilities narrowed by the antebellum era, Americans continued to imagine, articulate, and enact broader definitions. As we seek to imagine the relationship between disability and citizenship more equitably and expansively for ourselves, we should begin by remembering that many disabled and nondisabled Americans before us did, too.

--Dan Ernst 

Upham's "Taking American Citizenship Seriously"

David R. Upham, St. Thomas University College of Law, has published Taking American Citizenship Seriously: The Recovery of the Fourteenth Amendment (Bloomsbury)

In this ambitious volume, Professor David R. Upham offers a comprehensive account of the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, shedding new light on its often-overlooked Privileges or Immunities Clause. Drawing on a close textual reading as well as a wide range of primary sources—some newly discovered—Upham argues that the framers intended the amendment as a measure designed to strengthen existing constitutional protections for the rights of both human personhood and American citizenship. Upham contends that the amendment secures for all individuals the basic rights to life, liberty, and property through guarantees of due process and equal protection, while also reaffirming the birthright principle that grants citizenship to nearly all born on U.S. soil. Moreover, the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards longstanding privileges and immunities of citizenship, including the rights to travel, engage in commerce, speak freely, bear arms, and enjoy protection from racial discrimination and other forms of civic exclusion. By recovering the Amendment’s original meaning, this book reshapes our understanding of constitutional rights and citizenship, with far-reaching implications for contemporary legal and political debates. 

--Dan Ernst

LSA James Willard Hurst Book Prize to Mayeri for "Marital Privilege"

The Law & Society Association has announced its 2026 awards, including the winner of the James Willard Hurst Book Prize ("awarded annually (biennially prior to 2002) for the best work in socio-legal history published in the previous year").

This year's Hurst award went to Serena Mayeri (Penn Carey Law), for Marital Privilege: Marriage, Inequality, and the Transformation of American Law (Oxford University Press, 2025). The citation:

Serena Mayeri’s Marital Privilege shows how, beginning in the 1960s, marriage was dislodged from its supreme position across a range of legal domains and replaced with a regime of “marital privilege.” With poignant, empathetic detail drawn from archives and legal documents, Mayeri brings to life both well-known and not-so-famous cases, revealing the theories and evolving strategies animating a wide range of challengers to the regime of marital supremacy—from litigants to advocacy organizations to legal academics. Yet, even as their victories advanced the values of nondiscrimination and individual autonomy, Mayeri shows how the assumptions of the new regime of “marital privilege” obscured and deepened inequalities of wealth, power, and privilege in American law and society. Combining sweeping ambition, doctrinal acumen, and a keen sense of historical contingency, Marital Privilege provides a magisterial account of a crucial transformation of American law. 

Congratulations to Professor Mayeri!

-- Karen Tani 

Byrne's "Law in the New Democracy" and Book Launch

On Thursday, July 2, from 6 PM - 7 PM at the Chau Chak Wing Museum in Camperdown, NSW, Paula Jane Byrne speaks about her new book Law in the New Democracy exploring development of a legal system in colonial New South Wales. It is published by ANU press and with the assistance of the Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History.  Here is the press's description of the book:

In the 1850s, opposition to the Crown in New South Wales made for unsteady ground for the administration of criminal law. This study of skirmishes between magistrates, constables and the metropolis reveals just how far understandings of law could be stretched and warped by recalcitrant local populations. At Carcoar, the local population entirely controlled how law worked; on the South Coast, ‘the people’ influenced how law intervened in their lives; in the north west of the colony, publicans dominated; on the north coast, violence against First Nations/Aboriginal people was forcibly meshed into the day to day working of the courts. This study shows a ‘frontier’ centred on the coasts and in the minds of legal officials of the metropolis, but elsewhere, some recognition of the Aboriginal polity and an early understanding of Aboriginal rights.

And here is the description of the book launch:

Democracy in the 1850s was felt to be fragile and uncertain. At any moment, the rhetoric of the Legislative Council and Assembly tells us, the rights obtained by the citizenry might be thwarted by the cunning manoeuvres of the English crown.

Such rhetoric would shape how colonial New South Wales viewed criminal law. Across the colony, desultory clerks filled sheets of paper with the words of victims and witnesses, words that would be carried to the metropolis, to the offices of legal officials. Dragging behind these words were the chained prisoners of the colony, eager on their journey to obtain money for a barrister in court.

This discussion examines the traces of such events and the role of the historian of 2026 in interpreting them. It addresses right of reply by Aboriginal people to history making. It questions the idea of a move into lawlessness the further we travel from Sydney and the idea of the frontier.

--Dan Ernst

Penna's "Byzantine Law" and Book Launch

Daphne Penna, University of Groningen and KU Leuven, has published Byzantine Law: The Law of the Eastern Roman Empire, in the "Elements in Rethinking Byzantium" series of the Cambridge University Press.  On May 28, she will speak about the book in the Law and Humanities Seminar Series of the Peking University School of Transnational Law.  Here is Cambridge's description of the book:

The purpose of this Element is to introduce the study of later Roman law (Byzantine law) to a wider academic audience. Currently a great deal of specialized knowledge is necessary to approach the field of Byzantine law. This Element works to break down the barriers to this fascinating subject by providing a brief, clear introduction to the topic. It makes a scholarly contribution by placing Byzantine law in a broader perspective and by reconsidering some of the aspects of the study of Byzantine law. The Element places Byzantine law outside of the box by comparing, for example, Byzantine law to the European legal tradition and highlighting the role that Byzantine law can have in unravelling the common legal past of Europe. It gives also information on the status of Byzantine legal studies and makes suggestions on how to study Byzantine law and why.

--Dan Ernst 

Rao's "White Power"

It is publication day for White Power: Policing American Slavery (University of North Carolina Press), by Gautham Rao.  The book is the initial entry in the UNC Press’s new series, W. Hodding Carter III Books:

Beginning in the colonial era and growing through the American Revolution and the Southern plantation system, slaveholders’ violent police regime continued after Emancipation, through Reconstruction, to today. Moving across time, space, and place, White Power uncovers how slaveholders created their own white supremacist police and government to deny Black people rights, power, and humanity.

Legal historian Gautham Rao introduces us to laws that empowered white people to forcibly exercise their desired racial superiority over Black people, shows how they spread from the South throughout the nation, and traces the rebellions, fugitivity, activism, and legal systems that challenged them. Rao’s narrative includes slaveholders, lawmakers, and the Ku Klux Klan, dramatic escapes by runaway enslaved people, abolitionist activism in courtroom showdowns, and pitched battles between white paramilitaries and enslaved rebels. He offers a new interpretation of the history of policing in the US, centering the institution and legacy of slavery and speaking to the origins of today’s persistence of white vigilance, white supremacist militia groups, and white racist cops determined to maintain power over Black people by force. Equally determined, however, was Black Americans’ refusal to accept it. 

DC-area folks can catch Professor Rao in conversation on White Power with the Library of Congress's Ryan Reft at 6:30 tonight at People's Book in Takoma Park, Maryland. 

–Dan Ernst

Todd and Thunder's "United States Attorneys for the District of Columbia"

K. Chris Todd and James M. Thunder have privately published, with the sponsorship of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit, The United States Attorneys for the District of Columbia 1801-2024: A Compendium of Short Biographies (iUniverse):

Did you know that Francis Scott Key, author of the Star-Spangled Banner, was also the top federal prosecutor for the District of Columbia for eight years? Read a short biography of his life, his career, and his work as a prosecutor and lawyer in this fascinating compendium featuring all forty-nine United States Attorneys for the District of Columbia. Or read the shocking story of the 1859 murder in Lafayette Park of Key’s son, Barton Key, who was serving as the United States Attorney at the time he was shot dead. Congressman Daniel Sickles murdered Key after Sickles discovered Key was having an affair with Sickles’ wife. In recent history, read about Earl Silbert, who broke the case of the Watergate cover-up, along with the stories of such distinguished lawyers and judges as Thomas Flannery, Eric Holder, Chuck Ruff, and many others. The book recounts the history of one of the most important of the ninety-four judicial districts in the United States. Many landmark trials in our nation’s history occurred in the District of Columbia courts, either guided by or defended by one of these forty-nine men and women. They prosecuted the assassins of Presidents Lincoln and Garfield, and the men who attempted to assassinate Presidents Jackson, Truman, and Reagan. They also played pivotal roles in the trials concerning the Teapot Dome Scandal of 1923, the attacks on the Capitol by Puerto Rican nationalists in 1954, the 1971 May Day protest against the Vietnam War, and the Jan. 6th, 2021 violent attack on the Capitol. The book is sourced in great detail, richly illustrated with over 800 historic photos and other images contemporaneous with the events that defined the lives of each United States Attorney.

--Dan Ernst

Grimm on German Constitutional History since 1949

Dieter Grimm has published Constitutional Effectiveness: The Case of Germany's Basic Law with Hart/Bloomsbury:

This book presents a unique account of the social and political impacts of the German Basic Law on the German Republic from 1949 to the present day.

It considers the way in which the history of the Federal Republic of Germany has been decisively influenced by its Constitution, the Basic Law of 1949, and by the jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court.

The book argues that the historiography of the Federal Republic does little to reflect this influence. The Basic Law is mentioned and so occasionally rulings of the Federal Constitutional Court. But the reader does not get the impression that they were of specific importance in Germany before and after reunification.

Legal scholars, on the other hand, are concerned about the legal consequences of the Basic Law, but do not analyse its impact in the real world. There is, thus, a gap between the two disciplines – one not being familiar with social reality, the other not familiar with the normativity of the law. The history of the effectiveness of the constitution falls into this gap.

In this book, Dieter Grimm, himself a Justice of the Federal Constitutional Court from 1987 to 1999 and an expert on interdisciplinary research in law, history and political science, guides the reader through important developments and events that were determined or influenced by the constitution and its judicial interpretation.

--Dan Ernst 

Bank's "High Rates and Low Taxes"

Steven A. Bank, UCLA School of Law, has published High Rates and Low Taxes: Tax Dodging in Mid-Century America  (Cambridge University Press):

Amidst calls for a return to the high tax rates of the 1950s and 60s, this book examines the tax dodging that accompanied it. Lacking political will to lower the rate, Congress riddled the laws with loopholes, exemptions, and preferences, while largely accepting income tax chiseling's rise in American culture. The rich and famous openly invested in tax shelters and de-camped to exotic tax havens, executives revamped the compensation and retirement schemes of their corporations to suit their tax needs, and an industry of tax advisers developed to help the general public engage in their own form of tax dodging through exaggerated expense accounts, luxurious business travel on the taxpayer's dime, and self-help books on 'how the insider's get rich on tax-wise' investments. Tax dodging was a part of almost every restaurant bill, feature film, and savings account. It was literally woven into the fabric of society.

Professor Bank has posted the introduction here. 

--Dan Ernst

Tolson's "In Congress We Trust?"

Forthcoming from the Cambridge University Press: In Congress We Trust? Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era by Franita Tolson, Dean of the University of Southern California Gould School of Law.  It will appear in the series Cambridge Studies on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties:

This book reveals how Congress quietly shaped American elections across more than a century of constitutional development. Far from a passive observer, Congress used its authority to influence key controversies – from the expansion of slavery in new territories to the reconstruction of the post-Civil War electorate. Congress exercised power under the Elections Clause, the Guarantee Clause, and later, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, to combat voter suppression, reimagine representation, and determine who could (and could not) participate in American democracy. Even as Jim Crow laws disenfranchised millions, Congress continued to review and sometimes overturn the elections of its own members, refusing to cede complete control to the states. In doing so, Congress routinely subordinated federalism to politics. In Congress We Trust? provides a new perspective on who truly governs our system of elections by showing that federal authority has been broad, lasting, and decisive.

--Dan Ernst

Ritger's "Houses of Correction"

Matthew Ritger, Dartmouth College, has published Houses of Correction: Carceral Institutions and Humanist Culture in Early Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press):

More than 250 years before the rise of the modern penitentiary, houses of correction pioneered the use of forced labor and individualized sentences within institutions of confinement, promoting reform and the “hope of amendment” for every individual. Yet these earlier carceral institutions faced many of the problems that remain familiar today: corruption scandals, recidivism, and abuses of power.

In Houses of Correction, Matthew Ritger turns to the archives of England’s first house of correction, Bridewell, to show how humanist reformers provided ideas, justifications, and administration for what came to be called bridewells, workhouses, and “Literary worke-houses,” even as repeated scandals made it clear that these coercive institutions would forever be at odds with the ideals of humanist culture. Examining how the work of writers including More, Shakespeare, and Milton dealt with humanism’s entanglements with these new prisons, Houses of Correction constructs the first book-length literary history of some of early modern Europe’s most influential carceral institutions. 

--Dan Ernst 

Hamilton's "Nothing Less Than Equality"

Tikia K. Hamilton, Loyola University Chicago, has published Nothing Less Than Equality: The Battle over Segregated Education in the Nation’s Capital (University of Chicago Press):

The landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, which barred racial segregation in American public schools, wasn’t the only path for Black parents, teachers, and activists who sought equality of educational opportunity. Some believed that the solution to inequality lay in pressing the federal government to live up to the Jim Crow doctrine of “separate but equal” by providing more resources to Black schools. And for a time, this seemed true in Washington, DC, where Black activists leveraged their status as residents of the nation’s capital to advocate on behalf of Black education. However, disappointments with the “separate but equal” strategy and a sea change in activism led to an embrace of integration.
 
In Nothing Less Than Equality, Tikia K. Hamilton reveals the rich and complex history of educational activism in Washington prior to Brown v. Board of Education, illuminating complex dynamics that provide a counterpoint and backdrop to the landmark Supreme Court case. Hamilton thoroughly examines the multipronged strategies employed by parents, teachers, attorneys, and activists to democratize education, demonstrating that there was no linear path to Brown. 

--Dan Ernst 

Witte and Pin's "Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom"

John Witte, Jr., Emory University, and Andrea Pin, University of Padua, have published The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom: Human Rights in the United States and Europe (Notre Dame Press):

In The Legal Foundations of Religious Freedom, authors John Witte Jr. and Andrea Pin explore the Christian and secular origins of rights in the Western legal tradition and the complex interplay between human rights and religious freedom norms in modern law, religion, and culture. They analyze historical documents and recent cases from the United States Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights, and the Court of Justice of the European Union to articulate the historical, theoretical, and legal tension of human rights and religious freedom on both sides of the Atlantic. The authors contrast the serious threats to new religious minorities and traditional religious accommodations with firm new protections of religious freedoms in both Europe and America.

Ultimately calling for robust protection of the fundamental rights and liberties of all people and faiths, Witte and Pin caution that religious freedom and other human rights claims can only do so much to bridge the widening cultural divides over law and religion in modern Western societies. It is our responsibility to embrace the fundamental goods of dignity, fraternity, and justice.

--Dan Ernst