Jones to Deliver Fulton Lecture

 Tomorrow (Friday, April 16, 2021) from 12:15pm-1:20pm Central Time, Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor, Professor of History, and a Professor at the SNF Agora Institute at The Johns Hopkins University, will deliver the 2021 Maurice and Muriel Fulton Lecture in Legal History at the University of Chicago Law School–or rather virtually.  Register here.  Her topic is Vanguard: Leading on Voting Rights, Leading the Nation:

When Vice President Kamala Harris invoked six women from the past in August 2020, she explained it was on their shoulders that she stood: Mary Church Terrell, Ida B. Wells, Mary McLeod Bethune, Diane Nash, Fannie Lous Hamer, and Constance Baker Motley. Harris is the inheritor of these women of the Vanguard. For them, the 19th Amendment was a milestone but not a victory. When we appreciate what an open secret Black women’s disenfranchisement was in 1920, the facts of the 19th Amendment fit awkwardly with events that feature light shows, period costumes, and marching bands. Members of Congress who promulgated the 19th Amendment, state lawmakers who ratified it, and suffragists themselves all understood that nothing in its terms prohibited states from strategically using poll taxes, literacy tests, and understanding tests to keep Black women from registering to vote. Nothing in the new amendment promised to curb the intimidation and violence that threatened Black women who came out to polling places. Voting rights and voter suppression went hand in hand in 1920. Out of the ashes of these scenes, Black women built a new movement for voting rights, one that took them 45 years, until 1965, when they won passage of the Voting Rights Act.

--Dan Ernst.  H/t:JG

Jones to Deliver Chase Lecture

The Supreme Court Historical Society and the Georgetown Center for the Constitution have announced that on Thursday, April 22, 2021, Martha Jones, Johns Hopkins University, will deliver the seventh annual Salmon P. Chase Distinguished Lecture in commemoration the centennial of the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment.  The event will be held virtually, from 7:00 to 8:30 pm.  To register for this virtual event, click here and complete the form.  Presenters scheduled for the accompanying Faculty Colloquium the next day are, with Professor Jones, Ellen Katz, University of Michigan, Paula Monopoli, University of Maryland,  David Bernstein, George Mason University, and Reva Siegel, Yale University.

--Dan Ernst

Tolson on Voting Rights in BC Legal History Roundtable

The Legal History Roundtable at the Boston College Law School announces its next session, In Congress We Trust? Enforcing Voting Rights from the Founding to the Jim Crow Era, a webinar with Franita Tolson, on Friday, November 13, 2020, 12:00PM-12:55PM:

Registration is required. Zoom link will be sent before the day of the event.  Please join Professor Mary Bilder and Professor Dan Farbman as they welcome Franita Tolson, Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs and Professor of Law at USC Gould School of Law, to discuss her forthcoming book and the election.  Following the discussion will be a Q&A session.  Free and open to the public.

--Dan Ernst

"Democracy Contested"

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

Democracy Contested? A virtual event of Cornell University to be held Thursday, October 29, 2020 at 7:00pm to 8:00pm.

As the U.S. Presidential Election nears, the nation’s courts, political systems and media are preparing for the possibility of a contested outcome. A panel of Cornell faculty experts will examine the history of contested elections in the United States and worldwide, while also discussing how disinformation and fake news reports might influence the election result and voter participation.

Moderator:
David Bateman, Associate Professor, Government

Panelists:
Kenneth Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Government
Alexandra Cirone, Assistant Professor, Government
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann, Associate Professor, History

Smith v. Allwright at University of Kentucky

Lonnie Smith Votes in 1944 Primary

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE.]

The University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) pleased to announce a new exhibit titled “Black Voters, White Primaries." Using case files from the papers of Supreme Court Justice Stanley Forman Reed, as well as other archival materials from the collections, the exhibit explores how Smith v. Allwright (1944) helped end the “white primary," a voter suppression tool that served as the first line of attack—and often the only one needed—to prevent Black Americans from voting in the Jim Crow South. BONUS: UK Rosenberg College of Law Professor Josh Douglas weighs in on voter suppression this election season.

The exhibit was created as part of UK’s John G. Heyburn II Initiative for Excellence in the Federal Judiciary, a non-partisan endeavor devoted to the preservation and study of federal judicial history, with a particular focus on Kentuckians in the federal courts. 

Credit for image:  “Courtesy University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center”

Zelden on Talking Legal History

 New on “Talking Legal History” with Siobhan M. M. Barco is her interview of Charles L. Zelden

"about the new expanded edition of his book, Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Growing Crisis in American Democracy (University Press of Kansas, 2020). Zelden is a professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Nova Southeastern University’s Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches courses in history, government and legal studies.

"In this third expanded edition Zelden offers a powerful history of voting rights and elections in America since 2000. Bush v. Gore exposes the growing crisis by detailing the numerous ways in which the unlearned and wrongly learned “lessons of 2000” have impacted American election law through the growth of voter suppression via legislation and administrative rulings, and, provides a clear warning of how unchecked partisanship arising out of Bush v. Gore threatens to undermine American democracy in general and the 2020 election in particular."

–Dan Ernst

The 19th Amendment @ 100 @ St. Johns Law

 [We have the following announcement.   DRE]

The St. John’s Law Review invites you to explore the past, present, and future of women’s rights in the United States during our 2020 symposium Commemorating the 100th Anniversary of the 19th Amendment. Registration here.

Women have always played a vital role in shaping the cultural landscape of America by persistently demanding equality and opportunity. In 1920, the first women exercised their newly secured constitutional right to participate in our democracy, 244 years after this country’s founding. For most non-white women, however, the fight for voting rights continued for decades. For some, the fight is ongoing.

Now, 100 years later, immense progress has been made. The current landscape would be unrecognizable to the suffragettes of the early 20th century. Gender equality, however, is still far from a reality. This symposium will explore the state of gender equality in America, what we can learn from the past 100 years, and what the next 100 years should look like.

Keynote Address:
Taunya Banks, University of Maryland School of Law

Panelists:
Alissa Gomez, University of Houston Law Center
Kit Johnson, The University of Oklahoma College of Law
Cassandra Jones Havard, University of Baltimore School of Law
Nora Demleitner, Washington and Lee University School of Law
Mikah K. Thompson, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law
Nicole Ligon, Duke Law School

Moderators:
Cheryl L. Wade, St. John's University School of Law
Rosemary Salomone, St. John’s University School of Law
Catherine Duryea, St. John’s University School of Law

A Symposium on Race, Citizenship and Women's Right to Vote

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The symposium Citizenship and Suffrage: Race, Citizenship, and Women’s Right to Vote on the Nineteenth Amendment’s Centennial, sponsored by the Washington College of Law, American University, will take place online via Zoom on Tuesday, October 6, from 05:00PM - 06:30PM.

The event will describe how citizenship acquisition and citizenship-stripping laws barred women who married noncitizens, as well as women of color generally, from exercising their right to vote even after the 19th Amendment was ratified. Speakers will discuss the history of these laws and then connect these historical events to the challenges to accessing the ballot today.

Panelists include Professor Rose Cuison-Villazor (Rutgers Law School and WCL alum); Professor Kunal Parker (Miami Law School); Celina Stewart (League of Women Voters); Professor Leti Volpp (Berkeley Law School). Professor Amanda Frost (WCL) will moderate.

Morley on Partisan Gerrymandering and State Constitutions

Michael Morley, Florida State University College of Law, has posted Partisan Gerrymandering and State Constitutions:

Since the U.S. Supreme Court held in Rucho v. Common Cause that partisan gerrymandering claims are non-justiciable under the U.S. Constitution, reformers have shifted their focus to pursuing such claims under state constitutions. In some cases, longstanding state constitutional provisions have been re-interpreted to prohibit partisan gerrymandering. In others, state constitutions have been expressly amended to either forbid partisan gerrymandering or transfer authority over drawing congressional and legislative district lines from the state legislature to independent redistricting commissions.

The U.S. Constitution does not confer authority to regulate federal elections on states as entities, however, but rather specifically on the “Legislature” of each state. The “independent state legislature doctrine” teaches that a state constitution is legally incapable of imposing substantive restrictions on the authority over federal elections that the U.S. Constitution confers directly and specifically on a state’s legislature. Over the past 130 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly adopted conflicting positions on the doctrine without recognizing its deep historical roots or normative justifications.

The independent state legislature doctrine reflects the prevailing understanding of states, Congress, and other actors throughout the Nineteenth Century, and was consistently applied during that period across a broad range of circumstances. It protects important structural considerations and is consistent with the political theory underlying the U.S. Constitution’s election-related provisions. Properly understood, the independent state legislature doctrine is a powerful, largely overlooked obstacle to the use of state constitutions to combat partisan gerrymandering.

–Dan Ernst

Weekend Roundup

• LaborOnline, the blog of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, has been hosting a symposium, introduced by Eileen Boris, on recent LHB Guest Blogger Nate Holdren's Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era.

•  Catch the latest Legal History Podcast: Philip Thai discusses his book, The War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast with Siobhan Barco. We announced the book here. 

• Over at Strict Scrutiny, Adam Cohen is interviewed about his book Imbeciles: The Supreme Court, American Eugenics, And The Sterilization Of Carrie Buck.

• The deadline for applying to the previously announced constitutional history seminar with Josh Chafetz and David Pozen has been extended to September 9.

• The 13th annual Court History and Continuing Legal Education Symposium, “An Election Fraud Case for the Ages: U.S. v. Aczel,” will take place in a virtual session Friday, Nov. 20 from 4 to 5 p.m.  Journalist Sasha Issenberg will explore the story behind U.S. v. Aczel, a trial in federal court of the mayor, chief of police, and other prominent officials in Terre Haute, Indiana, for voter suppression in 1914.  More.

• ICYMI: Martha Jones's search to find out if her grandmother voted (NYT), and Felice Batlan discovers that her great-grandmother lost her US citizenship under the Expatriation Act of 1907 (WaPo).  Garrett Epps on birthright citizenship and Kamala Harris (The Atlantic).

 Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Weekend Roundup

• Drinking with Historians, a webinar hosted by Matt Gabriele and Varsha Venkatsubramanian, has hosted Gautham Rao and now Karl Shoemaker to chat about their research this summer. You can sign up for the Friday 6pm ET sessions here. The videos go up afterwards here. 

• For your syllabi: ideas for teaching legal history through fiction (here) and film (here and here), from the past couple of summers.

• Congratulations to UVA Law’s Cynthia Nicoletti for her receipt of the Supreme Court Historical Society’s Hughes-Gossett Award for the best article in the Journal of Supreme Court History for “Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase and the Permanency of the Union.”

• The Lawbook Exchange has published a new catalogue, Noteworthy Publications Related to Early English Law. 

• The Organization of American History has suspended the name of the Avery Craven Award for its award in Civil War and Reconstruction History.  

• Bernard Bailyn has died. (NYT)

• The documentary "Vote HERE" draws upon the insights of Charles Zelden, Nova Southeastern University.

• ICYMI: How the Electoral College Was Nearly Abolished in 1970 (History Channel). 

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Weekend Roundup

• Two new posts at Talking Legal History.  Guest Host Lesa Redmond, a first year student in the Department of History at Duke University, interviews Paul Finkelman, President of Gratz College, on his recently published Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South, 2d ed. (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2020).  Siobhan M.M. Barco discusses Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Cambridge University Press, 2020) with authors Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross.

• Congratulations to Annette Gordon-Reed on her University Professorship at Harvard University (Crimson; Gazette).

• Now available as a free download, Racism in America: A Reader, with a Foreword by Annette Gordon-Reed. (HUP).  “At Harvard University Press, we’ve had the honor of publishing some of the most influential books on the subject. The excerpts in this volume—culled from works of history, law, sociology, medicine, economics, critical theory, philosophy, art, and literature—are an invitation to understand anti-Black racism through the eyes of our most incisive commentators.”  TOC here.

• Also available as a free download, the latest issue of the journal Capitalism, including the article Capitalism when Labor was Capital: Slavery, Power, and Price in Antebellum America, by Caitlin Rosenthal.

• We've learned from Cambridge University Press that, after a Covid-19 related delay, the latest Law and History Review has been printed and will soon be mailed.

• The directors of the FDR and LBJ Libraries discuss the friendship between the two presidents on Wednesday, August 5, at 2pm on Facebook Premiere in a session entitled The New Deal to the Great Society.

• The National Constitution Center announces the opening of its exhibit The 19th Amendment: How Women Won the Vote on August 26.

• Much of interest in the latest (34:1) issue of Studies in American Political Development.  Check out, for example, Paul Musgrave, “Bringing the State Police In: The Diffusion of U.S. Statewide Policing Agencies, 1905–1941.”

• Now available as an e-pub on Amazon Kindle: Law's Picture Books: The Yale Law Library Collection.

• White Supremacy and Historical Memory: Collegiate and Suburban Division.  University of Chicago and Stephen A. Douglas. UNC Chapel Hill and Charles B. Aycock, Julian S. Carr and Josephus Daniels.  Chevy Chase Advisory Neighborhood Commission and Francis G. Newlands.

• Cindy Ewing (University of Missouri) has won the Lynne Rienner Publishers Award for Best Dissertation (ISA) and the Oxford University Press USA Dissertation Prize in International History (SHAFR) for her 2018 dissertation (Yale), "The Asian Unity Project: Human Rights, Third World Solidarity, and the United Nations, 1945-1955."

• Fei-Hsien Wang (Indiana University) received a commendation from the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing's DeLong Book History Prize for Pirates and Publishers: A Social History of Copyright in Modern China. The book was featured in the International Society for Chinese Law and History's last Summer Book Talk on July 30.

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Lindsay M. Chervinsky (Institute for Thomas Paine Studies/nternational Center for Jefferson Studies), "George Washington invoked executive privilege. But he’d reject Barr’s version"; Dana Frank (University of California, Santa Cruz), "Congresswomen of color have always fought back against sexism"; and more.  

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Zelden's "Bush v. Gore" (Expanded)

Charles L. Zelden, Nova Southeastern University, has published a Third Expanded Edition of Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Growing Crisis in American Democracy (University Press of Kansas):

Who could forget the Supreme Court’s controversial 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore or the 2000 presidential campaign and election that preceded it? Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, endless recounts, raucous allegations, and a constitutional crisis were all roiled into a confusing and potentially dangerous mix—until the Supreme Court decision allowed George W. Bush to become the 43rd President of the United States, despite losing the popular vote to Al Gore.

Praised by scholars and political pundits alike, the original edition of Charles Zelden’s book set a new standard for our understanding of that monumental decision. A probing chronicle and critique of the vexing and acrimonious affair, it offered the most accurate and up-to-date analysis of a remarkable episode in American politics. Highly readable, its comprehensive coverage, depth of documentation and detail, and analytic insights remain unrivaled on the subject.

In this third expanded edition Zelden offers a powerful history of voting rights and elections in America since 2000. Bush v. Gore exposes the growing crisis by detailing the numerous ways in which the unlearned and wrongly learned “lessons of 2000” have impacted American election law through the growth of voter suppression via legislation and administrative rulings, and, provides a clear warning of how unchecked partisanship arising out of Bush v. Gore threatens to undermine American democracy in general and the 2020 election in particular.

--Dan Ernst

Gaughan on Madison and Citizen's United

Anthony J. Gaughan, Drake University Law School, has posted James Madison, Citizens United, and the Constitutional Problem of Corruption which appears in the American University Law Review 69 (2020): 101:

James Madison (LC)

One of the most controversial decisions in the modern history of the Supreme Court is Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court struck down the ban on corporate independent expenditures. The majority defined corruption in narrow terms and held that quid pro quo corruption was the only constitutionally permissible basis for campaign finance regulation.

The decision set off a storm of outrage. President Obama even took the remarkable step of condemning the ruling during his State of the Union Address. Recent polls show that the public still overwhelmingly opposes the majority’s ruling in Citizens United.

On the tenth anniversary of Citizens United, this Article puts the constitutional problem of corruption in historical context by examining the political career of James Madison. The Citizens United case turned on the First Amendment’s freedom of speech clause. Madison wrote the First Amendment while he served in Congress. He also played a key role in drafting the Constitution and in authoring the Federalist Papers, which explained and defended the Constitution during the ratification debates.

Nearly two centuries after his death, Madison looms as large as ever in American constitutional law. The Supreme Court still consults his writings and career for guidance in interpreting the Constitution. Madison’s appeal even transcends traditional divides, as justices across the ideological spectrum routinely cite him.

The story of Madison’s political career thus brings a unique and important perspective to the Citizens United ruling. The underlying issues of free speech—as well as the threat of corruption posed by powerful financial interests—were well-known to Madison. One of the most important constitutional theorists in history, he was also a career politician, serving as a four-term member of Congress and later as a two-term President of the United States. In addition, he helped Thomas Jefferson found the Democratic-Republican Party (known today as the Democratic Party), which meant that Madison spent his life not only as a public intellectual but also as a practical politician engaged in party building. Madison’s political experiences thus provide a revealing glimpse into how the First Amendment’s author approached the issue of money in politics when it came to his own election campaigns.

--Dan Ernst.  H/t: Legal Theory Blog

The Nineteenth Amendment at 100: Essays by Siegel, Asanloo, Mayeri

The Yale Law Journal Forum recently published a collection of essays on The Nineteenth Amendment at 100. We've mentioned Reva Siegel's contribution, but missed two others. Arzoo Asanloo (University of Washington, Seattle) wrote about "Lessons from the Suffrage Movement in Iran":

The suffrage movement in Iran achieved its goal of formally enfranchising women in 1963, through a referendum in which women voted. This Essay explores the movement for Iranian women’s suffrage in three phases. First, it examines ’the mid-nineteenth-century pre-suffrage political climate that created the conditions for some to call for women’s enfranchisement and the founding of a women’s movement during a period of modernization in the mid-twentieth century alongside debates about Iranian women’s roles. Second, this Essay considers the success of the women’s suffrage movement as part of a broader package of reforms that transferred power from the aristocracy and clerical leaders to the monarchy, despite political resistance. Third, it explores the challenges to Iranian women’s rights after the 1979 revolution, which maintained women’s right to vote, but initially suspended other hard-fought rights in the domain of family law, as part of an effort by the new Islamic republic to redefine women’s roles as a technique of branding the new state.

The lessons from the Iranian women’s suffrage movement show that voting alone is not a cure for women’s equal enfranchisement in all sectors of society. Women’s entry into the political sphere, however, raises and maintains demands for women’s rights in society as a key legitimating factor for the state. The Iranian women’s movement was a multi-dimensional effort with different factions sometimes sparring over the goals of the mission. Debates about women’s rights in Iran and elsewhere reveal that women’s societal roles still serve as important cultural tropes whose meaning powerful actors fight to define and control.

Serena Mayeri (University of Pennsylvania) contributed a piece titled "After Suffrage: The Unfinished Business of Feminist Legal Advocacy":

This Essay considers post-suffrage women’s citizenship through the eyes of Pauli Murray, a key figure at the intersection of the twentieth-century movements for racial justice and feminism. Murray drew critical lessons from the woman suffrage movement and the Reconstruction-era disintegration of an abolitionist-feminist alliance to craft legal and constitutional strategies that continue to shape equality law and advocacy today. Murray placed African American women at the center of a vision of universal human rights that relied upon interracial and intergenerational alliances and anticipated what scholars later named intersectionality. As Murray foresaw, women of color formed a feminist vanguard in the second half of the twentieth century, pioneering social movements and legal claims that enjoyed significant success. But Murray’s hope that women’s solidarity could overcome ideological divides and the legacy of white supremacy went unfulfilled. As a result, the more expansive visions of racial, sexual, economic, and reproductive justice that intersectional advocacy produced remain the most pressing unfinished business of sex equality today, at the Nineteenth Amendment’s centennial.

The whole collection is available here.

-- Karen Tani

Weekend Roundup

• The first 2020 issue of The Docket, the online sidekick of Law and History Review, is now live.

• The Historical Society of the New York Courts has kicked off its Celebrate Diversity Month with a blog post on Jane Bolin by its Board member David L. Goodwin and a link to last year's panel on the lawyer and judge at the Yale Law School.  See also this.

• When contemplating your viewing options as you shelter in place, remember the Leon Silverman lectures of the Supreme Court Historical Society archived at C-SPAN. The complete list of lectures is here.

• New from Hart: Lawyers in 21st-Century Societies, vol. 1: National Reports, edited by Richard L Abel, Ole Hammerslev, Hilary Sommerlad and Ulrike Schultz.

• ICYMI: John Fabian Witt on How the Republican Party Took Over the Supreme Court in the New Republic.  Heather Cox Richardson on vote suppression and the Republican Party on HNN.  Garrett Epps in the Atlantic on Adrian Vermuele's "Common Good Constitutionalism."  Jacobson v. Massachusetts back in the news after being deployed in anti-abortion litigation.

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.  

Weekend Roundup

• Congratulations to my fellow Legal History Blogger Karen Tani upon being named the
  University of Pennsylvania’s 24th Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor, effective July 1.  DRE

• TOC for Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis / Revue d'Histoire du Droit / The Legal History Review 87:3 (December 2019).

• New from Law and History Review and Cambridge Core: Speaking the Unspeakable: Buggery, Law, and Community Surveillance in New South Wales, 1788–1838 by Luke Taylor.

• On April 3, the University of Colorado Law School’s Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law hosts its 2020 Ira C. Rothgerber Jr. Conference on Constitutional Law on "Women’s Enfranchisement: Beyond the 19th Amendment," with three panels and a keynote by Reva Siegel.  More.

• The Supreme Court Historical Society has added a 3rd webcast to its site, a discussion with author David Bruce Smith on his children's book, American Hero - John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States.  More.

• ICYMI: Slavery in East Brunswick, NJ.  Stanford Law’s Rabia Belt on caucus voting and democracy.  Andrea Dennis on Mass Surveillance and Black Legal History.  "Lincoln collector and scholar Guy Fraker” donates a pleading written by Abraham Lincoln to the  McLean County Museum of History.

• Update: Paul J. du Plessis delivered the Alan Watson Memorial Lectures 2020, entitled The Civil Law in Three Acts, at the School of Law, Edinburgh University.

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

McClellan on Early Women's Rights Activists and the 14th Amendment

Angus McClellan, Claremont Graduate University, has posted Early Women's Rights Activists and the Meaning of the 14th Amendment:

The purpose of this paper is to consider the meaning of the 14th Amendment as it applies to women in the United States through the perspective of the women’s rights litigants, advocates, and their allies in the 1860s and 1870s. Originalism as a method for constitutional interpretation can take many forms, including giving weight to the original intent of the drafters of the Constitution or its amendments, or deferring to the understandings of the ratifiers in state conventions and legislatures, or perhaps giving weight to the “public meaning” or “public understanding” of the documents by considering newspaper editorials, pamphlets, and dictionary definitions in use at the times of their ratifications. This paper is an originalist approach to understanding the 14th Amendment by turning to a group of people who were particularly active in the earliest debates on its meaning. Modern interpretations as well as those from contemporaneous statesmen and jurists will be considered as well to provide some orientation and comparison.

To map this argument broadly, modern scholars argue that the 14th Amendment protects some or all categories of individuals within the jurisdiction of the United States, and they variously claim that Section 1 protects substantive or procedural civil, political, natural, fundamental, or common law rights, or even social equality. Adding to this the variety of definitions of rights or “equality,” there is a wide spectrum of scholarly thought on what the 14th Amendment protects, and to whom it applies. Part II be divided between political efforts and legal efforts. It will focus first on the political efforts and the accompanying interpretations of the 14th Amendment from some of the most prominent activists during the 1860s and 1870s. It will then explore the legal arguments of women’s rights activists and their attorneys engaged in litigation from three notable cases in the earliest days of the 14th Amendment.

--Dan Ernst

WLH 30:1-2: Woman Suffrage in the US West

Western Legal History 30:1-2 (2019), is a symposium issue on woman suffrage in the American West, with an overview, “How the Woman’s Vote was Won in the West,” by Rebecca  J.  Mead and contributions on Alaska, Arizona, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.  Also: book reviews.  The issue is available here.

–Dan Ernst

Siegel on the 19th Amendment Now

Neil Siegel, Duke University School of Law, has posted Why the Nineteenth Amendment Matters Today: A Citizen's Guide for the Centennial:

Susan B. Anthony (LC)

This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the ratification of the Nineteenth
Amendment to the United States Constitution, a radically pro-democratic amendment that empowered roughly ten million women to vote in a general election for the first time. Given the practical and expressive significance of the Amendment, it is appropriate that the United States is honoring the occasion. But Americans might do more than honor their shared past. They might be encouraged to think about why the story of the Nineteenth Amendment matters to Americans living today. That story includes a half-century of social movement contestation over whether permitting women to vote would destroy or democratize the American family and the American constitutional structure. This Essay revisits the story of the Nineteenth Amendment—an unfinished narrative of both disappointment and hope—in the service of identifying reasons why that story relates to the lives of contemporary Americans. Its overarching objective is to suggest that the full story of the Amendment has always involved much more than a narrow debate over a determinate decision rule regarding women’s access to the franchise. To accomplish that objective, the Essay makes four points in four parts. The first two explain when and how voting rights for all women slowly became a reality, and the final two identify some implications of that history for American constitutional law and contemporary constitutional politics.

Part I considers which women were enfranchised when and why it matters. Part II considers some of the groups (men) and structures (federalism) that both impeded and facilitated woman suffrage. Part III explains the link between restrictions on woman suffrage and the social subordination of women to men, showing how the anti-subordination rationale of the Nineteenth Amendment bears on both its own interpretation and the interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause by the courts. Part IV turns to the contemporary implications of the story of the Nineteenth Amendment for American constitutional politics, including debates over the Equal Rights Amendment, unequal pay for equal work, paid family and self-care leave, and restrictions on access to contraception and abortion.

–Dan Ernst