Weekend Roundup

• We recently noted the publication of Thurgood Marshall: Race, Rights, and the Struggle for a More Perfect Union, by Charles L. Zelden (Nova Southeastern University). Follow the link to hear him discuss the book with a local PBS station.  

• Via History News Network: Revolutionary Moments has joined the blogosphere. Here's a snippet of its first post: "With the world once again filled with anticipation and dread of revolution, it is reasonable to examine what relevant past events our predecessors experienced. . . . [T]he moderators propose to introduce questions relevant to current events with the notion that scholars who study revolutions throughout the globe will comment."

•  From the Chronicle of Higher Ed: "Ph.D. Attrition: How Much Is Too Much?"

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

Heins reviews Braukman on the Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965

Via our friends at H-Law, we have a review of Stacy Lorraine Braukman, Communists and Perverts under the Palms: The Johns Committee in Florida, 1956-1965 (University Press of Florida, 2012). Here's an excerpt, from reviewer Marjorie Heins (New York University):

When the Florida legislature created a committee in 1956 to investigate organizations that advocated violations of state law, the clearly understood purpose was to brand the NAACP, the state’s leading proponent of ending segregation, as communist-run and un-American. Using anticommunism to discredit the civil rights movement was hardly a new tactic during the McCarthy era, but the Florida Legislative Investigation Committee (FLIC), or Johns Committee (named in honor of its sponsor, state senator Charley Johns) was conspicuously unsuccessful in its efforts to stigmatize or intimidate the NAACP.

So, seeking to maintain its political credibility and its funding, the committee soon turned its attention from the assumed evils of communism and race-mixing to those of homosexuality. It initiated a witch hunt that was unique in U.S. history for its combination of prurience, invasion of privacy, twisted moralism, and psychological ignorance. Stacy Braukman’s Communists and Perverts under the Palms, despite its questionable title, provides a useful, straightforward account of the campaign.

The full review is available here.

[Like what you see? H-Net recently issued a plea for donations so that it can continue providing content like this free of charge and without commercial advertising. Follow the link for more information.]

Fromer on a 19th-Century Trade Secrecy Case

Jeanne C. Fromer, NYU Law, has posted A Legal Tangle of Secrets and Disclosures in Trade: Tabor v. Hoffman and Beyond, which is forthcoming in Intellectual Property at the Edge: The Contested Contours of IP, ed. Rochelle Cooper Dreyfuss and Jane C. Ginsburg  (Cambridge University Press, 2013).  Here is the abstract:

In this book chapter, I explore an early trade secrecy case from New York, Tabor v. Hoffman, decided in 1889. A study of this case indicates that many present-day concerns about overlapping edges between trade secrecy and patent laws — and their interaction and interference with one another's aims — were latent, if not overtly raised, when American courts were just beginning to articulate the common law right of trade secrecy. After telling Tabor’s tale, I investigate some of the longstanding interactions and tensions between trade secrecy and patent laws, through the lens of the regimes’ encouragements of disclosure in some ways and secrecy in others. Moreover, even though trade secrecy law is predominantly focused on secrecy, in some ways it enables disclosure. By contrast, although patent law is preoccupied with disclosure, in some ways, it permits and encourages secrecy. In all, patent law and trade secrecy together create a legal tangle of secrets and disclosures in trade. A full review of the Tabor case suggests that the innovator there was able to take advantage both of trade secrecy’s disclosures and patent law’s secrets. The court did not appreciate this possibility, instead focusing on the unfairness to the plaintiff of the defendant’s appropriation.

Franklin Research Grants from the American Philosophical Society

[We have the following announcement.]

Since 1933, the American Philosophical Society has awarded small grants to scholars in order to support the cost of research leading to publication in all areas of knowledge. In 2012-2013 the Franklin Research Grants program awarded $435,000 to 85 scholars, and the Society expects to make a similar number of awards in this year's competition. The Franklin program is particularly designed to help meet the costs of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes; the purchase of microfilm, photocopies, or equivalent research materials; the costs associated with fieldwork; or laboratory research expenses.

Fukuyama reviews Bobbitt, "The Garments of Court and Palace"

Financial Times has published a review, by Frances Fukuyama, of Philip Bobbit, The Garments of Court and Palace: Machiavelli and the World that He Made (Atlantic Books). Bobbit, Fukuyama writes, is "a constitutional lawyer, former US government official and author of the well-received The Shield of Achilles (2002)." (Readers of Above the Law might also recognize him as "The James Bond of Columbia Law School.") The full review is available here.

Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily

Historians Discuss Duscuss Same-Sex Marriage and VRA Cases

Kenneth Mack, Ellen Fitzpatrick, George Chauncey and Michael Beschloss on the PBS Newshour last week.

Rest in Peace, Edmund S. Morgan, 1916-2013

From the New York Times: "Edmund S. Morgan, an award-winning historian who illuminated the intellectual world of the Puritans, explored the paradox of freedom and slavery in colonial Virginia and, in his 80s, wrote a best-selling biography of Benjamin Franklin, died on Monday in New Haven. He was 97." Read on here.

To watch a 2009 conversation between Morgan and Annette Gordon-Reed, follow the link to the Gilder Lehrman Center website.

Shaviro reviews Steil, "The Battle of Bretton Woods"

Over at JOTWELL, Daniel Shaviro (New York University) has posted a review of Benn Steil, The Battle of Bretton Woods: John Maynard Keynes, Harry Dexter White, and the Making of a New World Order (Princeton University Press, 2013). Here are the first two paragraphs:

It’s always nice when you can combine outside reading for fun with something that is educational and at least indirectly professionally relevant.  Benn Steil’s economic and diplomatic history of the 1944 Bretton Woods conference, which established the post-World War II global framework for currency relationships and international trade (while also creating the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) filled this niche for me during a quiet weekend.  While the subject is not literally or directly related to taxation, it touches so closely on finance, macroeconomic policy, and international trade as to occupy a common universe with overlapping concerns.

The book tells a lively story, in which U.S. Treasury economist Harry Dexter White – an ardent economic nationalist yet also a Soviet mole – thoroughly squelched the great English economist John Maynard Keynes (the U.K.’s chief negotiator) in establishing the postwar regime for trade, currency, and capital flows.  With the U.S. economically dominant and the U.K. reduced to begging for loans, Keynes would have had no chance even had he been better at converting his analytical and epigrammatic skills into diplomatic ones.

Read on here.

Dubber on Ultima Ratio in Criminal Law

Markus D. Dubber, University of Toronto Law, has posted Ultima Ratio as Caveat Dominus: Legal Principles, Police Maxims, and the Critical Analysis of Law.  Here is the abstract:    

A comparative and historical analysis of the so-called ultima ratio principle reveals that, despite its Latinate veneer, it is neither ancient nor universal, but a recent addition to the German criminal law canon. Upon further inquiry, ultima ratio also turns out to be ill-defined, undermotivated, and toothless, a fundamental legal principle and distinctive feature of criminal law honored in its ubiquitous breach. In the end, the iron legal principle of ultima ratio may appear more like the flexible police maxim of caveat dominus. Its frequent invocation suggests the need to reconceive legal science as a critical analysis of law in general, and of law's supposed principles in particular.

Research Fellowship for European Administrative History

[We have the following announcement.]

Doctoral and postdoctoral students of European Administrative History, looking to finance the final phase of their research projects, may now apply for a JEVFellowship.  Named after its donor and publisher of the Yearbook of European Administrative History, Prof. Dr. Erk Volkmar Heyen, the JEV-Fellowship addresses excellent young researchers regardless their nationality and offers project funding for twelve months at maximum. Application deadline is 30 September 2013.

Prof. Dr. Erk Volkmar Heyen, former Professor of Public Law and European Administrative History at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald, Germany, was publisher of the Yearbook of European Administrative History from 1989 to 2008. Via the German University Foundation in Bonn, he recently donated a research fellowship in the field of European Administrative History. The so-called JEV-Fellowship aims to benefit the next generation of researchers and is now open to applicants for the first time. It particularly addresses doctoral and postdoctoral students of any nationality who are able to finalize their projects within a period of no longer than twelve months in case of funding. The JEV-Fellowship is open to all historical disciplines, provided the research project addresses an aspect of European administrative history within the period of the 16th to the 20th century.

The research topic should reach beyond national scope. Comparative approaches are welcome. Applications in German or English may be submitted until 30 September 2013 and should be sent in electronic form to: Priv.-Doz. Dr. Peter Collin at collin@rg.mpg.de. For further information please consult the original call for proposals.

The stipend amount is based on the usual rates for doctoral fellows of the German Research Foundation. In case of research being done outside Germany, the very local conditions will be taken into consideration. Unfortunately, marital status will not impact on the amount of funding. Travel or other costs may not be reimbursed.

Upon recommendation of a jury the Board of the German University Foundation in Bonn decides on and awards the JEV-Fellowship in January 2014.

The Greatest Organization in the World ...

Hughes in 1925 (credit)

An authoritative source for one of my favorite observations of Charles Evans Hughes was unexpectedly hard to track down.  In case anyone else finds the quotation timely, a citation for it is “Hughes Asks Nation to Join World Court as 1,000 Honor Him,” New York Times, November 11, 1925, 6:

The American Government is a vast cooperative endeavor.  It is the greatest organization in the world for preventing things from being done.  It can move swiftly when the essential forces work together; otherwise, it makes a noise but does not move.

Bush on Unauthorized Practice of Law in U.S. Economic History

Michael Bush, West Virginia University, has posted From the Great Depression to the Great Recession: (Non-)Lawyers Practicing Law, which is to appear in West Virginia Law Review 115 (2013).  Here is the abstract

In most American jurisdictions, a practitioner of legal services must have a license to practice law. However, history illustrates that economic recessions increase demand to deregulate the legal profession and allow non-lawyers to provide legal services. This article is a defense of licensing requirements for legal services, because the rule of law is too important to a civilized democracy to let it be undermined by quick judgments in the shadows of bad economies. Ultimately, legal services will be governed- by courts, legislatures, a licensed bar, or the free market. However, due to the critical nature of the rule of law in our society, the licensed bar which is bound by ethical duties and minimum competencies, is in the best position to regulate.

Book Review Roundup

• 

  Joseph J. Ellis is out with a new book: Revolutionary Summer: The Birth of American Independence (Alfred A. Knopf). The New York Times reviews it here. (Subscribers to the Wall Street Journal may read another take on the book here.)

• Ellis's book, along with recent works by Richard Beeman and Nathaniel Philbrick, is also in the spotlight over at Slate. "Why do popular histories of the War of Independence ignore modern scholarship?" Eric Herschthal asks.

• From the Los Angeles Times: A review of Travis McDade, Thieves of Book Row: New York's Most Notorious Rare Book Ring and the Man Who Stopped It (Oxford University Press).

• From History News Network: Luther Spoehr reviews, here, Erik Christiansen, Channeling the Past: Politicizing History in Postwar America (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013).

The Book Review Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers. 

Weekend Roundup

• The most recent issue of Perspectives on History (the newsmagazine of the American Historical Association) includes roundtables on the Supreme Court's decisions in Windsor and Fisher. Participants include Laura Edwards (Duke University) and Nancy Cott (Harvard University).

• More news from the AHA: if you're in the D.C. area for research or otherwise, join fellow friends of the Association on July 9th for the third annual Summer Reception. More info is available here.

• From the Huffington Post: "What's in a Naim?" Melissa Murray (UC Berkeley) offers "[t]he history of Naim and Loving" as "a useful frame for understanding the Court's decision in Perry." 

• In honor of the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, the editors of the History News Network have compiled the best resources on the topic. Check them out here. 

• Just in time for someone's vacation is this post on the Lake George Trespass Case.

• "The Humanities, Declining? Not According to the Numbers," according to Michael Bérubé (Pennsylvania State University). Read on here, at the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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

Blackman, "Oklahoma's Indian New Deal"

These past few years I've developed more than a passing interest in Native American history. A section of a dissertation chapter turned into a book chapter (and soon, I hope, an article) about Native American efforts to claim state welfare benefits in the Southwest in the 1940s and 1950s. Because of this project, I deeply appreciate the great work being done at the intersection of Native American history and legal history, and I hunger for even more, especially on twentieth-century topics.

One avenue that scholars continue to explore is the impact of the "Indian New Deal" on particular people and places. Jon S. Blackman's new book, Oklahoma's Indian New Deal (University of Oklahoma Press), is in this vein. Cribbing now from the book's Amazon site:

Among the New Deal programs that transformed American life in the 1930s was legislation known as the Indian New Deal, whose centerpiece was the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) of 1934. Oddly, much of that law did not apply to Native residents of Oklahoma, even though a large percentage of the country’s Native American population resided there in the 1930s and no other state was home to so many different tribes. The Oklahoma Indian Welfare Act (OIWA), passed by Congress in 1936, brought Oklahoma Indians under all of the IRA’s provisions, but included other measures that applied only to Oklahoma’s tribal population. This first book-length history of the OIWA explains the law’s origins, enactment, implementation, and impact, and shows how the act played a unique role in the Indian New Deal.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, white farmers, entrepreneurs, and lawyers used allotment policies and other legal means to gain control of thousands of acres of Indian land in Oklahoma. To counter the accumulated effects of this history, the OIWA specified how tribes could strengthen government by adopting new constitutions, and it enabled both tribes and individual Indians to obtain financial credit and land. Virulent opposition to the bill came from oil, timber, mining, farming, and ranching interests. Jon S. Blackman’s narrative of the legislative battle reveals the roles of bureaucrats, politicians, and tribal members in drafting and enacting the law.

Although the OIWA encouraged tribes to organize for political and economic purposes, it yielded mixed results. It did not produce a significant increase in Indian land ownership in Oklahoma, and only a small percentage of Indian households applied for OIWA loans. Yet the act increased member participation in tribal affairs, enhanced Indian relations with non-Indian businesses and government, promoted greater Indian influence in government programs—and, as Blackman shows, became a springboard to the self-determination movements of the 1950s and 1960s.

More information is available here.

Penningroth on African American Divorce, 1865-1930

Dylan C. Penningroth, Northwestern University, has posted an item from his backlist, African American Divorce in Virginia and Washington, D.C., 1865-1930, which appeared in the Journal of Family History 33 (January 2008): 21-35.  Here is the abstract:    

This article explores the dynamics of divorce among African Americans from 1865 through the early years of the Great Migration. It builds on recent socio-legal scholarship that sees law as local, experiential, and improvised; drawing on local court records from Virginia and Washington, D.C. By focusing on divorce, a legal proceeding in which the litigants were nearly always of the same race, the article recovers under-examined dimensions of African American life, and suggests ways of moving beyond familiar dyads of race relations. Far from avoiding southern lower courts, African Americans pressed hundreds of suits; and participated vigorously in the legal process as litigants, clients, and witnesses. The legal process also involved translating popular notions, including those of gender and race, into legal categories. Black women who ended their marriages had to navigate a treacherous “politics of respectability." Finally, African American divorce was linked in complex ways to the Great Migration.

Born on the 4th of July: Kawashima, "The Tokyo Rose Case"

The University Press of Kansas has added a new volume to its Landmark Law Cases & American Society series: Yasuhide Kawashima, The Tokyo Rose Case: Treason on Trial (2013). Here's a description:

Iva Toguri (credit: Harry S. Truman Library)

Iva Ikuku Toguri (1916–2006) was an American citizen, born on the 4th of July. Her parents, first-generation Japanese Americans, embraced their new nation and raised Iva to think, talk, and act like a patriotic American. But, despite her allegiance to the United States, she was forced to spend most of her adult life denying that she was a traitor or that she was World War II’s infamous Tokyo Rose.

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Iva was nursing an ailing aunt in Japan. Prevented from returning to home, she was viewed with suspicion by the Japanese authorities. They hounded her to renounce her American citizenship, which she adamantly refused to do. Pressured to find employment, she joined Radio Tokyo. Known as Orphan Ann, she did nothing more than emcee brief music segments on “The Zero Hour” during the war’s last two years. She was never called “Tokyo Rose” by anyone and was but one of only a dozen or so English-speaking females heard on Japanese airwaves.

In need of money to return home after the war, she made the mistake of allowing herself to be interviewed by two ambitious journalists who were certain that she was the Tokyo Rose, even though she denied it. The published story brought Iva to the attention of American authorities who tried and convicted Iva for treason, despite the lack of evidence and a reluctant jury. She was then stripped of her citizenship and sent to prison.
Yasuhide Kawashima’s account of Toguri’s trials are deeply rooted in Japanese language sources, American legal archives, and the cultures of both nations. He identifies heroes and villains in both the United States and Japan and also highlights broader concerns: the internment of thousands of loyal Japanese Americans, the meaning of citizenship, the nation’s commitment to the idea of fair trial, the impact of tabloid journalism, and the very concept of treason.

Iva was eventually pardoned in 1977 by President Gerald Ford—she was the first person in U.S. history to be pardoned for treason—and had her citizenship restored. Yet when she died in 2006, obituaries continued to identify her as Tokyo Rose. Kafkaesque in its telling, Kawashima’s tale provides a harsh reminder that the law does not always render justice.

Weiner's Worlds of Law

Over on Worlds of Law, Marc Weiner, a former guest blogger, has three interesting posts:

• Sharp's Numbers, about Blackstone's Commentaries and a book owned by Granville Sharp housed in the Yale rare books collection 

• Maine Meets Maine, a video reflection on the historical significance of the cattle pound, joining the State of Maine and Henry Sumner Maine.

• A thread on E.B. White and international law, and more generally about certain characteristics of the midcentury legal imagination.  The final post is "Why International Law is Like Webster's Third Dictionary (at least, for E.B. White)."

The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century

[We have the following announcement.  More here.]

The Miller Center is pleased to announce the 2013–2014 "Historical Presidency" series, “The American Presidency and the Crises of the Nineteenth Century.” Organized by Gary W. Gallagher, renowned U.Va. history professor and Miller Center senior faculty associate, the inaugural season will examine executive leadership during a particularly calamitous period in our nation’s history.

Featuring the most distinguished scholars in their fields, the Miller Center’s “Historical Presidency” series will reach back into the American past in order to gain perspective on the way that presidential leadership has evolved over time, from the founding of the country to the present.

“Lincoln and Davis: War Presidents”
A Conversation with James McPherson and Gary Gallagher
September 18, 5:00 p.m., Nau Hall 101  
GARY W. GALLAGHER is the John L. Nau III Professor in the History of the American Civil War at the University of Virginia. JAMES M. MCPHERSON is the George Henry Davis '86 Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University.

“James Knox Polk and the War with Mexico”
October 16, 3:30 p.m.
DANIEL WALKER HOWE is Rhodes Professor of American History Emeritus at Oxford University and Professor of History Emeritus at UCLA. 

“Andrew Jackson and the Troubled Birth of Democracy”
November 8, 3:30 p.m.
HENRY WILLIAM BRANDS is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Sink Hole: How Kansas Crises Undid the Presidencies of Franklin Pierce and James Buchanan”
February 26, 3:30 p.m.
MICHAEL F. HOLT is Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Virginia.

“U.S. Grant and the Crisis of Reconstruction”
March 19, 3:30 p.m.
JOAN WAUGH is professor in the UCLA History Department.

“James Madison and the Brink of National Ruin”
April 16, 3:30 p.m.
ALAN TAYLOR is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor at the University of Virginia. 

Brinkley on FDR at the Roosevelt Library

[We have the following announcement.]

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum is pleased to present "Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Renewal of America," a lecture and book signing with Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University, Historian for CBS News, and author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America.  The program will be held at 7:00 p.m. on Tuesday, July 9, 2013 in the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home. Following the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will be available for a book signing and several of his books will be available for sale in the New Deal Store. Attendees can visit the Library's new permanent exhibition until 10:00 p.m. -- free of charge -- after the program. This event is free and open to the public.

Credit.

During the presentation, Dr. Brinkley will discuss Franklin D. Roosevelt and New Deal conservation, with an emphasis on FDR's creation of the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). President Roosevelt personally devised the idea for the CCC, a program to put young men aged 17-24 -- many from urban areas -- to work on conservation projects in healthy rural environments. Within three months the Corps enlisted nearly 250,000 young men. They were assigned to CCC camps around the nation.

During its 9-year existence, the CCC employed nearly 3 million men. Eleanor Roosevelt championed the CCC and, with her strong backing, a much smaller program was also created for unemployed young women. The CCC planted more than two billion trees, fought forest fires, built trails, campgrounds, and reservoirs, and aided soil conservation programs. It became one of the New Deal's most popular and successful programs. Its legacy remains today in the facilities it constructed throughout America's national forests, parks, monuments, and wildlife refuges.

Mintz on the Historians' Briefs in Windsor

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Steven Mintz asks, Does History Matter?

At a time when many question the relevance of history,  it is noteworthy that the U.S. Supreme Court case that prohibited  the federal government from undercutting a state’s decision to extend "the recognition, dignity and protection" of marriage to same-sex couples, hinged on arguments advanced by professional historians.

More

Knapp on Benjamin Austin

Aaron T. Knapp, Boston University History, has posted Law's Revolution: Benjamin Austin and the Spirit of '86, which appeared in Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities 25 (2013): 271-358.  Here is the abstract:    

In the spring of 1786, a series of newspaper essays appeared in Boston arguing that lawyers and the laws on which they relied posed a mortal threat to the republican way of life and therefore had to be eradicated forever. Authored by Benjamin Austin, Jr. under the pseudonym "Honestus," these writings sparked a substantial public dialogue extending far beyond Massachusetts’s borders and, within the Bay State, prompted the Shaysites to wage what one historian has called "the American Revolution’s final battle." The commonly held notion that the obstreperous spirit of 1786 reflected a "crisis" requiring redress, and that ratification of the Constitution thereafter resolved it, temps us to consign Critical Period radicals such as Benjamin Austin to the losing side of history. The Article pursues a contrary interpretation. It views Austin and his partisans in 1786 as seminal figures in the birth of an independent American legal culture. It traces overlooked strains of this post-Revolutionary legal culture from the Founding to the Civil War and, in the process, unsettles foundational assumptions long held dear by American legal historians.

The U.S. Legal History Survey Revisited: IV -- Methods of Evaluation -- Historiographical Essay

After a brief hiatus, I am returning to my series of posts on teaching the U.S. Legal History survey. (Earlier posts are here, here, and here). When I left off, I was pondering how to evaluate student learning. In retrospect, it might have been useful to find ways of evaluating the students throughout the course -- perhaps through shorter response papers or in-class exercises. (Do you all do this? What sort of assignments do you use?). This past semester, however, I based final grades entirely on a final assignment: either a ten-hour, essay-style take-home exam or a 20-25 page historiographical essay (student's choice).

The historiographical essay is an unusual assignment for a law school class, but I thought it worked well and I'll likely use it again. Here's how I introduced the assignment:

A historiographical essay is a review of the historical writings on a particular topic or field of study (for example, the law of slavery in the antebellum South or the “Constitutional Revolution” of 1937). Historiographical essays are rooted in the idea that there is no one, “true” history, but rather a set of overlapping interpretations, which are influenced by the historian’s time, place, and identity. How an historian interprets the past will be based on his or her values, education, theoretical perspective (e.g. Marxist, feminist, etc.), and social context, as well as by the primary sources that are available at the time.

A historiographical essay seeks to identify and explain change over time in how historians have approached a single topic. This requires, first, taking apart a number of books (five or six will do for this assignment). The essay should identify each book’s argument and demonstrate an understanding of how (i.e. with what evidence) the author built his or her argument. A successful historiographical essay will, second, link the books together, showing the ways in which the selected historians have built upon each other's work or are in dialogue with each other. Third, the essay should suggest productive lines for future inquiry: perhaps there is an angle that has not been explored, a theoretical perspective that scholars have yet to bring to bear on the topic, or a weakness that runs throughout the books under consideration. A historiographical essay need not be celebratory; indeed, it may be critical. What matters most is that the essay provides a thoughtful, nuanced portrait of the chosen field of scholarship.

Every student in this class is capable of producing an excellent historiographical essay, so do not be discouraged if you do not have a strong background in history. That said, this option might be particularly useful to students who have a deep interest in a particular topic and students interested in academic careers. 

Colman on Fashion, Sexism and the Federal Judiciary

Charles E. Colman, an Acting Assistant Professor, NYU School of Law, has posted Fashion, Sexism, and the United States Federal Judiciary, which will appear in Vestoj: The Journal of Sartorial Matters (July 2013).  Here is the abstract:    

The U.S. federal judiciary has frequently displayed a dismissive attitude toward "fashion," while simultaneously recognizing the great economic importance of clothing. As fashion was, from the formation of the United States until at least the late 1960s, associated primarily with the female sex, while judges during this time period were almost exclusively male, one naturally wonders whether the power dynamics of gender shaped the development of the law pertaining to fashion. There is good reason to believe that this has indeed been the case.

New Release: Onwuachi-Willig, "According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family"

New from Yale University Press: Angela Onwuachi-Willig, According to Our Hearts: Rhinelander v. Rhinelander and the Law of the Multiracial Family (2013). Here's the Press's description:

This landmark book looks at what it means to be a multiracial couple in the United States today. According to Our Hearts begins with a look back at a 1925 case in which a two-month marriage ends with a man suing his wife for misrepresentation of her race, and shows how our society has yet to come to terms with interracial marriage. Angela Onwuachi-Willig examines the issue by drawing from a variety of sources, including her own experiences. She argues that housing law, family law, and employment law fail, in important ways, to protect multiracial couples. In a society in which marriage is used to give, withhold, and take away status—in the workplace and elsewhere—she says interracial couples are at a disadvantage, which is only exacerbated by current law.

One of of the blurbs on the book's webpage comes from our very own Tomiko Brown-Nagin:

"According to Our Hearts is a fascinating—and sobering—account of interracial relationships in America. Onwauchi-Willig persuasively argues that the “mono-racial” family remains the social and legal standard by which all others are measured. Anyone interested in race, gender and the law will find the book an absorbing and enlightening read."

More information is available here. It looks like excerpts and the TOC will be available soon.

Weekend Roundup

• Via H-Law: a call for manuscripts from Westphalia Press.

• Although it sounds more in Property than Legal History, but Rick Hills's penetrating post on the Supreme Court's recent exaction decision explains a great deal about the Supreme Court's attempt to police local land use decision since the 1980s (with a look back to the early twentieth century).

• The Historian's Corner provides glimpses of the history of the courts of the District of Columbia Circuit.

• On the merits of browsing the stacks: in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Julio Alves (Smith College) makes the case for "a greater awareness of what we are losing in overprivileging digital tools, and a better balance of digital practices and traditional ones." 

• Also in the Chronicle of Higher Ed: Susan Sturm (Columbia Law School) explains why "'Fisher' Is Not the Point."

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

O'Connor, "Taking, Tort, or Crown Right?"

Sean M. O'Connor, University of Washington School of Law, has posted Taking, Tort, or Crown Right? The Confused Early History of Government Patent Policy, which appeared in the John Marshall Review of Intellectual Property Law 12 (2012): 145-204.  Here is the abstract:    

From the early days of the Republic, Congress and the federal courts grappled with the government’s rights to own or use patents it issued. Courts rejected the British "Crown Rights" rule that allowed the sovereign to practice whatever patents it issued. Instead, the federal government was conceptualized as a legal person on par with any other persons with regard to issued patents. But, this simple rule presented challenges as complexities arose in three intertwined patent rights scenarios. The first involved inventions by government employees. The second revolved around government and government contractor use of patents held by private citizens. And the third involved inventions by federal contractors and their employees arising under federal funding. While these three scenarios seem quite distinct today, nineteenth and early twentieth century courts often treated them as overlapping. The confusion was not resolved until the mid-twentieth century when a combination of executive branch and Congressional legislation set the roots of current government patent policy. This Article reviews the history in detail and illuminates current government patent policy debate occurring through such seemingly diverse cases as Stanford v. Roche and Zoltek Corp. v. United States.

Labor and Working-Class History Seminar at Hunter

[We have the following call for papers.]

The Labor and Working-Class History Seminar at Roosevelt House, Hunter College, City University of New York seeks proposals for seminar papers that explore the rich and diverse spectrum of labor history and lived experiences; class dynamics as informed by other social categories and identities; changes in political economy and their policies promoting economic security and other forms of social welfare; and other related topics.

The Labor and Working-Class History Seminar will be an on-going colloquium for a broad academic audience, including graduate students, faculty members, and independent scholars. . . . [A]t the meeting, an invited presenter will offer an overview of a scholarly work, pre-circulated electronically to all participants, and a commentator will provide constructive feedback. The exchange between the presenter and commentator will be followed by a discussion among all seminar attendees.

The Labor and Working-Class History seminar, while focused on history, welcomes scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including human rights studies, public policy studies, sociology, anthropology, literature, law, and environmental studies. We encourage cross-disciplinary discussion, and invite proposals from diverse subject areas and approaches.

Interested scholars who would like to present a portion of their current research on labor and/or class should submit a one page abstract and a brief cv to: Donna Haverty-Stacke and Eduardo Contreras at laborsem@hunter.cuny.edu by August 1, 2013.  Decisions will be communicated by September 1, 2013 to all those who have submitted abstracts.

We have a limited fund to support regional travel but are unable to provide funding for long-distance travel or lodging. If you would like to be placed on the email list to receive announcements of upcoming presentations, please write to: laborsem@hunter.cuny.edu.

Dorn on "In Custodia Legis"

We have just missed until now a terrific series of posts by the Law Library of Congress’s Curator of Rare Books, Nathan Dorn, on In Custodia Legis.  This year’s posts include:

How Robin Hood Defied King John and Brought Magna Carta to Sherwood Forest

The True Portraiture of Judge Littleton

The World’s Legal Heritage in Great Subterranean Halls, or… A Collection Big with Babylonian Perspective

John Lilburne, Oaths and the Cruel Trilemma

Law Librarians and Immortal Glory

Doodling Away the Middle Ages

Signatures, Subscription Lists and Printing for the First U.S. Congress

From Magna Carta on Trial to the Holy Experiment

Pomp, Ceremony and the Simplicity Befitting a Republic

On Despising English Liberties and Other Wisdom from the Founders

Freyfogle on Aldo Leopold's Last Talk

A Sand County Almanac was a big book for me as an adolescent, so I’m especially happy to note that Eric T. Freyfogle, University of Illinois College of Law, has posted Leopold's Last Talk, which appears in the Washington Journal of Environmental law and Politics 2 (2012); 236.  Here is the abstract:    

Aldo Leopold (credit)

During the last decade of his life, Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) delivered more than 100 conservation talks to various popular, professional, and student audiences. In them, he set forth plainly the central elements of his conservation thought. By studying the extensive archival records of these talks one sees clearly the core elements of Leopold’s mature thinking, which centered not on specific land-use practices (good or bad), but instead on what he saw as deep flaws in American culture. Leopold’s sharp cultural criticism — more clear in these talks than in his lyrical, muted classic, A Sand County Almanac — called into question not just liberal individualism but central elements of Enlightenment-era thought. This essay distills the messages that Leopold repeatedly presented during his final years. It clarifies the messages by situating Leopold’s thought within long-running philosophic discussions on the nature of life, the limits on human knowledge, standards of truth, and the origins of value. For Leopold, conservation could succeed only if it challenged prevailing cultural understandings and pressed for specific, radical change. The now-stymied environmental movement has never taken that advice to heart.

Historians Weigh in on the Marriage Equality Decisions

George Chauncey has an op-ed in the New York Times (hat tip: H-Law)

Mary Dudziak comments at Balkinization.

Readers may also be interested in these articles from the History News Network:

• "Committee on LGBT History: We Are Proud Historians Helped Make DOMA/Prop. 8 Decisions Possible"

• "Historians Played Important Role in DOMA Decision."

Historians Weigh in on the VRA Decision

Eric Foner, Clayborne Carson, and H. W. Brands comment on HNN.  See also Mark Graber on Balkinization.

Marier and Piper on Canadian Medical Patent Law

Virginie Marier and Tina Piper, McGill University, have posted Early Twentieth-Century Canadian Medical Patent Law in Practice: JB Collip and the Discovery of Emmenin, which originally appeared in the University of Toronto Law Journal 60 (2010): 855-891.  Here is the abstract:    

In the 1930s, James Bertram Collip (1892-1965) purified, standardized, and then commercialized the hormone Emmenin at McGill University. This focused history of Collip’s development of Emmenin considers how Collip used (and avoided) the legal tools of intellectual property to his advantage, given his complicated place as a scientist/business person/academic/physician inventor in the inter-war era. Collip’s story is significant as a case study as it lends nuance to the picture of the Canadian inventor, shows the daring foresight of early Canadian commercialization business models, and explores the influences that eventually led to the development of university technology transfer offices in Canada. It also highlights germinal moments in the negotiation of standardized agreements and university-industry partnerships. Ultimately, this paper contributes to the task of filling out the history of the development of legal norms regarding intellectual property in Canada by exploring sources outside of case law and legislation to tell a rich story of invention, ownership, and profit.

Blokhuis to Lecture on Students Rights at the Kluge Center

On Thursday, June 27, at 12 p.m., Kluge Fellow J.C. Blokhuis discusses “Student Rights and the ‘Special Characteristic of the School Environment’ from a Jurisprudential Perspective” in the Woodrow Wilson Room (LJ-113), Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress. 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C.

Until 1966, constitutional rights were not for children. Minors and other legally incompetent persons had custodial interests, not liberty interests. Public educational authority in general and compulsory schooling laws in particular had been predicated on an expansive conception of the duty of the State as parens patriae to safeguard and promote the custodial interests of children.

The Supreme Court wrestled with the custodial implications until 1995, when the ‘special characteristics of the school environment’ were defined in a manner that explained why the constitutional rights of pupils could not be coextensive with those of adults. Professor Blokhuis addresses the difficulties associated with unqualified ascriptions of constitutional rights to minors, particularly in contexts designed to be custodial in the present and liberating in the future.

Webcasts of Kluge lectures go up approximately two months after the date of the program, here.

Ruskola's "Legal Orientalism"

Teemu Ruskola, Emory Law, has just published Legal Orientalism: China, the United States, and Modern Law, with the Harvard University Press:

Since the Cold War ended, China has become a global symbol of disregard for human rights, while the United States has positioned itself as the world’s chief exporter of the rule of law. How did lawlessness become an axiom about Chineseness rather than a fact needing to be verified empirically, and how did the United States assume the mantle of law’s universal appeal? In a series of wide-ranging inquiries, Teemu Ruskola investigates the history of “legal Orientalism”: a set of globally circulating narratives about what law is and who has it. For example, why is China said not to have a history of corporate law, as a way of explaining its “failure” to develop capitalism on its own? Ruskola shows how a European tradition of philosophical prejudices about Chinese law developed into a distinctively American ideology of empire, influential to this day.

The first Sino–U.S. treaty in 1844 authorized the extraterritorial application of American law in a putatively lawless China. A kind of legal imperialism, this practice long predated U.S. territorial colonialism after the Spanish–American War in 1898, and found its fullest expression in an American district court’s jurisdiction over the “District of China.” With urgent contemporary implications, legal Orientalism lives on in the enduring damage wrought on the U.S. Constitution by late-nineteenth-century anti-Chinese immigration laws, and in the self-Orientalizing reforms of Chinese law today. In the global politics of trade and human rights, legal Orientalism continues to shape modern subjectivities, institutions, and geopolitics in powerful and unacknowledged ways.

TOC here; blurbs after the jump.

New Release: Shapiro, "Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools"

New from the University of Chicago Press, Adam R. Shapiro, Trying Biology: The Scopes Trial, Textbooks, and the Antievolution Movement in American Schools (2013). Here's a description from the Press:

In Trying Biology, Adam R. Shapiro convincingly dispels many conventional assumptions about the 1925 Scopes “monkey” trial. Most view it as an event driven primarily by a conflict between science and religion. Countering this, Shapiro shows the importance of timing: the Scopes trial occurred at a crucial moment in the history of biology textbook publishing, education reform in Tennessee, and progressive school reform across the country. He places the trial in this broad context—alongside American Protestant antievolution sentiment—and in doing so sheds new light on the trial and the historical relationship of science and religion in America.

For the first time we see how religious objections to evolution became a prevailing concern to the American textbook industry even before the Scopes trial began. Shapiro explores both the development of biology textbooks leading up to the trial and the ways in which the textbook industry created new books and presented them as “responses” to the trial. Today, the controversy continues over textbook warning labels, making Shapiro’s study—particularly as it plays out in one of America’s most famous trials—an original contribution to a timely discussion.

More information is available here.

Kathryn T. Preyer Award: Application Process for 2013

[We're moving this post up one more time, as a reminder that the June 30 deadline is fast approaching.]

The American Society for Legal History welcomes applications for the Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar Award.

About the award:

Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to young legal historians, the program of Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars is designed to help legal historians at the beginning of their careers. At the annual meeting of the Society two younger legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. The generosity of Professor Preyer's friends and family has enabled the Society to offer a small honorarium to the Preyer Scholars and to reimburse, in some measure or entirely, their costs of attending the meeting. The competition for Preyer Scholars is organized by the Society's Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee.

Application Process for 2013:

Submissions are welcome on any topic in legal, institutional and/or constitutional history.  Early career scholars, including those pursuing graduate or law degrees, those who have completed their terminal degree within the previous year, and those independent scholars at a comparable state, are eligible to apply. Papers already submitted to the ASLH Program Committee--whether or not accepted for an existing panel--and papers never previously submitted are equally eligible. Once selected, Preyer Award winners must present their paper as part of the Preyer panel, and they will be removed from any other panel.

CFP: Washington Area Early American Seminar

[We have the following call for papers.]

The Washington Area Early American Seminar, hosted by the University of Maryland, College Park, invites proposals from scholars wishing to present work in progress in the next academic year.

The seminar meets on Fridays (monthly during term-time) and our regular members include faculty and graduate students from a variety of DC-area institutions. Papers are pre-circulated and our afternoon (4-6pm) seminars are followed by a dinner at a local restaurant.

To propose a paper, please send a brief cv and a tentative title along with a 300 word description of the topic and its connection to your publishing plans to Rick Bell (rjbell@umd.edu) and Holly Brewer (hbrewer@umd.edu). We especially welcome proposals from scholars farther afield who will be visiting the DC area for research this coming year. For consideration for the 2013-14 academic year, please send proposals before 1 July 2013.

Altman Accepts Amherst VAP

Congratulations to Clara Altman, Legal History Blogger and Facebook Coordinator, for landing a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Law, Jurisprudence, and Social Thought, which she will shortly take up at Amherst College.  Clara is completing her dissertation, “Courtroom Colonialism: Philippine Law and U.S. Rule, 1898-1935,” at Brandeis University.  She has just completed a year as a fellow in the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia.  All of us Legal History Bloggers are grateful to Clara for her faithful and imaginative work as Facebook Coordinator and regular creator of our Sunday book review post.

First issue of Comparative Legal History

We recently announced the launch of Comparative Legal History, the journal of the European Society for Comparative Legal History. The first issue is now out. Full access is limited to subscribers, but here's a glimpse of the table of contents:

Editorial Articles

The Challenges of Comparative Legal History
David Ibbetson

American Responses to German Legal Scholarship: From the Civil War to World War I
David M Rabban

The Political Offence and the Safeguarding of the Nation State: Constitutional Ideals, French Legal Standards and Belgian Legal Practice (1830-1870)
Bram Delbecke

Sex, Crime and the Law: Russian and European Early Modern Legal Thought on Sex Crimes
Marianna Muravyeva  

Review Article

Comparative and Economic Approaches to Law: A Tale of Wilful Misunderstanding?
Jaakko Husa

Book Reviews

Manlio Bellomo, Inediti della giurisprudenza medievale
Reviewed by Emanuele Conte

Alejandro Guzmán-Brito, Codificación del Derecho Civil e Interpretación de las Leyes: Las normas sobre interpretación de las leyes en los principales Códigos civiles europeo-occidentales y americanos emitidos hasta fines del siglo XIX
Reviewed by MC Mirow

Turan Kayaoglu, Legal Imperialism: Sovereignty and Extraterritoriality in Japan, the Ottoman Empire and China
Reviewed by Zülâl Muslu

Mia Korpiola (ed), Regional Variations in Matrimonial Law and Custom in Europe, 1150-1600
Reviewed by Richard Mc Mahon

 MC Mirow, Florida's First Constitution, the Constitution of Cádiz: Introduction, Translation, and Text
Reviewed by Peter L Reich

 Anthony Musson and Chantal Stebbings (eds), Making Legal History: Approaches and Methodologies
Reviewed by Adelyn LM Wilson

Book Review Roundup

• Over at History Today, you'll find a review of Anthony Pagden, The Enlightenment and Why it Still Matters (Oxford University Press, 2013).

• From History News Network: a review of Richard Breitman and Allan Lichtman's FDR and the Jews (Belknap, 2013)

• Subscribers to the Nation magazine will surely want to read Michael O'Donnell's review of The Roberts Court: The Struggle for the Constitution, by Marcia Coyle.

• From the New York Times: a review of Robert Kuttner, Debtors' Prison: The Politics of Austerity Versus Possibility (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013). 

• The NYT also covers two books on higher education: Is College Worth It? A Former United States Secretary of Education and a Liberal Arts Graduate Expose the Broken Promise of Higher Education (Thomas Nelson), by William J. Bennett and David Wilezol, and College (Un)bound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students (New Harvest/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), by Jeffrey J. Selingo.

• From the Chronicle of Higher Education: check out Carlin Romano's thoughtful essay on "civility and sex speech," in which he spotlights Unlearning Liberty: Campus Censorship and the End of American Debate (Encounter Books, 2012), by Greg Lukianoff.   

The Book Review Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

Weekend Roundup

• CALI does constitutional history!  Hat tip: Ross Davies and Roger Skalbeck.   

• Over at JOTWELL: William Baude (Stanford Law School) writes a glowing review of Clyde Spillenger's "Risk Regulation, Extraterritoriality, and the Constitutionalization of Choice of Law, 1865-1940."  

• If you've never perused the website of the Historical Society of the New York Courts it is worth a look. 

• From the New York Review of Books Blog: Spying on Americans: A Very Old Story. 

• Over at H-Law, Kenneth J. Hirsh, Cincinnati Law, plugs the Louis Marshall Papers at the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives at the Cincinnati campus of Hebrew Union College.

• Lori Clune, an assistant professor of history at California State University, Fresno, makes the case for sparing the Rosenbergs at HNN.

• Scott Douglas Gerber (Ohio Northern University Law), editorializes in the Providence Journal on Law and the Lively Experiment in Colonial Rhode Island.

• The American Academy in Berlin invites applications for its residential fellowships for 2014-2015, as well as early applications for the academic years 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. The deadline is Monday, September 2, 2013 (12 pm EST or 6 pm CET).  More.

• The University of Pennsylvania Law Review is looking for contributors to “its online companion, Heightened Scrutiny. Essays selected for HS go through the full editorial process and are published to the major databases, in addition to being perpetually available on our website. We typically run shorter pieces with an eye towards more timely commentary on current events in the law.”

• It's still June, so there's still hope for our summer writing agenda.  If you're feeling the need to be sternly talked to on the subject, try Rachel Toor in the Chronicle of Higher Education: I Don't Write Enough Because ...  Hat tip: Linda Przybyszewski.

• From Books & Ideas: Eva Hemmungs Wirtén on the Commons, Old and New: From Land Use to Information Sharing.

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