Stanford Center for Law and History Graduate Student Annual Conference Paper Prize

We have a second announcement from our friends at the Stanford Center for Law and History, regarding the Graduate Student Annual Conference Paper Prize. Deadline: January 31st, 2025. 

The Stanford Center for Law and History will invite paper submissions from graduate students for its seventh annual conference, “Native Legal Histories: Methods, Sovereignties, and Identities.” The Native nations forcibly included within the United States have had complex and nuanced legal histories. This conference will explore histories of both Indigenous law and Native encounters with U.S. law to better understand Indigenous communities’ legal experiences and understandings.It will bring together scholars of law and history to examine Indigenous legal histories across a range of venues and themes. Focusing, in particular, on questions of methods, sovereignties, and identities, the conference seeks to consider how the growing and robust field of Native legal history might help us to reconsider familiar narratives of law and its past. This one-day conference will be held on Friday, April 11th, 2025, at Stanford Law School. It will include four panels and a graduate student lighting round with breakfast and lunch provided.

Application Requirements: CV and Paper abstract (500 words or less)

To see more details and submit your application, click here.

-- Karen Tani

Bamzai and Prakash Respond to Critics on the Removal Power

Is it surprising that the scholarly debate on the removal power is back on the front burner?  Aditya Bamzai and Saikrishna Prakash, University of Virginia School of Law, have posted How to Think About the Removal Power, which appears on Virginia Law Review Online:

In an earlier article titled The Executive Power of Removal, we contended that Article II gives the President a constitutional power to remove executive officers, at least those who are presidentially appointed. In this Essay, we expand on, and reply to a critique of, that article. We discuss the meaning of the clause vesting “executive Power” in the President and the clause author    izing Congress to make laws “necessary and proper for carrying into Execution” the powers of the federal government. We contend that the former vests authority to remove in the President and the latter does not allow Congress to treat that allocation of authority as a default. We discuss how constitutional developments in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania—specifically, a 1784 report authored by the Council of Censors—support our understanding of the federal Constitution’s text and structure. We also discuss early practice under the federal Constitution—specifically, high-profile instances where presidents removed executive subordinates without Senate participation. These sources and episodes, along with those we discussed in our previous article, support the conclusion that the Constitution confers on the President the authority to remove presidentially appointed executive officers.

--Dan Ernst

Stanford Center for Law and History Fellowship

[We have the following announcement of the Stanford Center for Law and History Fellowship.  DRE]

The Stanford Center for Law and History is a residential fellowship that provides an opportunity to
conduct research in the dynamic environment of Stanford University. The fellowship term is for two years. We expect that fellows will dedicate most of their time to pursuing their proposed research projects, and the fellowship is designed to ensure meaningful mentorship from faculty within both the Law School and the History Department. Fellows will also devote some time to organizing and implementing other Center activities, including an ongoing workshop series and an annual conference. The fellowship provides a significant opportunity to become part of a lively law-school-wide community of individuals with an interest in academia through attending weekly faculty lunch seminars and by participating in activities with the other fellows at Stanford Law School to learn more about one another’s scholarship and about academic life more generally. Fellows are also encouraged to attend and participate in the broad range of lectures and workshops available within the broader university, including inter alia, the History Department and the Stanford Humanities Center.

For the 2025-2026 fellowship, we will provide a workspace, a competitive salary, and a generous benefits package. Applicants who have completed (or are soon to complete) both a J.D. and a Ph.D in history are strongly preferred.  The fellowship is expected to start around August 1, 2025, but there is some flexibility as concerns the exact start date.  More.

Mehrotra on Seligman and the International Tax Regime

Ajay K. Mehrotra, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law and the American Bar Foundation, has posted The Intellectual Origins of the Modern International Tax Regime: Edwin R. A. Seligman, Economic Allegiance, and the League of Nations' 1923 Report, which is forthcoming in the Journal of Law & Political Economy:

E.R.A. Seligman (NYPL)

In March 1923, a group of prominent political economists and tax law experts gathered in Geneva, Switzerland to discuss the post-World War I framework for a new international tax regime. Commissioned by the League of Nations, these experts produced a comprehensive report that gradually became the intellectual foundation of the modern international tax regime. Relying on archival materials and other primary sources, this article contends that the US expert Edwin R. A. Seligman played a vital role in revising the report. While scholars have noted Seligman's influence over US tax law and policy, his pivotal role in drafting the 1923 report has only recently been acknowledged. This article builds on this recent scholarship by investigating how Seligman's background, experiences, and ideas-particularly his analysis and advocacy of the concept of "ability to pay" and "economic allegiance"-shaped the 1923 Report, and hence the subsequent development of the modern international tax regime.

--Dan Ernst

Casto to Speak on CJ Ellsworth

William R. Casto, Paul Whitfield Horn Distinguished Professor at Texas Tech University, will speak via Zoom on “The Life and Times of Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth” before the Supreme Court Historical Society on February 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM (EST).  Register here.

Oliver Ellsworth (LC)

Chief Justice Ellsworth, born in 1745, played a pivotal role in the founding of our nation. From his work as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to his leadership in crafting the Judiciary Act of 1789, Ellsworth’s impact on the formation of the federal judiciary is profound. His tenure as Chief Justice, though brief from 1796 to 1800, was crucial in shaping the early years of the Supreme Court.

Ellsworth’s legacy extends far beyond his time on the Court, as he was instrumental in creating the "Connecticut Compromise," resolving the contentious debate over congressional representation. His legal and political career reflects the complex challenges and transformative moments of the American Revolution and early national government.

--Dan Ernst

Roberts on the Forced Labor Convention of 1926

Christopher M. Roberts, Chinese University of Hong Kong, has posted Re-Covering Forced Labour: Colonial Foreclosures and Forgotten Potentials, which is forthcoming in the Melbourne Journal of International Law:

This article aims to reopen the question of the meaning of forced labour. It undertakes this task through a detailed exploration of the history of the 1930 Convention concerning Forced or Compulsory Labour ('Forced Labour Convention') based on a careful reading of the archival record. The history of the Forced Labour Convention and its closely linked predecessor, the 1926 Convention to Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, reveals that while the processes leading to both were initially open-ended, colonial interests ultimately produced sharp limitations in both texts. Recognising the colonial foundations of contemporary international law in this area should enhance our openness to reconsidering how we think about coercive labour today. The development of the Forced Labour Convention did not only consist in limiting dynamics, however. While they were pushed to the margins, this article also highlights three areas-conditions of work, conditions of life and worker freedoms-in which the historical record helps to suggest a more expansive, progressive understanding of forced labour than that which has become commonplace. Reconstructing our approach to forced labour, with attention to these potentials, can revitalise the concept in the contemporary world, overcoming close to a century of foreclosure.

--Dan Ernst

Weekend Roundup

• My fellow LHBlogger Karen Tani discusses her recent foreword to the Harvard Law Review's issue on the Supreme Court on David Schleicher and Samuel Moyn's Digging a Hole podcast.  DRE
  

• The latest in the "In Black America" series is a tribute to the late John Hope Franklin (KUT 90.5).
  

• The Loudoun County, Virginia courthouse has been renamed to honor Charles Hamilton Houston and been designated as a national historical landmark (WaPo).
  

• Orin Kerr on English common-law on emergency entry into a home and the Fourth Amendment (Volokh Conspiracy). 
  

• The Newsletter of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit for January 2025 is here.
  

• Michelle Adams, will discuss her book, The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North, at the Literati Bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan on January 16 from 6:30 pm - 8:00 pm EST (ACS).
  

• President Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to the son of Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi in honor of his mother, the litigant in Ex parte Endo (Pacific Citizen). H/t Eric Muller.
  

• "The John Carter Brown Library invites applications for a 2 year postdoctoral position helping to coordinate the library’s programs and events to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the independence of the United States."  More.
  

• A review, in Swedish, of Allen D. Boyer and Mark Nicholls's The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History" by Boris Benulic in The Epoch Times.  English translation after the jump.

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

Michigan Legal History Workshop

[Our friends at Michigan Law have sent us the lineup in its Legal History Workshop in the upcoming semester.  DRE]

February 5.  Session 3. Naomi Lamoreaux & Rebecca Eisenberg, University of Michigan Law School

What Administrative Agencies Can Do that Courts Cannot: Lessons from the Patent Office’s Handling of Interferences, 1836-1940

February 12.  Session 4. Heather Menefee, Northwestern University, Department of History

From “Loyal” to “Legitimate”: Racial Definitions of Political Identity during Dakota Tribal Reorganization, 1886-1999

February 19.  Session 5. Sanne Ravensbergen, University of Michigan, Department of History

The Hybrid Uniform of the Jaksa: Prosecutors in Nineteenth-Century Colonial Indonesia

February 26. Session 6. Aaron Hall, University of Minnesota, Department of History

The First Constitutional Lesson: Learning to Follow the Founding in Antebellum America

March 12.  Session 7. Beth Lew-Williams, Princeton University, Department of History

“John Doe Chinaman:” Law and Race in the American West

March 19.  Session 8. Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, University of Southern California, Department of History

Maritime Prize Law and the Making and Unmaking of Empires, ca. 1689-1916

March 26.  Session 9. Megan Ming Francis, University of Washington, Department of Political Science

The Price of Civil Rights: Philanthropy and Legal Mobilization

April 2. Session 10. Justene Hill Edwards, University of Virginia, Department of History

Finances of the Freedmen: The Expansion and Plunder of the Freedman’s Bank, 1866-1867

April 9.  Session 11. Ivón Padilla-Rodriguez, University of Illinois, Chicago, Department of History

"In Consideration of Humanity:" Policing Mexican Child Refugees in the Early Twentieth Century United States

April 16.  Session 12. Sara Mayeux, Vanderbilt University, Law School

“Drug Money” in Legal, Political, and Cultural History

CFP: 5th Asian Legal History Conference

We have the following call for papers, for the 5th Asian Legal History Conference:

Doshisha University, with the support of the Centre for Comparative and Transnational Law’s Transnational Legal History Group at CUHK LAW and the Asian Legal History Association, is organizing the Fifth Asian Legal History Conference at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan on 31 July and 1 August 2025. Previous Asian Legal History Conferences have been hosted, organized and supported by the University of Law at Hue University, the Faculty of Law at Thammasat University, the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore and the Faculty of Law at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The conference aims to bring together a diverse, interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers and graduate students to share their research findings on topics relating to legal history in Asia. The conference is open to both scholars anywhere in the world working on Asian legal history, broadly understood, and scholars based in Asia working on any legal history-related subjects.

Click here for the call for papers. The deadline for paper and panel proposals is 15 March 2025.

-- Karen Tani