Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Federal History

Federal History 17 (2025) has now been published open-access.  It includes much legal history, including book reviews (including a posthumously published one by Ken Kersch) and an interview with Michael Willrich, a former president of the American Society for Legal History.  Here is the TOC:

Editor’s Note
Benjamin Guterman

Roger R. Trask Lecture 

Guardians of History at the Library of Congress
John Y. Cole

Articles

“The Duty of Government”: The Politics of the Domestic Postal Money Order, 1837–1911
 Christopher W. Shaw

Shipowners and Seamen in the Establishment of the Department of Commerce and Department of Labor, 1898–1920
Kathleen S. Sullivan

The Judgeships of the U.S. Commerce Court, 1910–1913: How Their Ambiguous Status Threatened Judicial Independence and Guided the Creation of Future Specialized Federal Courts
Jake Kobrick

“A living force”:  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Vision of American Democracy
Iwan Morgan

The Defense Logistics Agency in Operation Enduring Freedom, 2001–2014: The Commodity Side of Logistics Efficiency
Colin Jay Williams

Interview

An Interview with Michael Willrich
Benjamin Guterman

Roundtable 

Prohibition, The Constitution, and States’ Rights, by Sean Beienburg

Introduction by Robinson Woodward-Burns, Howard University
Review by Ken I. Kersch, Boston College
Review by Susan McWilliams Barndt, Pomona College
Review by Review by Emily Pears, Claremont McKenna CollegeReview by George Thomas, Claremont McKenna College
Author’s Response by Sean Beienburg, Arizona State University

Reviews in Legal History

Terri Diane Halperin
Timothy Messer-Kruse, “The Carried-Off and the Constitution: How British Harboring of Fugitives from American Slavery Led to the Constitution of 1787”
Kevin Arlyck, “The Executive Branch and the Origins of Judicial Independence”

Reid Arno

Norrinda Brown, “Black Liberty in Emergency”
Christopher S. Havasy, Joshua C. Macey, Brian Richardson, “Against Political Theory in Constitutional Interpretation”
Carla LaRoche, “Black Women and Voter Suppression”

Benjamin Guterman

Kate Andrias, “Constitutional Clash: Labor, Capital, and Democracy”

Amelia Flood

Amy McMeeking, “Citizenship, Self-Determination, and Cultural Preservation in American Samoa”

Lisa Parshall

William M. Carter Jr., “The Second Founding and Self-Incrimination”