Sunday Roundup

• Now available on-line, a recording of that National Constitution Center town hall, The Story of the U.S. Constitution: Past and Present, with Akhil Reed Amar, David Blight, and Annette Gordon-Reed. 

• Also newly available online: Michael McConnell and Noah Rosenblum's debate on originalism at NYU Law on November 19, 2025. 

• William M. Treanor, the Agnes Williams Sesquicentennial Professor of Constitutional Law and Constitutional History and Dean Emeritus of Georgetown Law, will deliver the 2025 Gouverneur Morris Endowed Lecture of the Bronx County Historical Society at Fordham Law, which is co-sponsoring the event, on Wednesday, January 28, 2025 at 6:30 pm.  Dean Treanor’s topic: “The Constitution’s Penman, Gouverneur Morris" (New York Almanack).  

• Jeremy Kessler on the law and history of bans on history of viewpoint discrimination at a Columbia Law School alumni luncheon.  (The event is called the "Stone Circle" Luncheon, and I'm embarrassed to say I was slow to get the reference.)  (Columbia Law School). 

• 
  Heidi Kitrosser reviews Patrick G. Eddington, The Triumph of Fear: Domestic Surveillance and Political Repression from McKinley to Eisenhower (Georgetown University Press, 2025) (Lawfare).

• ICYMI: The 1924 Immigration Act is back, unfortunately (The Guardian).  The Rise of Scholars' Amicus Briefs.  "Gun carry regulation was always the norm" (The Hill).  "A (very) short history of Crimes Against Humanity" (EJIL Talk!).  "Historic Dispute Over ‘Unitary Executive’ Advances in Trump Era"--a very full and thoughtful explainer (CT Examiner).  

--Dan Ernst 

Weekend Roundup

• 

  David Sugarman (credit)

  The Socio-Legal Studies Association has awarded David Sugarman its 2025 prize for  “Outstanding Contribution to the Socio-Legal Community."  Professor Sugarman's contribution to “modern socio-legal historical studies” was specially noted.  SLSA's informative notice is here.  See also the notices of the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford and of Lancaster University.

• News from the National Constitution Center: President and Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Rosen is transitioning to the role of CEO Emeritus.  

• YLS’s notice of New Perspectives on the Legal Treatise (Hein), edited by Femi Cadmus and Nicholas Mignanelli, a collection of essays resulting from the Second Yale Legal Information Symposium, entitled “The Legal Treatise: Past, Present, and Future” and held in March 2023.  New Perspectives opens with an essay by John Langbein that traces “the decline of legal treatise writing in the American legal academy to the rise of legal realism.”

• 
  
  UVA Law's notice of Saikrishna Prakash's The Presidential Pardon: The Short Clause with a Long, Troubled History (Harvard University Press) (pub. date 1-20) with a discussion of the book by Professor Prakash. 

• On February 23, Michael Klarman, the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard Law School, will deliver the Robert L. Levine Distinguished Lecture at Fordham Law, entitled, “How did we get here?” (Fordham Law).

• Daniel E. Thompson has posted Litigating Originalism in Bruen: A Brief-Level Coding Study of History, Evidence, and Argument Form.  "This ["descriptive and provisional"] article offers a pilot, brief-level coding analysis of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Corlett (No. 20-843) at the certiorari stage and the same docket at the merits stage (NYSRPA v. Bruen). Using a transparent scoring rubric, it codes ten briefs on four dimensions: Originalist Evidentiary Strength (0–4), Historical-to-Doctrinal Rigor (0–4), Rhetorical Force (0–3), and Consequentialist Overlay (0–3)." 

• From Bunk: "Best History Writing of 2025."  

• Recently published: The Old Alcalde: Life and Times of a Texas Fire-Eater, Oran Milo Roberts, by John A. Adams, Jr.  Roberts was, in addition to much else, Chief Justice of the Texas Supreme Court and the president of Texas's Secession Convention in 1861 (Ricochet).

• Jack Goldsmith on Edward Levi's Department of Justice (Executive Functions). 

• ICYMI: Ilan Wurman on birthright citizenship (Compact).  Stephen Halbrook on "history and tradition" and the Second Amendment in Joel Alicea's amicus brief in the Hawaii "no carry case" (Volokh Conspiracy). A terrifically interesting HLR case comment, bridging Roman Law, Norman Rockwell and FDR's White House, on Elam v. Early (4th Cir. 2025).

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

Resnick's "Impermissible Punishments"

Judith Resnik, Yale Law School, has published Impermissible Punishments: How Prison Became a Problem for Democracy (University of Chicago Press):

Impermissible Punishments explores the history of punishment inside prisons and how governments grappled with obligations to justify the punishments they impose. Legal scholar Judith Resnik charts the creation of the corrections profession and weaves together the stories of people who made rules for prisons and the stories of those living under the resulting regimes.

Resnik maps three centuries of shifting ideas, norms, and legal standards aiming to draw lines between permissible and impermissible punishments. Her account documents the impact of World War II, the United Nations, the US Civil Rights movement, and the pioneering prisoners who insisted that law should protect their individual dignity. Taking us to the present, Resnik analyzes the expansion of imprisonment, the inability of public and private prisons to provide safe housing, and the impact of abolition politics.

Exploring the interdependency of people in and out of prisons, Impermissible Punishments examines what governments committed to equality owe to the people they detain and argues that many contemporary forms of punishment need to end. 

UCL Faculty of Laws will host an impressive book launch on May 14.  Also, horrifically, this.

--Dan Ernst 

Dhondt on Jurisdiction and Taxation in the Habsburg Netherlands

Frederik Dhondt has posted Jurisdiction and Taxation in the Habsburg Netherlands: The Manuscripts of Goswin Arnould de Wynants, Emperor Charles VI’s Belgian Councillor, which also appears in Handelingen van de Koninklijke Commissie voor de Uitgave der Oude Wetten en Verordeningen van België /Bulletin de la Commission Royale pour la Publication des Anciennes Lois et Ordonnances de Belgique 59 (2025): 231-352:

Goswin-Arnould de Wynants (1661-1732), councillor (judge) in the Council of Brabant, and member of the High Council for the Netherlands in Vienna appointed by emperor Charles VI of the Holy Roman Empire, was one of the most privileged observers of law and administration in the Spanish and then Austrian Netherlands at the turn of the eighteenth century. Most of his work has never been published, although copies of his manuscripts circulated relatively widely and can be found in various Belgian heritage institutions. Although Wynants is a reference for nineteenth- and early twentieth century legal historians, scholarship in legal history seems to have forgotten both the author and the eighteenth century in the Southern Netherlands. Part of the explanation lies with Wynants’s informal writing style and lack of explicit references, which render his work less suitable for handwritten text recognition and computational legal history. However, a traditional close reading highlights his extensive use of implicit legal reasoning and elements of broader legal culture. Building on the work of Ben Croon (1991) and the institutional study of Klaas Van Gelder (2016) as well as the comprehensive study of public law manuscripts of Martin Schennach for the Holy Roman Empire (2020), two of Wynants’s main works are analysed. First -for the battle over jurisdiction between secular and ecclesiastical power- his Memoirs on the institutions of the Austrian Netherlands. Secondly, the treatise on taxation in Brabant. Although it is still solid to see Wynants as a ‘regalist’ (Croon), defending the secular ruler against ecclesiastical competition and fiscal exemptions, this image has to be complemented. In fine, Wynants primarily defends the judge as a crucial actor in the early modern legal ‘cacophony’ of legal sources and languages (Herzog 2024).

--Dan Ernst 

Gonzales's "Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation"

David-James Gonzales, Brigham Young University, has published Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation: Mexican American Grassroots Politics and Civil Rights in Orange County, California (Oxford University Press):

On March 2, 1945, five Mexican American families and their Jewish American lawyer filed a class-action lawsuit against four school districts in Orange County, California, to end the segregation of ethnic Mexican children. In a shocking decision, the court ruled in favor of plaintiffs, setting a legal and historical precedent in Mendez, et al. v. Westminster School District of Orange County that shook the foundations of Jim Crow America and led to the end of de jure school segregation across the nation.

Breaking Down the Walls of Segregation tells the story of how ethnic Mexicans in a relatively unknown agricultural backwater built the unprecedented movement that led to this decision. Beginning in the 1880s, David-James Gonzales details the social and economic history of Orange County, explaining how citrus capitalists, seeking increased market share and profitability, established the walls of segregation to manage ethnic Mexican family labor. By the early 1930s, ethnic Mexicans were segregated into over fifty underserved colonias and barrios. Without training or support from national civil rights organizations, they mobilized against segregation and inequality beginning in the late 1920s. Ethnic Mexican grassroots organizations proliferated throughout the county, intent on engaging in civic affairs and ending anti-Mexican discrimination and segregation. This movement, comprised of immigrants, citizens, parents, children, emerging activists, and their non-Mexican allies, paved the way for the growth of LULAC and nationwide organizing. As an essential part of the "long civil rights movement," the ethnic Mexican struggle against segregation in Orange County illustrates how minoritized groups have historically pushed US social, economic, and political institutions to live up to the nation's founding ideals.

--Dan Ernst

Nominate an ASLH Honorary Fellow!

[We have the following Call for Nominations for Honorary Fellows from the American Society for Legal History.  DRE.]

The Honors Committee of the American Society for Legal History solicits nominations of senior scholars for consideration for election as Honorary Fellows of the Society.  Election as Honorary Fellow is the highest honor the Society can confer.  It recognizes distinguished historians whose scholarship has shaped the broad discipline of legal history and influenced the work of others.  Honorary Fellows are the scholars we admire, whom we aspire to emulate, and on whose shoulders we stand.  The Society seeks to recognize scholars who are not simply distinguished in their fields, but who also have given back to the discipline and made their fields stronger by creating communities of scholars and scholarship and by helping other (often younger) scholars to stand on their shoulders.  In other words, scholars who are as committed to building a future for their fields as they are to studying the past.  Commensurate with the growing international reach of the Society, we seek nominations of senior scholars who, collectively, similarly encompass the wide scope of scholarship in legal history.

Nominations should be submitted to Ariela Gross, chair of the Honors Committee, by email (grossa@law.ucla.edu) before February 9, 2026.  Each nomination should include a statement of why the nominee merits election.  Statements should address the nominee’s scholarly distinction and their citizenship in the field.  A list of current and past honorary fellows is [here].

Hamm's Biography of Arthur Garfield Hays

Richard F Hamm has published Confronting Racism: Arthur Garfield Hays and the Fight for Equality, 1925-1954 (SUNY Press):

Beginning in 1925 the corporate lawyer and civil libertarian Arthur Garfield Hays began battling segregation. This book details Hays's work on the Mayor's Commission that investigated the1935 Harlem riot; his role in a 1937 restrictive covenant case in Westchester, County; his representing a challenger to the segregated draft in World War II; his part in ending the exclusion of African Americans from the American Bar Association; and his opposition to strong fair employment legislation. Motivated by his conception of a good society that valued civil liberties, democracy, and individualism, Hays fought for African Americans' legal rights under the Constitution. His activism was limited by his conservative economic views and his fear of an active state that intervened in private matters. His career illuminates the potential and perils of interracial co-operation during the long civil rights movement. Because the issues he confronted continue today-police mistreatment of African Americans, housing discrimination, limits on African Americans in the professions, racial discrimination in the military, and how to build government structures to limit discrimination-this book speaks to our time as well as his.

 --Dan Ernst 

Cromwell Foundation Cromwell Article Prize to Funk & Mayson

Via the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, we have the following announcement:

The Cromwell Article Prize for best article in legal history published in the calendar year 2024 has been awarded to Kellen R. Funk (Columbia Law School) and Sandra D. Mayson (Penn Carey Law School) for their article Bail at the Founding, published in volume 137 of the Harvard Law Review.  Funk and Mayson do a deep dive into the law and practice of bail at the founding, finding that the liberty-protecting law on the books was belied in practice for many accused of crimes, for whom pretrial detention was a routine matter.  Through astonishing archival sleuthing, the authors uncover a world of pretrial detention and bail practice that turned not on cash but on reputation.  Sureties and unsecured pledges, they find, were the principal mechanisms for those let out of custody pending trial in the early republic. 

Bail at the Founding is an archival exploration of great value to the working out of the Constitution’s original public meaning for questions about pretrial detention.  It is also a challenge to that project, because it raises deep questions about whether and how the reputation-centered and cash-scarce world of the late eighteenth century can be translated into the cash- and credit-rich world of the twenty first.

The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, established by William Nelson Cromwell in 1930, supports work in American legal history.  The Foundation’s prize for the legal history article of the year is intended to recognize the growing role of legal history and teaching and research in law schools. This year the prize was selected from articles published in leading student-edited law journals. The prize committee, chaired by Foundation trustee John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School), consisted of Foundation trustees Sarah Barringer Gordon (Penn Carey Law) and John Langbein (Yale Law School), along with Dan Ernst (Georgetown Law), Amalia Kessler (Stanford Law School), and Alison LaCroix (University of Chicago Law School).  

The Foundation makes grants to support important work in all facets of American legal history including archival preservation, scholarly study of original documents, original research in all areas of the law, and research and writing of biographies of major legal figures. Information on how to apply for a prize, fellowship or grant may be found on the Foundation’s website, cromwellfoundation.org.

Congratulations to Professor Funk and Professor Mayson! 

-- Karen Tani 

Weekend Roundup

• A historian's' amicus brief, sponsored by the Brennan Center for Justice, has been filed in United States v. Hemani, "a constitutional challenge to a federal statute prohibiting any individual who 'is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance' from possessing a firearm." The signatories are Holly Brewer, Saul Cornell, Brian DeLay, Randolph Roth, Simon Stern, Stephen Taylor, and William Treanor.  

• The life and legacy of John Hope Franklin, an episode of the radio program, Black America (KUT).

• A recording of that Federalist Society panel on originalism and birthright citizenship, including Kurt Lash, Amanda Frost, and Keith Whittington, is here.   

• The John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, seeks a research associate to "undertake directed research and produce public-facing and scholarly work on histories and legacies of religions and freedom in the early Americas with an emphasis on the eighteenth century." 

• Jessica Lake will discuss her book, Special Damage: The Slander of Women and the Gendered History of Defamation Law at UVA Law on Tuesday, February 10, 2026, from 5-6 p.m.  

• The schedule has been announced for that symposium at Boston College on February 20 to honor the life and work of the late  Ken Kersch.   

• In memoriam: Daniel Walker Howe (UCLA).

• Lady Margaret Hall's notice of the ASLH and Cromwell Foundations award of its William Nelson Cromwell Article Prize to Grace Mallon.

• The January 2026 newsletter of the Historical Society of the District of Columbia Circuit is here. 

• 
  The Merced County [CA] Historical Society has released its book, Old Courthouse: 150 Years, 150 Stories (Merced Sun-Star). 

• "Talbot Publishing, an imprint of The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., is pleased to announce the publication of M.H. Hoeflich and John Moreland’s Little Law Books."

• Alex Wellerstein discusses his new book, The Most Awful Responsibility: Truman and the Secret Struggle for Control of the Atomic Age (LGM Podcast). 

• The finalists for the African American Intellectual History Society's Pauli Murray Book Prize in Black Intellectual History (Black Perspectives).

• Gregory P. Downs and Kate Masur on "Jan. 6 and the Long Shadow of Civil War- and Reconstruction-Era Political Violence" (Talking Points Memo).

• ICYMI: Jack Rakove on what’s wrong with The American Revolution by Ken Burns (Washington Monthly).  Anna O. Law on birthright citizenship, in an interview heralding her book (The Redoubt).  Max Skjönsberg on Maitland, Smith, and Laissez-Faire (Law and Liberty).  Ilya Somin on Chief Justice Roberts on the Declaration of Independence (Volokh Conspiracy). A Timeline of Divorce in America (History).

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

Kennedy on Derrida and the Crits

Duncan Kennedy, Harvard Law School, has posted The reception of Jacques Derrida in American Critical Legal Studies: 

This article describes in some detail the way in which critical legal scholars in the 1980s read, appropriated and then used versions of some of Jacques Derrida’s ideas, particularly the idea of deconstruction. They first of all understood deconstruction as a procedure close in many ways to the sociological jurists’ and legal realists’ critiques of the conceptual apparatus of classical legal thought. They debated and disagreed about the implications of the resulting Franco-American amalgam and applied different versions of it to contemporary debates about legal reasoning and doctrinal indeterminacy, and then extended them to debates about gender, “identity” and law and economics. The article ends with my own existentialist decisionist reading, from within these debates, of some canonical Derridean aphoristic slogans.  

--Dan Ernst 

Bradley and Goldsmith on Erie and Originalism

Curtis Bradley, University of Chicago Law School, and Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law School, have posted General Law Revivalism and the Problem of 1938:

From the constitutional Founding until Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), federal courts routinely applied a body of "general law" to resolve a wide range of legal issues, including issues relating to commercial law, torts, international law, conflict of laws, equity, and procedure. This general law regime became politically fraught and difficult to administer, and the Supreme Court finally repudiated it in Erie, declaring that "there is no federal general common law" and requiring the federal courts to ground all rules in either federal or state law. Erie and its progeny created what this Article terms the "Erie algorithm," which requires every pre-Erie doctrine to be reconceptualized through nonoriginalist principles relating to the proper sources of law and the nature and scope of federal judicial power. This algorithm undergirds nearly every corner of contemporary federal courts doctrine. Despite their willingness to rethink other major structural constitutional law precedents, the originalists on the Supreme Court have accepted--and, indeed, embraced--the Erie algorithm and incorporated it throughout modern public law. By contrast, a number of scholars in recent years--primarily but not exclusively originalists--have sought to revive the pre-Erie general law. "General law revivalism," this Article argues, overlooks how dysfunctional the general law regime had become before Erie and fails to appreciate the incompatibility of that regime with the post-Erie constitutional order. In addition, those who suggest jettisoning Erie have not made the case for absorbing the massive system costs that such an effort would generate. The Article concludes that the Erie transformation leaves many versions of originalism with "the problem of 1938": the necessity of reconciling originalist commitments with a legal system fundamentally shaped by Erie's non-originalist foundations. 

--Dan Ernst 

Neumann on Birthright Citizenship under Postwar Nationality Acts

Gerald L. Neuman, Harvard Law School, has posted Lessons for Birthright Citizenship from Suspension of Deportation:

Although much has been written about why Donald Trump's Executive Order purporting to abolish birthright citizenship for children of unlawfully present or temporarily present parents violates the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, there is a prior issue that has received less discussion: the Executive Order also violates the Immigration and Nationality Act.  This article examines that statutory issue through the lens of one particular but revealing aspect of the voluminous evidence, the law and practice of suspension of deportation for noncitizen parents of children born as citizens while their parents were unlawfully or temporarily present in the United States.

The dense interaction of Congress and the executive from 1940 into the 1950s on suspension of deportation shows repeated confirmation of the shared interpretation of both branches on the scope of birthright citizenship, as embodied in the 1940 Nationality Act and then the 1952 INA. 

This article discusses both published sources and previously unpublished documentation obtained from INS files in the archives.  Appendices to this article make available examples of previously unpublished suspension decisions, in order to further demonstrate that the Executive Order violates the INA.   The actual practice totally contradicts revisionist theories that claim to support the Executive Order.

--Dan Ernst 

ASLH/Notre Dame Graduate Legal History Colloquium

[We have the schedule for the ASLH/Notre Dame Graduate Legal History Colloquium to be held on February 7, 2026, from 10 AM - 4 PM (EST) at the Notre Dame Law School in South Bend, Indiana.  Here is the registration form.  DRE]

9:45 - 10:05 AM  Registration/Welcome 

10:05 - 11:00 AM  Paper #1: Early American Constitutional Interpretation

"Codes and Constitutions in McCulloch v. Maryland”

Author: Benjamin Keener, University of Pennsylvania
Respondent: Jeffrey A. Pojanowski, Notre Dame Law School 

11:05 - 12:00 PM  Paper #2: Legal and Religious Constitutions at the Founding        

"Reverend Founding Fathers: The Presbyterian Church Constitution, 1776-1837"

Author: Mintae Cha, University of Notre Dame
Respondent: Richard W. Garnett, Notre Dame Law School

12:05 - 1:00 PM  Afternoon Break (Lunch)

1:05 - 2:00 PM  Paper #3: The Early American Jury                       

"Government By Jury"

Author: Nathaniel Donahue, New York University
Respondent: Christian R. Burset, Notre Dame Law School

2:05 - 3:00 PM  Paper #4: Administration at the Founding

"Reframing the Decision of 1789: The Independence of Officeholders from their Official Superiors"

Author: Tingfeng Yan, University of Chicago
Respondent: Emily S. Bremer, Notre Dame Law School

3:05 - 4:00 PM  Paper #5: History and the Anti-Federalists                    

"'Time Only Can Determine': The Role of History in the Writings of the Anti-Federalists"

Author: Matthew Levine, Stanford University
Respondent: Katlyn Marie Carter, University of Notre Dame

Berger-Howe Legal History Fellowship: Deadline Approaching

[We are moving this previously posted announcement up because the deadline of January 15 is approaching.  DRE.]

Harvard Law School invites applications for the Raoul Berger-Mark De Wolfe Howe Legal History Fellowship for the academic year 2026-2027.  Eligible applicants include those who have made substantial progress on their doctoral dissertations or who have recently been awarded a doctoral degree. A first law degree is preferred, but not required.

The purpose of the fellowship, which is awarded annually, is to enable the fellow to complete a major piece of writing in the field of legal history, broadly defined, as the fellow seeks to begin an academic career in legal history. There are no limitations as to geographical area or time period.  Previous fellows have gone on to pursue faculty appointments or other fellowships in American universities, primarily on law faculties.

The fellow is expected to spend the majority of their time on their own projects. The fellow will also participate in the Harvard Law School Legal History Workshop, a for-credit semester-long seminar, and assist with occasional other legal history sessions, both under the direction of Harvard faculty affiliated with the Program in Law and History.  The term of the fellowship is July 1 through June 30.  The fellow will be required to be in residence at the law school during the academic year (September through May).

Applicants for the fellowship for 2026-2027 should submit their applications and supporting materials electronically to Professor Bruce H. Mann. 

Each interested applicant should submit: 

• a detailed (five pages maximum) description of a proposed project;
• a writing sample; 
• a comprehensive résumé or curriculum vitae that gives the applicant's educational background, publications, works in progress, and other relevant experience; 
• two academic letters of reference, which may be submitted electronically by the recommenders to Professor Mann at the above email address; and
• copies of official transcripts of all academic work done at the graduate level,  which may be sent electronically or by regular mail to Professor Mann at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

The deadline for applications is January 15, 2026.  Announcement of the award will be made by February 27, 2026.  The fellow selected will receive a stipend of $60,000.

JLH 45:2

The Journal of Legal History 45:2 (2024) has been published open access online.  With a hat-tip to ESCLHblog, here is the TOC.  DRE]

The Common Law and Civil War in Fourteenth-Century England: The Prosecution of Treason and Rebellion Under Edward II, 1322–1326 
Sophie Thérèse Ambler

What did it mean for poor and middling men and women to take up arms against their government? How did they negotiate competing claims for their participation in civil war and what consequences confronted them? This article analyses the crown’s investigation of its opponents following the 1321–22 civil war, comparing its predecessor of the Montfortian civil war (1263–67), to examine how the king, justices and juries tackled these questions. It demonstrates how the crown rooted the summary conviction and execution of Thomas of Lancaster and other noble insurgents in common law procedure; then, at the King’s Bench and a special inquiry in the Welsh Marches, re-framed treasonous offences to tackle non-noble insurgents; then, fearing a new uprising, instrumentalised the common law’s machinery to gather military intelligence. The crown recognized the agency of subjects across society in civil war and juries were ideally placed to investigate it; they also weighed subjects’ culpability, balancing obligation to the king against the mitigating realities of coerced participation in war. Thus, juries and the communities who informed their verdict were invited to engage with the ethical and legal dilemmas of civil war. This article thus presents a people’s history of treason.

On the Origins of Invalidation of British Colonial Legislation by Colonial Courts: The Van Diemen’s Land Dog Act Controversy of the 1840s – Part One
Ian Loveland

By 1865 British Imperial governments had accepted that colonial courts had the authority to invalidate colonial statutes which contravened the relevant colony’s constitution. This situation arose notwithstanding the lack of any express grant of such jurisdiction to colonial courts in Imperial or colonial legislation. This paper evaluates the first instance of a colonial court asserting that jurisdiction, during the Dog Act crisis in Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in the 1840s. Part one of the paper charts the background to, conduct of and judgment in the relevant litigation. The second part, which will appear in a future issue of this journal, explores the consequential attempts of the colony’s Governor to remove the judges from office and to re-enact the invalidated colonial law. The suggestion made is that the Dog Act controversy provides considerable insight into how, despite the absence of any explicit statutory grant of such jurisdiction, the power of judicial review of colonial legislation by colonial courts became established as an orthodox element of British colonial constitutional law in the latter nineteenth century.

Crime, Trade Marks and Soft Trade Policy in the Interwar Era: Market Realities and the Merchandise Marks Act 1926
Elena Glover

This article explores a facet of the relationship between trade marks and the criminal law in the UK in the interwar era, a pivotal period of transition in UK economic policy from free trade to a more managed economy. Drawing together insights from legal, business and economic history, we show that, in the interwar years, the context of domestic politics and wider international trade policy, produced a greater focus on the relationship between trade marks and market-place understandings of the national origin of manufactured products. This context included the passage of the Merchandise Marks Act 1926, a criminal law statute that stipulated the circumstances in which imported goods were to be marked with an indication of national origin, and included a criminal offence regulating trade marks enforced by prosecutions brought by the Board of Trade. We argue that the criminal law regulating trade marks became entwined with ‘soft’ trade policy, i.e. a means of protecting the domestic/empire market falling short of tariff protection. Drawing on substantial original archival research, we explore the problems that confronted the Board of Trade when it enforced the 1926 Act in view of market realities.

Book reviews

Contractual Relations: A Contribution to the Critique of the Classical Law of Contract by David Campbell, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2022, xxiv + 438 pp (including index), £95 (hardback), ISBN 9780198855156
Warren Swain

Subversive Legal History: A Manifesto for the Future of Legal Education by Russel Sandberg, Oxford, Routledge, 2021, 6 p+234 pp., £109.44, ISBN 9780367191290 (hardback)
Susan Bartie

Italian Review of Legal History 11

[Italian Review of Legal History 11 (2025) has been published open access online.  Unsurprisingly, most of the contributions are in Italian.  We note those available in English below.  H/t: ESCLH Blog.  DRE.]

Sul Diritto dei popoli, il pensiero di John Rawls (English) 
Antonio Padoa Schioppa

La diserzione nel contesto della mobilitazione generale: Esperienza storica e sfide attuali (English) 
Serhii Khalymon, Liudmyla Litvin, Viktor Tyshchuk
 
Giurisdizione militare e stato democratico. Dalla giustizia dei capi alla legge 180/1981
Floriana Colao

Cura dei poveri e sicurezza sociale nell’Inghilterra di Età Tudor: Il ruolo dei Justices of the Peace
Dolores Freda

La colonizzazione democratica. Lotte per la terra, riforma agraria e attuazione costituzionale nel dopoguerra
Paolo Passaniti

Lo sviluppo della teoria dell’atto amministrativo come espressione dei valori del diritto amministrativo (English)
Andrzej Adamczyk

El espejo tiznado: el Tratado de París (1898) en la historia jurídica de Puerto Rico (English) 
José R. Gómez Biamón 

Il concetto di “popolo” nella prospettiva intergenerazionale
Raffaele Marzo

Un esame filosofico del patto sociale nella ricostruzione della società sudafricana (English) 
Konanani Happy Raligilia, Rorisang Gomolemo Thage, Lufuno Tokyo Nevondwe, Kolawole Olusola Odeku, Lesiba Benedict Moshoeu

Altri temi

Para uma história de gavetas: o projeto de código penal brasileiro de Galdino Siqueira (1913)
Ricardo Sontag

Schede bibliografiche

Recensione a Antonio Grilli, Resistenza e repressione. Il Tribunale speciale per la difesa dello Stato nella RSI (1943-1945), Roma, Carocci, 2024
Floriana Colao

Recensione a Paolo Passaniti, La riforma agraria in Italia. La Maremma dell’Ente Maremma, Pisa, Pacini, 2024
Federico Roggero

Il fascino dell’anomalia: leggendo Davide Rossi, Il lungo Novecento della frontiera adriatica. Transizioni istituzionali e modifiche giuridiche, Soveria Mannelli, Rubbettino, 2025
Alberto Sciumè

Recensione a Mario Ascheri e Fabrizio Ricciardelli, The City-states in Late Medieval Italy, Roma, Viella Editrice, 2024
Claudia Storti

Dibattiti: Una storia non solo per storici. Presentazione della monografia di Marzia Lucchesi, Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti (1908-1914), Napoli, Satura Editrice, 2023 (San Salvatore Monferrato, 27 giugno 2025)
Introduzione al dibattito sul libro di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti 1908-1914
Enrico Beccaria

Valeria Benetti e il lungo itinerario della questione femminile
Ettore Dezza

Considerazioni sul volume di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti (1908-1914)
Giulia Giustetto

Alcune considerazioni tra passato e presente sul libro di Marzia Lucchesi Diritto, pedagogia e femminismo. Valeria Benetti 1908-1914
Claudia Storti

L’attualità del pensiero e dell’opera di Valeria Benetti
Marzia Lucchesi

Roney on Citizenship and the Birth of the Federal Government

Jessica Choppin Roney, Temple University, has published “They Are Their Citizens and Must Submit to Their Government”: Citizenship and the Creation of the Federal Government, 1776–1787, online in Law and History Review.  From the introduction:

The American War for Independence scrambled the concept of political allegiance and belonging. In James H. Kettner’s apt phrase, “subjects became citizens.” Where British law denied the possibility that a subject could renounce the obedience owed to their sovereign, Americans asserted through force of arms “the right to choose their allegiance.” Influenced by a contractual notion of political compact and by the mayhem of a violent civil war, people shuffled and sometimes reshuffled into camps of revolutionaries, loyalists, and neutrals.

--Dan Ernst 

Weekend Roundup

• Peter Shane explains how the US Supreme Court could preserve Humphrey's Executor, using the historically informed distinction advanced by Noah Rosenblum and Nathaniel Donahue in their amicus brief in Trump v. Slaughter (Washington Monthly).  (Professor Shane adds, in an email to a listserv, that he is "sadly confident [that this] will not be the actual outcome.") 

• The Federalist Society conference running in parallel with the annual meeting of the Association of American Law Schools next week includes a luncheon debate between Andrea Katz and Aditya Bamzai on the proposition, "Resolved: The President Has the Indefeasible Power of Removal"

• William Ewald joins Jesse Wegman of The New York Times to discuss Wegman’s new book, The Lost Founder: James Wilson and the Forgotten Fight for a People’s Constitution, under the auspices of the National Constitution Center, online at noon on Tuesday, January 20. 

• ICYMI: "After 1066, this medieval fine was imposed to deter anti-Norman violence" (History Extra).  "The Long History of Nativist Red-Baiting in the United States" (Jacobin).  In his annual report on the federal judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts "hewed more closely to history" than in previous years (NYT).  In addition to Founding Era documents, he quoted Calvin Coolidge (SCOTUSblog).  Karin Wulf refers to the report, not, as CNN did, as "history-heavy" but as "history gestural." 

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

ASLH election results

The transition to the new year seems like a good time to post the results of the recent American Society for Legal History election. 

As announced at the annual meeting earlier this fall, the incoming President Elect is Michelle McKinley. 

Incoming Board members are Mary Sarah Bilder, Li Chen, H. Timothy Lovelace, Thomas J. McSweeny, and Geneva Smith.  

Incoming Nominating Committee members are Rowan Dorin and Laura Weinrib.

For a full list of current officers, follow the link. 

-- Karen Tani

Eldridge on Vinogradoff

Lorren Eldridge, University of Cambridge, has posted Gone and Forgotten: Vinogradoff's Historical Jurisprudence:

Sir Paul Vinogradoff was once well-known for his historically contextualised approach to legal theory which held that legal ideas were the contingent products of social factors. Law was necessarily engaged with other subjects, and ‘historical jurisprudence’ could produce real insight into the nature of law - in part by placing theories such as analytical jurisprudence in context, evaluating and modifying theoretical models by reference to the contingent social facts of an era. This was part of the nineteenth century turn to ‘science’ in history and a focus on methodology. Sir Henry Maine argued that legal history proved the insufficiency of analytic theories, but his method met with many criticisms, some of which Vinogradoff sought to address. However, Vinogradoff’s insights have rarely been pursued or developed, with legal history favouring Maitland’s more doctrinal approach, and legal theory rejecting historical jurisprudence – at least explicitly. Despite its imperfections, historical jurisprudence offers a rich and valuable way to understand law, including to evaluate analytical models such of those of H L A Hart, and as a methodology for dialogue between comparative and historical legal scholarship. It has, in fact, continued to do so without explicit recognition in the 100 years since Vinogradoff’s death. 

--Dan Ernst 

GLOSSAE 22

Here is the TOC for GLOSSAE 22 (2025):

Estudios

Los jueces de apelaciones de Canarias en el Antiguo Régimen
Mª Dolores Álamo Martell

El indulto y su discreta presencia en la jurisprudencia del Tribunal Supremo (1870-1976)
Gabriela C. Cobo del Rosal Pérez

Alfonso de Cartagena, eximio jurista. Sobre un opúsculo compuesto en el concilio de Basilea (ca. 1436)
Luis Fernández Gallardo

La prostitución en el Derecho penal contemporáneo español (1822-1995). Análisis legislativo y jurisprudencial
Isabel Ramos Vázquez

Jueces antiesclavistas y proesclavistas de la Real Audiencia de los Confines y de Guatemala (1543-1564)
José María Vallejo García-Hevia

James Fitzjames Stephen y el campo semántico de la codificación en la Inglaterra victoriana
Victor Manuel Saucedo Maqueda

La progresiva restricción del ius ad bellum: de la guerra como Estado al sistema de Naciones Unidas
Leandro Martínez Peñas

La captación de la voluntad testamentaria en el ius commune de la Edad Moderna
Maurici Pérez Simeón

La naturaleza jurídica del precio en el contrato de compraventa: Un antiguo ius controversum de la jurisprudencia romana proyectado en las criptomonedas
Albert Gómez Jordán

La institución procesal de la res iudicata en el tiempo: Una retrospección histórico-normativa a su origen, evolución y consolidación en el ordenamiento español
Jessica Naranjo Rodríguez

El artículo 10.1 del Código penal chileno de 1874: El influjo del modelo español
Nuria Domingo Roig

Recensiones

Guillermo Vicente y Guerrero (coordinador), Derechos, mitos y libertades en la formación de la modernidad política en la España contemporánea, Valencia, Tirant Humanidades, 2024, 511 pp. [ISBN 978-84-1183-457-5]
José María Lahoz Finestres

Rafael Ramis Barceló y Pedro Ramis Serra, Actos y graduados de la Universidad de Alcalá (1544-1562), Madrid, Dykinson, 2024, 707 pp. [ISBN 978-84-1070-387-2]; Rafael Ramis Barceló y Pedro Ramis Sierra, Actos y graduados de la Universidad de Alcalá (152
José María Lahoz Finestres

Luka Breneselovic, Die wissenschaftskritischen Zuordnungen von Franz von Liszt. Ein Beitrag zum Verständnis der Modernen Schule des Strafrechts, Duncker & Humblot, Berlín, 2020, 583 pp. [ISBN: 978-3-428-15978-9]
José Franco-Chasán

Juan Javier del Granado y Felipe Westermeyer, Common law y Equity: derroteros de la tradición jurídica de Occidente, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México – Instituto de Investigaciones Jurídicas, México, 2024, 181 pp. + XXI [ISBN 978-607 30-8810-7 (l
Francisco Cuena Boy

Srdan Šarkic, A History of Serbian Mediaeval Law, Brill, Leiden, 2023, 616 pp. + XIV [ISBN: 978-90-04-54385-0]
Paolo Angelini

Dirk Heirbaut, Redefining Codification. A Comparative History of Civil, Commercial, and Procedural Codes, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2025, 462 pp. [ISBN: 9780198947370.001.0001]
José Franco-Chasán

Erika Prado Rubio, Aproximación histórico-jurídica a los crímenes de lesa humanidad, Dykinson, Madrid, 2024, 189 pp. [ISBN: 9788410708679]
Manuela Fernández Rodríguez

Antonio Bádenas Zamora, Las tentativas para abolir la pena de muerte en la España de Isabel II (1833-1868), Dykinson S.L., Madrid, 2025, 153 pp. [979-13-7006-119-7]
Gabriela C. Cobo del Rosal Pérez

Aniceto Masferrer, El adulterio en la codificación penal española: contribución del Tribunal Supremo y su doctrina legal a su proceso configurador (1870-1978), Editorial Aranzadi La Ley, Las Rozas de Madrid, 2024, 298 pp. [ISBN: 978-84-10308-43-5]
Julián Gómez de Maya

Federico Gallegos Vázquez, El reinado de Wamba. Estudio jurídico-institucional del reino visigodo durante el siglo VII, Asociación Veritas para el Estudio de la Historia, el Derecho y las Instituciones, Valladolid, 2025, 277 pp. [ISBN 978-84-09-68968-2]
Leandro Martínez Peñas

Ewelina Rogalska, Structures of European Civil Codes, Augsburger Schriften zur Rechtsgeschichte, vol. 43, LIT Verlag, Münster, 2024, 360 pp. [ISBN:978-3-643 91680-8]
José Franco-Chasán

Brian Buchhalter Montero, Ideología y proceso en los Anteproyectos de Ley de Enjuiciamiento de Falange (1938), Agencia Estatal Boletín Oficial del Estado, Madrid, 2025, 152 pp. [ISBN: 978-84-340-3088-6]
Patricia Plana de Juan

Aitor Fernández Delgado, El officium legati en época justinianea: un estudio histórico-jurídico, Dykinson, Madrid, 2025, 310 pp. [ISBN: 978-84-1070-804-4]
Álex Corona Encinas

Informaciones

Memoria de Don Antonio Pérez Martín
Julián Gómez de Maya

V Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Historia del Derecho
Fernando Hernández Fradejas

Nuevos profesores titulares y catedráticos de Universidad de Historia del Derecho y de las Instituciones
Fernando Hernández Fradejas

Entrevistas

Entrevista a Agustín Bermúdez Aznar
Fernando Hernández Fradejas

--Dan Ernst 

ASLH Craig Joyce Medal to Bryen, Rao

For the past month, we have been posting notices of the awards, prizes, and fellowships announced at this fall's meeting of the American Society for Legal History. There is one more to cover, and it's a special one: the Craig Joyce Medal. About this award:

The Society depends on the volunteer labors of its members. It is fortunate in the number of its members who are willing to join in the business of the Society, which is to foster scholarship and teaching in the broad field of legal history. Each year well over a hundred names appear on this website on the lists of officers, directors, and committee members. Among that number, a few people contribute their time to the Society over many years in ways that are above and beyond the call of duty, even in an organization whose members have a strong sense of duty. The Craig Joyce Medal recognizes those individuals. It is awarded on an occasional basis to acknowledge and honor extraordinary and sustained volunteer service to the Society. The medal was first awarded, fittingly, to Craig Joyce, the Andrews Kurth Professor of Law at the University of Houston, in whose honor the ASLH Board of Directors created the award.

In 2025, there were two medal recipients: Ari Bryen (Vanderbilt University) and Gautham Rao (American University). Both recipients have long records of service to the Society. Most recently, Professor Bryen served a 4-year term as the ASLH's Secretary. Professor Rao has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the ASLH-sponsored Law and History Review since 2017; in 2026, he will help transition the journal to new leadership.  

Congratulations to Professor Bryen and Professor Rao - and thank you to both of them for their extraordinary dedication to the Society and the field. 

-- Karen Tani  

Weekend Roundup

• 

  Ely Samuel Parker, seated at left (LC)

  Ely Samuel Parker, "a member of the Senecans," was admitted to the New York State Bar, 176 years after being denied entry on account of his race  (NYT).  

• John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School) has published an editorial in the New York Times: "The Idea That Once Held America Together Died in 2025." (The idea: procedural fairness/regularity.)

• Samuel Bray summarizes his and Drew Keane's book chapter, "Of Canon Law and Kings: The Legal Thought of James Ussher (1581-1656)" (Divided Argument).   

• "The American Historical Association (AHA), in collaboration with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), has filed an amicus brief in support of Harvard University’s lawsuit against the federal government over the university’s ability to host foreign scholars and students." Link. 

• Theda Skocpol in conversation with Edwin Amenta (Sociologica). 

• An impressive lineup of historical talks at the University of London's Institute of Historical Research. 

• Lawbook Exchange's  December 2025 (Part II) catalog of Scholarly Law and Legal History. 

• ICYMI: Damon Root on Mercy Otis Warren, "the Founding Mother Who Opposed the Constitution" (Reason).  Adam Serwer thinks "Conservatives Want the Antebellum Constitution Back" (The Atlantic).

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

Baylin Duryea on Judicial Review of Wartime Price Control

Catherine Baylin Duryea, St. John's University School of Law, has published Emergency Oversight in the FIU Law Review.  It is an excellent study of an institution familiar to Federal Courts scholars but not enough others, the Emergency Court of Appeals, which heard challenges to the orders of the Office of Price Administration during World War II and to that extent ensured the the United States fought, not in a state of exception, but, as Charles Evans Hughes might have put it, under "a fighting constitution." Here is the abstract:

This Article examines one of the most pressing questions in administrative law: How much judicial oversight should administrative agencies face during an emergency? This issue was particularly salient during the COVID epidemic, but it is not new. The Second World War saw a significant expansion and consolidation of the power of administrative agencies as well as experimentation with the appropriate oversight role for courts. This Article analyzes one such experiment: judicial oversight of agencies implementing wartime anti-inflationary measures, i.e., price controls and rationing. During the war, Congress created a specialized court, the Emergency Court of Appeals (ECA), to hear disputes arising out of these domestic economic programs. The ECA took a minimalist approach to oversight of agency decisions; it intervened to protect individual rights only so far as it could do so without impairing the overall regulatory scheme. The court embraced the view that its responsibility was to protect constitutional rights and guard against wartime inflation. The Supreme Court fully endorsed the approach of the ECA. This vision of courts and agencies working in harmony during a crisis stands in stark contrast to their contemporary relationship.

This Article makes two significant contributions. The first is a descriptive analysis of the relationship between administrative agencies and courts with respect to price control and rationing during WWII. That relationship, described in detail here for the first time, provides a valuable historical comparison for the contemporary era, where the courts similarly found themselves navigating expansive economic regulation in the context of national emergencies. During COVID, the court took a far more interventionist, restrictive approach towards limiting agency action. That tees up the second contribution of the Article, which is to raise the normative question: Is it desirable for courts to strictly limit administrative responses to national emergencies? The historical comparison cannot provide an answer, but it highlights another, more collaborative model for balancing individual rights with effective and efficient governance.

--Dan Ernst 

Bartie on Collective Legal Biography

Susan Bartie, Australian National University, has published Understanding the world through legal Biography: Lessons from history, sociology and law open access in the International Journal of the Legal Profession 32 (2-25): 185-206:

This article draws on the historiography of biography, sociology and examples from law to consider the potential of group legal biography projects to generate knowledge and theories about law, society and politics. From the historiography of biography, it explains how debates between historians about whether histories of social orders are best treated as large-scale biography projects reject certain theories about humanity and how people construct society. They suggest that biographical approaches are about something more than form and that the size and depth of projects support some theories better than others. From sociology, it explains how sociologists have unwittingly taken positions in the historians’ debates, developing theories that encourage researchers to approach biographical data in different ways to generate certain theories about society. From law, it situates historical and sociological projects that draw on lawyers’ biographical data within the historical debates and the sociological theories. The point is to encourage more researchers to appreciate the range of possibilities and corresponding debates about the use and potential of biographical data in understanding law.

--Dan Ernst

Jeppeson on Attainder in Virginia and New South Wales

Jennie Jeppesen has published "Tried and Attainted": Comparisons of the Application and Reception of the Common Law of Attaint in Virginia and New South Wales in Law and History Review:

Common Law, the shining cornerstone of the English Justice system, becomes a muddy pool when trying to uncover the ways in which it arrived into the early Virginian, Maryland, and early Eastern Australian colonies. This is particularly true for the common law of felony attainder. Attaint—social and legal death without physical death—had lasting implications on the question of legal personhood for the convicts transported from England to these colonies between 1614 and 1840. This article revisits the work done by Bruce Kercher, adding new primary research from the American colonies to enrich and challenge Kercher’s arguments. Expanding the primary source material used in the analysis gives us a deeper and more nuanced understanding about how attainder was received and applied in the colonies—in particular, in the American colonies—and a deeper understanding of outside forces that influenced property rights beyond that of the question of attainder. This article provides nuance to how common law was understood and applied by those with and without formal legal training in early developing colonial societies.

--Dan Ernst

LHR 43:4

Law and History Review 43:4 (November 2025) is now published online.

British Imperial Constitutional Law and the Zionist Campaign against the Legislative Council in Mandatory Palestine
Maya Kreiner

The Twentieth-Century Origins of the Medieval Lex Mercatoria Thesis
Jake Dyble

General Will or Public Order? The Debate on Criminal Justice Policy in Early Colonial Himalaya, 1815–1816
Irit Ballas, Arik Moran

How Kantian is Kelsen’s Early Theory of International Law?
Wojciech Engelking

“The Problem Can Be Solved Only by Those Imbued with a Socialist Sense of Justice!”: Social Conflict and the Lower Courts in the German Democratic Republic
Ville Erkkilä, Luisa Gries

Legislating the Progressive Arab Society: State Authority and Social Rights in the 1964 Interim Constitutions of Egypt, Iraq, and Syria
Relli Shechter

The Collapse of the Civil Rights Coalition: Congress and the Politics of Antibusing Legislation, 1966–86
Jeffery A. Jenkins, Justin Peck

“The Rich Uncle from America”: Transnational Inheritance Transfers between the United States, Germany, and Russia, 1840s–1980s
Jürgen Norbert Dinkel

Between Law and Politics: Islamic Judges in the South Indian Littoral, 1808–1885
Saumyashree Ghosh

Witnesses, Judges: A Revolution Untold
Orit Malka

Lucretia (and Lucia) and the Medieval Canonists: Guilt, Consent, and Chastity in the Early Canonistic Jurisprudence of Rape: Submission for Law and History Review
Atria A. Larson

Fines and the Common Bench, 1218–1226
Douglas R. Chapman

Conspiracy, Crime, and Conflict in the Court of Star Chamber
K.J. Kesselring

“To Each Their Grievance Is Bitter and Unbearable”: Petitions, Autocracy, and the Rule of Law in Eighteenth-Century Russia
Alison K. Smith

Taken Not Given: The End of Slavery in Britain
Simon P Newman

“Distressing the Distressed”: Rent Distraint in Early Republic New York
Kristin O’Brassill-Kulfan

Incapable of Managing His Estate: Habitual Drunkards and the Expansion of Guardianship in the Nineteenth-Century United States
David Korostyshevsky

Alien Acts in the Age of Emancipation: Mobility Control and Executive Power in the British Caribbean, 1820s–1830s
Jan C. Jansen

Ideas With(out) Consequences?: The Natural Law Institute and the Making of Conservative Constitutionalism During the Cold War, 1947–1951
Dennis J. Wieboldt

The Appeal of Religious Law: Jurisdictional Politics and Modern State Formation in the Gulf Sheikhdoms, ca. 1950–2000
Alexandre Caeiro

Review Essay

Past as Present: State-ifying the Laws of War
Yilin Wang

Book Reviews

Lauren Benton, They Called it Peace: Worlds of Imperial Violence Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. 304. £35 hardcover (ISBN 9780691248479)
Boyd van Dijk

Allen D. Boyer and Mark Nicholls, The Rise and Fall of Treason in English History Abingdon: Routledge, 2024. Pp. 333. $180.00 hardcover (ISBN 9780367509934).
Matthew Steilen

Henry Ansgar Kelly, Criminal-Inquisitorial Trials in English Church Courts: From the Middle Ages to the Reformation Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2023. Pp. x, 
R. H. Helmholz

Alex Thompson, British Law and Governance in Treaty Port China 1842–1927: Consuls, Courts and Colonial Subjects Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2024. Pp. 180. €104.00 hardcover (ISBN 9789463720397). doi: 10.1515/9789048557097-004
Ivan Lee

Cuilan Liu. Buddhism in Court: Religion, Law, and Jurisdiction in China. Hardback. Published: 29 August 2024. 288 Pages. ISBN: 9780197663332.£78.00.
Paul R. Katz

Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2024. Pp.360. Paperback 32$. ISBN: 9781503637740
Ilkay Yilmaz

Taisu Zhang, The Ideological Foundations of Qing Taxation: Belief Systems, Politics, and Institutions Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. Pp. 422, $120.00 hardcover (ISBN 9781108995955).
Meng Zhang

Nadeera Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka. Navigating Pluralities in a Colonial Society, Amsterdam: Leiden University Press, 2023. Pp. 316. € 66,00 paperback (ISBN 9789087283759).
Pouwel van Schooten

--Dan Ernst 

Frost and Eason on Birthright Citizenship and Congressional Qualifications

Amanda Frost, University of Virginia School of Law, and her UVA law student, Emily Eason, have posted The Dog That Didn't Bark: Eligibility To Serve In Congress And The Original Understanding Of The Citizenship Clause, which appeared in Georgetown Law Journal Online, and is the subject of a New York Times column by Adam Liptak.  Here is the abstract:

Jefferson Davis Contemplates Hiram Revels (LC)

President Donald J. Trump's 2025 Executive Order restricting birthright citizenship has prompted new interest in the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause. This Essay analyzes an overlooked source of the original understanding of that Clause: the meaning of "citizen" when determining whether members-elect are qualified to serve in Congress. The U.S. Constitution requires that every member of Congress be a U.S. citizen, and further provides that each House "shall be the judge" of members' qualifications. Anyone is permitted to challenge a member-elect's qualifications to serve, and hundreds of such challenges have been brought over U.S. history. Accordingly, challenges to members-elect's citizenship--as well as the absence of such challenges--shed light on the original understanding of the Citizenship Clause. 

Using a variety of archival sources, we have researched the ancestry of all 584 members of the Thirty-ninth (1865-67), Fortieth (1867-69), and Forty-first (1869-71) Congresses, and found more than a dozen whose citizenship would be suspect under President Trump's interpretation of the Citizenship Clause. Yet no one questioned these members' citizenship despite the contentious political environment that inspired frequent qualifications challenges on a variety of other grounds. This dog that didn't bark provides further evidence that the Trump administration's novel interpretation of the Citizenship Clause is inconsistent with the original understanding. 

We conclude with an observation based on long hours of tedious research: Determining the status of immigrants arriving in the early nineteenth century--an era with few immigration records and minimal enforcement of existing state-based restrictions on immigration--is often impossible, and always onerous. The difficulty of the task alone is evidence that no one at the time of ratification could have seriously thought that U.S. citizenship turned on such questions. 

--Dan Ernst 

Legal History Review 113:3-4

Tijdschrift voor Rechtsgeschiedenis/Revue d'histoire du droit/The Legal History Review 113: 3-4 (2025) has been published, Here, with a hat tip to ESCLH Blog, is the TOC:

The Hexabiblos: the Humanist quest for the text (Lorena Atzeri)

Since the publication of its editio princeps in 1540, the Hexabiblos of Constantinos Harmenopoulos attracted the attention of many legal humanists, including Cujas, Contius, Soarez de Ribeira, Falkenburg, and others. As was their practice, they wrote annotations, emendations and comments in the margins of their personal copies, often collating the printed text with other manuscripts they discovered in various libraries. Some of this precious evidence has been preserved in a set of seven copies now in the Advocates Library in Edinburgh. These copies were used in the 18th century by Otto Reitz, the scholar entrusted by Meerman with the preparation of a new edition of the Hexabiblos. The books were later sold at the auction of Meerman’s library in 1824. This late Byzantine source offers an illuminating example of the philological approach of the legal humanists, and of the process which, over the centuries, led from manuscript text to printed edition.

Frühklassische Testamentsauslegung im Spiegel von Phaedrus Fab. iv,5 (Andreas Herrmann)

In Phaedrus we find striking examples of law in literature. Not only does Phaedrus exhibit a propensity for juristic parlance, he shows a recurring interest in questions of law as well as an understanding of legal concepts. His Fab. iv,5 in particular reflects topics which will have occupied early classical Roman jurists in their attempts to interpret testamentary dispositions. Read with a view to law as literature, Phaedrus’s narration draws attention to a particular pattern in which arguments are presented in some texts composed by Roman jurists.

‘Quibus permissum est iura condere’ Some ideas on the origin of the Ius respondendi (W.J. Zwalve) 

It is contended in this article that there has never been a ‘ius respondendi’, a licence to respond, introduced by the emperor Augustus. Instead, Justinian, after having repealed the 426 Law of Citations, wanted to stress that the authority of Roman jurisprudence (ius) had always been dependent on imperial authority even before the Law of Citations, retroactively granting an imperial ‘licence to explain the law’ to all jurists mentioned in his Digest.

Publication and the validity of constitutions in the Late Roman Empire (A.J.B. Sirks) 

Contrary to the current view of Mommsen, Seeck and Schwind that imperial legislation required publication to gain validity, Bianchi Fossati Vanzetti and particularly Kreuzsaler maintained that imperial legislation gained validity directly by the issuing by the emperor (the datio). Purpose of publication was merely to make the law known. For legal acts performed in the period between datio and publication according to the old law generally restitution was granted. In a reaction Kaiser has submitted arguments against this position. The present article examines his and Kreuzsaler’s arguments and confirms the conclusion of Kreuzsaler.

Henricus Kinschotius (1541–1608) On practices of grace and debt relief before the Sovereign Council of Brabant (Nicolas Ruys)

This article is aimed at investigating the power to pardon insolvent debtors in the early modern Duchy of Brabant through the analysis of Henricus Kinschotius’ treatise De solutionum induciis, 4th part of his opus De rescriptis Gratiae, a supremo Brabantia senatu nomine Ducis concedi solitis. In his treatise, Kinschotius, a Brabantian lawyer of the second part of the xvith century, seeks to study the so-called letters of atterminatio and respite, which are ducal grace letters intended to grant payment suspension to insolvent bona fide debtors. As supreme jurisdiction of the duchy, the Sovereign Council of Brabant is the main institution empowered to issue these pardon letters on behalf of the Duke. But granting such debt deferral is likely to affect the creditors’ interests. As a matter of consequence, several legal requirements must be fulfilled to benefit from a letter of atterminatio: the requesting debtor must notably provide a sufficient guarantee and obtain the consent of the majority of his creditors. This paper will thus discuss the procedural aspects for acquiring those letters, the scope of application ratione personae and materiae (with a list of claims that cannot be subject to a debt deferral) as well as their legal conditions and effects. Finally, special attention will be paid to the common practices of abuse committed by fraudulent debtors and which solutions Kinschotius proposes to put an end to it. As it will be concluded, Kinschotius’ study of the practice of letters of atterminatio and respite by the Council of Brabant illustrates a strong and tenacious autonomy of a provincial institution in the context of the assertion of sovereignty and centralisation of power that characterised the modern Habsburg Low Countries.

Passer lectres et contraitz entre les parties consentens et eux soubmectans a ladicte jurisdicion volontaire De vrijwillige rechtspleging voor publieke notarissen, grafelijke leenmannen en lokale schepenbanken binnen laatmiddeleeuws Henegouwen (14de–15de eeuw) (Falco Van Der Schueren)

In late medieval Hainaut, notaries public, comital vassals, and local benches of aldermen alike were competent to authenticate deeds of various legal transactions. As they could all exercise voluntary or non-contentious jurisdiction, they competed with one another in a free legal market. From a legal-historical perspective, this contribution aims to assess their relative market share. Methodologically, it uses the concepts of ‘validity’ and ‘proof’ as objective analytical criteria in a contextual framework combining normative texts, a unique fifteenth-century formulary, and a substantial corpus of chirographs, sealed charters, and notarial instruments. In doing so, it examines how these three legal actors ensured the validity of the transactions they handled, and to what extent their deeds had any probative value.

Versions of War Slavery: Grotius, Hobbes and the reception of their ideas (Gustaaf van Nifterik)

This article discusses two approaches to war slavery, one by Hugo Grotius based on jus gentium with a moral appeal to treat one’s war slaves well, the other by Thomas Hobbes for whom jus gentium plays no role and who focuses on the difference between chained and unchained slaves. Next, we look at the works of Pufendorf, Huber, and Noodt. There we find elements of both Grotius and Hobbes, in various combinations and with different outcomes. We see Grotius’ moral appeal gradually becoming an integrated part of jus gentium, applying to both chained and unchained slaves.

Book reviews

Daphne Penna [and] Roos Meijering, A sourcebook on Byzantine law, Illustrating Byzantine law through the sources. [Medieval law and its practice, 34]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2022]. xvii + 224 p. (Philipp Scheibelreiter)

Isabel Alfonso, José M. Andrade [and] André Evangelista Marques (eds.), Records and processes of dispute settlements in early medieval societies, Iberia and beyond. [Medieval law and its practise, 41]. Brill, Leiden – Boston 2024. xiv + 425 S. isbn 978-90-04-68295-5 (hardcopy), 978-90-04-68300-6 (e-book) (Steffen Schlinker)

Frisian Land Law, A critical edition and translation of the Freeska Landriucht, edited by H. Nijdam, J. Hallebeck [and] Hylkje de Jong. [Medieval law and its practice, 33]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2023]. viii + 449 p. (Helle Vogt)

Srdan Šarkic, A history of Serbian mediaeval law. [Medieval law and its practice, 39]. Brill, Leiden – Boston [2023]. xiii + 616 p. (Tomislav Karlovic)

G. Mazzanti, Matrimoni post-tridentini, Un dibatto dottrinale fra continuità e cambiamento (secc. xvi–xviii). [Diritto cultura società, Storia e problemi della giustizia criminale, 14]. Bononia University Press, [Bologna 2020]. 235 p. (Ton Meijers)

Sir John Baker, Sources of English legal history, Public law to 1750. Oxford University Press, [Oxford] 2024. lii + 788 p. (Guillaume Leyte)

T. Pasquiet-Briand (dir.), Les conflits doctrinaux du xix e siècle, Une analyse des fondements politiques du droit. Éditions mare & martin, [Paris 2023]. 261 p. (Guillaume Grégoire)

A. Cordes, H.-P. Haferkamp, B. Kannowski, H. Lück, H. de Wall, D. Werkmüller† und C. Bertelsmeier-Kierst (Hrg.), Handwörterbuch zur deutschen Rechtsgeschichte hrg , 2., völlig überarbeitete und erweiterte Auflage, Redaktion: A.M. Auer, A.-M. Heil, R. Penssel, L. Samad-Tari, S. Schmidt, P.-M. Schmitt, O. Walther, Th. Wanninger und M. Wolter, Band iv: Nüchternheit, nüchtern – Richtsteig. Erich Schmidt Verlag, [Berlin 2024]. xvi S. + 2016 Sp. (Alain Wijffels)

P. Collin [and] A. Casagrande (eds.), Law and diversity: European and Latin American experiences from a legal historical perspective, vol. 1: Fundamental questions. [Global perspectives on legal history, 21]. Max-Planck-Institut für Rechtsgeschichte und Rechtstheorie, Frankfurt am Main 2023. xii + 764 p. (Sandrine Brachotte)

--Dan Ernst