Kreis on Regulating Reproduction in Redeemer Georgia

Anthony Michael Kreis, Georgia State University College of Law, has posted Sex and Control in Redeemer Georgia, which is forthcoming in the Georgia State University Law Review:

This essay explores the interplay of history, law, and morality behind the first abortion law in Georgia. Examining the philosophical underpinnings of liberty and equality as articulated in Georgia's constitutional history through time, the essay highlights the moral contradictions inherent in the legal frameworks of Reconstruction Georgia. The origin of Georgia's 1876 abortion law contains multitudes-rooted in race-based contestations for political power, the sociological evolution of medical practice, and evolving attitudes on individual rights. At times, white elites used abortion to attack Yankee culture and stir up racist fears about moral contagion associated with Radical Republicans. To this end, when read against political time, the campaign to regulate motherhood and criminalize reproductive choice was not simply grounded in morality claims about protecting fetal life-a significant theme in the mid-nineteenth century campaign against abortion nationally-but also about enforcing other race and sex crimes and controlling the freedperson labor force in an era of political uncertainty and constitutional upheaval. Abortion surfaced as a political issue in Georgia at a time and in a manner that makes it inextricably linked to the politics of Reconstruction and Redemption.

--Dan Ernst

Virtual Launch of a Special Issue: Rethinking Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne

After a content warning that the event would "discuss sensitive and potentially triggering topics including sexual assault," the National Archives of the United Kingdom posted the following announcement of and registration for a virtual launch of a special issue of the Chaucer Review, entitled Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne: Rethinking the Record:

NYPL

Few medieval records have received as much attention from literary scholars as a group of documents dating from May to July 1380 that involve Geoffrey Chaucer and Cecily Chaumpaigne, the daughter of a London baker. At the heart of this group of records is a quitclaim of May 4, enrolled in the Close Rolls of the English Chancery, releasing Chaucer from “all manner of actions related to my raptus”. The word raptus, which in legal contexts can denote “rape,” “abduction,” and much of the spectrum lying between these terms, has challenged Chaucer scholars ever since Frederick J. Furnivall announced this find in 1873. The matter was given significant new impetus in 1993, when Christopher Cannon discovered a second quitclaim by Chaumpaigne – with the word raptus removed – enrolled in the plea rolls of the Court of King’s Bench a few days after the first. Cannon’s discovery has energised foundational strands of Chaucer studies, in particular feminist scholarship, over the last thirty years, but in this time no new documentary evidence has come to light.

Now, new research into the medieval legal collections at The National Archives has uncovered two new life-records relating to the dispute of 1380 – including evidence of the original legal accusations brought against the poet – which offer a radically different understanding of the documentary evidence

More.

--Dan Ernst

Weekend Roundup

• The Organization of American Historians has cancelled its annual meeting. But you can still skim the excellent program that the organizers put together. Margot Canaday (Princeton University) and Craig Steven Wilder (MIT) co-chaired the program committee. AND, if you were scheduled to present, check out this invitation (via Twitter) from The Docket (the online companion to the Law & History Review): "We’re sad about all that awesome #legalhistory scholarship that was going to be at #OAH20 and we’d like to be of service. The Docket will publish abstracts, full papers, etc. for any law, policy, or politics related OAH panel!" 

• Two recent op-eds by Felicia Kornbluh (University of Vermont): "Will the Court Ignore Past Rulings in Its Zeal to Demolish Abortion Rights?" (American Prospect) and "The abortion issue is back in the Supreme Court. What would my mother, and Jewish feminists of her generation, think?" (Forward).

• From Process, the blog of the Organization of American Historians, Greg Ablavsky (Stanford Law) writes about his recent Journal of American History article “Species of Sovereignty: Native Nationhood, the United States, and International Law, 1783–1795.

• For those who have moved to online teaching, Twitter is filled with good resources right now. For example, Aimi Hamraie (Vanderbilt University) tweeted out an excellent guide to "accessible teaching in the time of COVID-19," tapping into some hard-won wisdom from "disabled culture and community." 

• Law and History Review and Cambridge Core have posted two new articles: “Precocious Girls”: Age of Consent, Class and Family in Late Nineteenth-Century England, by Laura Lammasniemi, and Vernacularizing Justice: Age of Consent and a Legal History of the British Empire, by Ishita Pande. 

• Reuel E. Schiller has published “Regulation and the Collapse of the New Deal Order, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Market,” in Beyond the New Deal Order: U.S. Politics from the Great Depression to the Great Recession, ed. Gerstle, Lichtenstein, and O’Connor (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019).

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Elisa Minoff (Center for the Study of Social Policy) on why "work requirements are catastrophic in a pandemic"; Brendan Shanahan (Yale University), "Counting everyone — citizens and non-citizens — in the 2020 census is crucial"; Ariela Gross (University of Southern California) and Alejandro de la Fuente (Harvard University), "The history of slavery remains with us today"; and more.

• The Library of Congress may be closed to the public, but we believe its “crowdsourcing initiative By the People” continues.  The newest campaign to enlist the public’s help in making "digital collection items more searchable and accessible online is Herencia: Centuries of Spanish Legal Documents includes thousands of pages of historical documents in Spanish, Latin and Catalan."

• Jayanth K. Krishnan, Indiana University Maurer School of Law, has posted "Lawyers for the Undocumented: Addressing a Split Circuit Dilemma for Asylum-Seekers," which is forthcoming in the Ohio State Law Journal.  A section treats the Equal Access to Justice Act (EAJA), a federal statute adopted in 1980.

• ICYMI: An exhibit at the Lombard Historical Society on “the first woman to ever vote in an Illinois municipal election, an attorney named Ellen Martin.”  Patti Smith’s blurb of Ralph Nader’s cookbook: “A wonderful blend of consumer protection and consumer pleasure.” H/t: JLG

• And if you can face it: Duke University Press has put together this Navigating the Threat of Pandemics collection--free to read online until June 1 (books) and Oct.1 (articles). LHB readers may appreciate this one especially.

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

Weekend Roundup

• Two items of interest from John Fabian Witt (Yale Law School): (1) He and other torts scholars (Mark Gergen, Paul Hoffman) have submitted an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the current Section 1981 case Comcast v. National Association of African American-Owned Media. The brief challenges Comcast's characterization of a number of 19th-century torts cases and in doing so offers insights about the history of "but-for" causation as an element of negligence. (2) The latest issue of the New Republic includes his thoughts on "the shrinking legacy" of former Supreme Court Oliver Wendell Holmes, "first celebrity justice of the U.S. Supreme Court": why is Holmes veneration "in decline"?

• The 12th Annual Court History and Continuing Legal Education Symposium of the Historical Society of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana will be devoted to the history of judicial confirmation.  The symposium includes the presentation, “Paths to the Bench: Southern District of Indiana Appointments from William E. Steckler to Gene E. Brooks,” by Doria Lynch and “a brief synopsis of the Chief Justice Robert B. Taney mural alternation project, which is part of the national trend to remove inappropriate historical symbols from public spaces.”  It will be held from 1 to 4:30 p.m. on November 1 in the Sarah Evans Barker Courtroom of the Birch Bayh Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in Indianapolis.   (The Indiana Lawyer.)

• John W. Kluge Center has announced the arrival of several scholars-in-residence at the Library of Congress.  The holder of the Kluge Chair in American Law and Governance is Andrea Campbell, the Arthur and Ruth Sloan professor of political science at MIT, who is working on a book project titled “How Americans Think About Taxes.” 

• Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on exhibit at the National Museum of American Jewish History, 5th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, through January 12, 2020.

• Here at LHB we usually try to keep things nonpartisan, but we still feel obliged to note, in case you somehow missed it, the recent interview ASLH past-president Bruce Mann gave to CNN.  And, while we're on the subject of legal historian spouses to presidential candidates, thank you John Bessler for that shout out at the 2019 Hall of Fame Celebration of the Dubuque County Democratic Party.  DRE 

• Over at Jotwell: Binyamin Blum (UC Hastings) reviews Orna Alyagon Darr's Plausible Crime Stories: The Legal History of Sexual Offences in Mandate Palestine (CUP, 2018)

• ICYMI:  How Did Magna Carta Influence the U.S. Constitution? (History).  Frank Bowman on the history of impeachment in Rolling Stone.

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: many historically informed observations about impeachment and President Donald Trump, including by Sidney Milkis (University of Virginia, Miller Center) and Daniel Tichenor (University of Oregon) (here); Thomas Balcerski (Eastern Connecticut State University) (here); and Doug Rossinow (University of Oslo) (here). Also Jessica Wang (University of British Columbia) on "How New York defeated rabies" and why "the city’s history with the disease offers a blueprint for eliminating deaths around the world." More.

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