Strange on Penal Expertise and the Death Penalty in the 1950s

Carolyn Strange, Australian National University, has published, open access, The Contestation of Penal Expertise in the Age of the Expert: Thorsten Sellin and the Death Penalty in the 1950s, in Law and History Review:

Readings of the history of penal expertise trace its rise to the late nineteenth century and its decline to the late twentieth century, with the crumbling of the welfare state. Despite stark differences along Whiggish and Foucauldian lines in evaluations of that history, a consensus has emerged that the penal-welfare complex peaked around mid-century, dependent on correctional experts. Most studies of that phenomenon have focused on the institutionalization and “treatment” of “problem” populations while neglecting the role of penal expertise in critiques of capital punishment. When Britain and Canada undertook major inquiries into the death penalty in the 1950s, they turned to the world’s foremost expert on the subject: sociologist Thorsten Sellin. Yet, these government-appointed studies devalued his academic capital in favor of the lived expertise of police. By examining the contestation of Sellin’s sources, methods, and conclusions, this paper puts the chronology of penal welfarism and its experts into question. Not simply a case of ill-informed opinion prevailing over criminological evidence, the dismissive treatment of this penal expert highlights the need to apply a more capacious understanding of contending forms of expertise at numerous points in penal history, rather than setting the devaluation of penal expertise in the recent past.

--Dan Ernst 

LSA Awards to Daly, Mitra & Swanson

Several legal historians won awards at the Law and Society Association's virtual conference last week. 

The winner of the 2021 J. Willard Hurst Book Prize is Samuel Fury Childs Daly (Duke) for his book, A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War (Cambridge University Press, 2020). This book is the first study of West African legal history to win the Hurst Prize (since 1980). Prof. Daly was our LHB guest blogger in April 2021.

The runner-up for the 2021 Hurst Prize is Durba Mitra (Harvard) for her book, Indian Sex Life: Sexuality and the Colonial Origins of Modern Social Thought (Princeton University Press, 2020).

The winner of the John Hope Franklin Prize is Kara W. Swanson (Northeastern University) for her article, "Race and Selective Legal Memory: Reflections on Invention of a Slave," Columbia Law Review vol.120, no.4. 

Congratulations to all!

--Mitra Sharafi

Socio-Legal Studies Job at York University (Toronto)

 [We share the following job ad, which may be of interest to LHB readers. Applications are due by March 22, 2021.]

Position Rank: Full Time Tenure Stream – Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream/Associate Professor, Teaching Stream/Professor, Teaching Stream

Discipline/Field: Law & Society, Socio-Legal Studies 

Home Faculty: Liberal Arts & Professional Studies

Home Department/Area/Division: Department of Social Science

Affiliation/Union: YUFA

Position Start Date: July 1, 2021

Department of Social Science

The Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, York University invites highly qualified candidates to apply for a teaching stream tenure-track position in Law & Society at the rank of Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream or Professor, Teaching Stream to commence July 1, 2021. The successful candidate will be expected to teach undergraduate courses and to provide creative educational leadership in enhancing teaching and learning through curricular and pedagogical innovation in the classroom and at the level of programs and support aspects of curriculum delivery and development. The successful candidate is expected to develop new courses to complement the program curriculum. Salary will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. All York University positions are subject to budgetary approval. More information about the Department can be found at http://www.sosc.laps.yorku.ca/. Information about the Law & Society Program can be found at http://www.laso.sosc.laps.yorku.ca/.

A PhD in Socio-Legal Studies, Law, or a closely related field in the humanities or social sciences is required by the start date. Qualified candidates will have an ability to teach and contribute to curriculum development in core program areas including socio-legal theory. A focus on environmental justice, anticolonialism, and global human rights would be welcome. Applicants must demonstrate excellence or the promise of excellence in critical interdisciplinary undergraduate teaching in the field of socio-legal studies. Experience with teaching large lecture-style classes, and in an interdisciplinary program, will be considered assets. Pedagogical innovation in high priority areas such as experiential education, technology enhanced learning, and community-based learning is an asset. Publications in socio-legal studies and related fields are also an asset.

The successful candidate will demonstrate excellence or clear potential for excellence in teaching university-level courses, as appropriate to career stage, through: the teaching statement; teaching accomplishments and pedagogical innovations; teaching evaluations; and strong letters of reference. The successful candidate will also demonstrate a strong commitment to pedagogy and student success, the capacity to bring a theoretical and practical orientation to teaching, learning and program design, and demonstrate good judgment and a reflective approach to innovation in teaching. Experience with curriculum development and universal design approaches to teaching and assessment is preferred. The successful candidate is also expected to provide evidence of service contributions or potential to contribute to service in administrative and committee work.

York University champions new ways of thinking that drive teaching and research excellence. Through cross-disciplinary programming, innovative course design, diverse experiential learning and a supportive community environment, our students receive the education they need to create big ideas that make an impact on the world. Located in Toronto, York is the third largest university in Canada, with a strong community of 53,000 students, 7,000 faculty and administrative staff, and more than 300,000 alumni.

York University has a policy on Accommodation in Employment for Persons with Disabilities and is committed to working towards a barrier-free workplace and to expanding the accessibility of the workplace to persons with disabilities.  Candidates who require accommodation during the selection process are invited to contact Uwafiokun Idemudia, Chair of the Department of Social Science at chrsosc@yorku.ca (Subject line: Law & Society)

York University is an Affirmative Action (AA) employer and strongly values diversity, including gender and sexual diversity, within its community. The AA Program, which applies to women, members of visible minorities (racialized groups), Aboriginal (Indigenous) people and persons with disabilities, can be found at www.yorku.ca/acadjobs  or by calling the AA line at 416-736-5713.  Applicants wishing to self-identify as part of York University’s Affirmative Action program can do so by downloading, completing and submitting the form found at: http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/affirmative-action/self-identification-form.  All qualified candidates are encouraged to apply; however, Canadian citizens, permanent residents and Indigenous peoples in Canada will be given priority. No application will be considered without a completed mandatory Work Status Declaration form which can be found at http://acadjobs.info.yorku.ca/affirmative-action/work-authorization-form.

The deadline for receipt of completed applications is March 22, 2021. 

Application, including a cover letter, an up-to-date curriculum vitae, a statement of research and teaching interests, teaching evaluations and three confidential letters of reference, may be uploaded to https://apply.laps.yorku.ca beginning on January 28, 2021.

Questions may be directed to Professor Uwafiokun Idemudia, Chair, Department of Social Science, Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies. Email: chrsosc@yorku.ca (Subject line: Position in Law & Society).

Posting End Date: March 22, 2021

--Mitra Sharafi

Eldridge on Vinogradoff

Although it’s gated, we note the publication of Gone and forgotten: Vinogradoff's historical jurisprudence, by Lorren Eldridge, a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Law, Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, online in Legal Studies:

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 HLA 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

Mawani at Queen Mary

[We have the following announcement.  DRE]

The School of Law, and the Centre for Law and Society in a Global Context, at Queen Mary University of London, are hosting Professor Renisa Mawani (q.v. here and here) for the first week of March 2020. Both events are free and everyone is warmly welcome.  Our two events with Professor Mawani are:

• On March 3, an interdisciplinary symposium on Professor Mawani’s award-winning, recent book, Across Oceans of Law, with a panel including Dr Luis Eslava (Kent); Professor Laleh Khalili (Queen Mary University of London); Professor Stewart Motha (Birkbeck); Dr Simon Layton (Queen Mary); and Dr Surabhi Ranganathan (University of Cambridge) 

• On March 5, the Cotterrell Lecture in Sociological Jurisprudence on "Turning Nationals into Foreigners: The Ingress into India Ordinance."

Weekend Roundup

• Our friends at the Federal Judicial Center have posted the legislation that for the first time increased the size of the US Supreme Court and established a new federal circuit. 

• We're getting caught up on Legal History Miscellany posts since the new year--here's Krista J. Kesselring (Dalhousie University) on Star Chamber records and early modern fugitives, Sara M. Butler (The Ohio State University) on femme sole status, and Cassie Watson (Oxford Brookes University) on illustrated Victorian crime reports.

• Over at Nursing Clio: Cara Delay (College of Charleston) on the trial of abortionist Mamie Cadden in 1950s Ireland.

• An advance alert from Oxford University Press tells us of the online publication of two articles in the American Journal of Legal History.  We've previously noted Zachary Newkirk’s "Full Justice May Be Done Them": The Case of Bill, Charles, Jupiter, Randolph, et al. v. William A. Carr in a Florida Freedmen's Bureau Court.  New to us is John Harrington and Ambreena Manji’s “Africa Needs Many Lawyers Trained for the Need of their Peoples”: Struggles over Legal Education in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana.

• Calling all junior scholars of Asian socio-legal studies (including those doing archival research): read up on the Training Initiative for Asian Law & Society Scholars (TRIALS) here. The deadline is June 20, 2019.

• ICYMI: An ABA Journal Gallery: 12 Supreme Court milestones that helped define First Amendment rights.  A report on the presentation “Idaho Women Win the Right to Vote” by the professors Katherine Aiken and Rebecca Scofield at the University of Idaho.

• Update:  When we think of legal-historian spouses of presidential candidates, we of course think of Bruce Mann, a past-president of the ASLH.  The Hill reminds us we should also think of Amy Klobuchar's spouse, John Bessler. Legal historians: they're quite the catch!

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

Weekend Roundup

• A new issue (2:1) of The Docket–the online sidekick of Law and History Review–has gone live.  Check it out! 

• The American Council of Learned Societies has announced its fellows for 2019, among them Laura Edwards (for “Only the Clothes on Her Back: Textiles, Law, and Commerce in the Nineteenth-Century United States”); Amanda H. Frost (for “Unmaking Americans: A History of Citizenship Stripping in the United States”); Katherine Unterman (for "The Colonial Constitution: Law and Empire in the US Territories”); and Kimberly Welch (for “Lending and Borrowing Across the Color Line in the Antebellum American South”).

• YLS's John Fabian Witt's lecture, To Save the Country? National Emergencies from Lincoln to Trump, delivered at Columbia University’s Center for American Studies on March 28, is now up on YouTube.

• "Voices of the Movement" is a series of podcast interviews of "veterans of the civil rights movement" conducted by the Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart. Available now is episode 1: "The day Martin Luther King Jr. died."

• If you’re in the mood for a review essay with a point-of-view, try, while it’s still open access, Nan Enstad's The “Sonorous Summons” of the New History of Capitalism, Or, What Are We Talking about When We Talk about Economy? from Modern American History 2:1.  H/t: JLG 

• The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum and the International Labour Organization will present the symposium Together, We Win: FDR, Frances Perkins and the ILO at the Library’s Henry Wallace Center on Monday, April 15, 2019.

• Here’s some timely and unfortunately apt comparative constitutionalism: Lénárd Sándor, Chief Counsel to the Constitutional Court of Hungary and, currently, a visiting foreign fellow at the Federal Judicial Center, in conversation with Jeffrey Rosen.

• And, in other news from the FJC, check out the most recent addition to the Center's unit to our Famous Federal Trials series, U.S. v. Guiteau, written by Winston Bowman.

• ICYMI: In WaPo, Petula Dvorak’s appreciation of an exhibit on consumer advocacy at the National Museum of American History.   A Look at Dover [NH]’s Legal History, Courts, and Jurists. Sean Wilentz on "why a merciful God invented second editions."

• Postdoc opportunity at McGill's Indian Ocean World Centre: details here. The deadline is May 15, 2019.

• Also for early career scholars: Oxford's Centre for Socio-Legal Studies has a Call out for a "Law in Context" Early Career Workshop. Those applications are due July 10, 2019.

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