Legal History Blog

Athena Mutua, SUNY at Buffalo Law School , takes up implications of scholarship on " The Long Civil Rights Movement " in a new ess...

Rudolph Peters , Crime and Punishment in Islamic Law: Theory and Practice from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-first Century (Cambridge: Cambri...

Julian Zelizer , Princeton, has a new essay, THE CONSERVATIVE EMBRACE OF PRESIDENTIAL POWER in the Boston University Law Review . Zelizer...

A Rehnquist Ode on the Vinson Court (Circa Summer 1953) is a new essay by John Q. Barrett, St. John's University . It appears in Green...

Colonialism, Nationalism and Legal Education in Mandatory Palestine is a new paper by Nir Kedar, Bar-Ilan University , and Uri Cohen, Tel-A...

Malcolm M. Feeley, U.C. Berkeley, Boalt School of Law , and Hadar Aviram, U.C. Hastings College of Law , have posted a new paper, Where Have...

Presidential Popular Constitutionalism is a new article by Jedediah S. Purdy, Duke Law School . It is forthcoming in the Fordham Law Review...

Brian Z. Tamanaha, St. John's University School of Law , has posted a new paper that has already generated a debate: The Bogus Tale Abou...

Dishonorable Passions: Sodomy Laws in America, 1861-2003 by William N. Eskridge Jr . (Viking) is reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle b...

Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America by Ri ck Perlstein (Scribner) is reviewed today by Bruce J. Schulman, Bos...

The Obligation Thesis: Understanding the Persistent 'Black Voice' in Modern Legal Academia is a recent article by Monica Bell, Yale...

Not so Novus an Ordo: Constitutions without Social Contracts is an interesting new article by Jacob T. Levy, McGill University - Departm...

Blood Quantum Land Laws and the Race Versus Political Dilemma is a new article by Rose Cuison Villazor, Southern Methodist University - De...

"We are at War and You Should Not Bother the President": The Suffrage Pickets and Freedom of Speech During World War I is a new p...

Jody S. Kraus, University of Virginia , has posted a new paper, From Langdell to Law and Economics: Two Conceptions of Stare Decisis in Cont...

Agency Character and Character of Agency Guidelines: An Historical and Institutional Perspective is a recent article by Hillary Greene, Uni...

"Moral Marriage, Mistresses and Mayhew: Cohabitation and the Law in Nineteenth-Century England" Speaker: Rebecca Probert, School o...

On Friday, May 9th, at 1:00, the Oxford Legal History Forum will host Professor David Rabban (University of Texas at Austin), who will prese...

The first review for my new book, Exporting American Dreams: Thurgood Marshall's African Journey , is just out from Publishers Weekly . ...

"When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't to make a political statement or start a fig...

The deadline for proposals for San Francisco State University's conference on Politics and the Constitution is July 1, 2008. The confer...

Paul Finkelman, Albany Law School , a leading historian of American slavery and other topics, has posted a number of articles, recent and no...

Judicial Review Without a Constitution by Douglas Edlin, Dickinson College is a recent essay in Polity (2006). Here's the abstract: ...

Justice Sutherland Reconsidered is a new article by Samuel R. Olken, John Marshall Law School . It is forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Rev...

Pippa Holloway , Sexuality, Politics, and Social Control in Virginia,1920-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006) is r...

THE AGE OF REAGAN: A History, 1974-2008 by Sean Wilentz (Harper) is reviewed by Kevin Phillips for the Washington Post . For Phillips, ...

Harry N. Scheiber , ed., Earl Warren and the Warren Court: The Legacy in American and Foreign Law (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007) is review...

Between the Domestic and the Foreign: Centering the Nation's Edges , a review essay by Linda Bosniak, Rutgers University School of Law, ...

Crooked Timber and other blogs carry the news this morning of the death of Charles Tilly , Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Scien...

Speaking Truth to Memory: Lawyers and Resistance to the End of White Supremacy is a recent article by Mary Ellen Maatman, Widener Universit...

Leaving the House: The Constitutional Status of Resignation from the House of Representatives is a new article by Josh Chafetz, Cornell Un...

Michael A. Lerner , Dry Manhattan: Prohibition in New York City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) is reviewed for H-Urban by Pat...

'No Taking Without a Touching?' Questions from an Armchair Originalist , is a new paper from Nicole Stelle Garnett, Notre Dame Law S...

Again this year the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has added a prominent legal historian to its ranks. This year it is Reva Siegel,...

Alfred L. Brophy, University of Alabama , has a new article, Considering William and Mary's History with Slavery: The Case of President ...

Jefferson's Failed Anti-Slavery Proviso of 1784 and the Nascence of Free Soil Constitutionalism is a new article by William G. Merkel, ...

One of the best sort of writing breaks has to be gardening... Whether or not your paragraphs turn out right, you have something to show fo...

Peter Conrad has a decidedly 1.0 review (or 0.0, if there is such a thing) of Alberto Manguel , The Library at Night (Yale University Pres...

Daniel J. Sharfstein, Vanderbilt , has posted a recent article, Crossing the Color Line: Racial Migration and the One-Drop Rule, 1600-1860 ....

Eric Muller at Is That Legal? has run into the effects of cutbacks at the National Archives . Eric was disappointed to find that, in the ...