A history of the NSA, 1989, Thelonius Monk and more in the book reviews

A quick round-up from the book pages:

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency by Matthew M. Aid is reviewed in the New York Review of Books. James Bamford writes:

Matthew M. Aid has been after the NSA's secrets for a very long time. As a sergeant and Russian linguist in the NSA's Air Force branch, he was arrested and convicted in a court-martial, thrown into prison, and slapped with a bad conduct discharge for impersonating an officer and making off with a stash of NSA documents stamped Top Secret Codeword. He now prefers to obtain the NSA's secrets legally, through the front door of the National Archives. The result is The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency , a footnote-heavy history told largely through declassified but heavily redacted NSA reports that have been slowly trickling out of the agency over the years. They are most informative in the World War II period but quickly taper off in substance during the cold war....

While much of the terrain Aid covers has been explored before, the most original areas in The Secret Sentry deal with the ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, where the NSA was forced to marry, largely unsuccessfully, its super-high-tech strategic capabilities in space with its tactical forces on the ground. Before the September 11 attacks, the agency's coverage of Afghanistan was even worse than that of Iraq....

Disappointingly, the weakest section of the book, mostly summaries of old news clips, deals with what may be the most important subject: the NSA's warrantless eavesdropping and its targeting of American communications.

Links to Aid's documents are posted at the National Security Archive.

Also in the NYRB, Timothy Garton Ash takes up several books about 1989, including 1989: The Struggle to Create Post–Cold War Europe by Mary Elise Sarotte, and Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosion of the Communist Establishment by Stephen Kotkin, with a contribution by Jan T. Gross.

WHEN EVERYTHING CHANGED: The Amazing Journey of American Women From 1960 to the Present by Gail Collins is reviewed in the New York times by Amy Bloom, who find it a "smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable account of women’s recent history in America."

Also in the NYT are reviews of WORSE THAN WAR: Genocide, Eliminationism, and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, and STRIPPING BARE THE BODY: Politics Violence War, which collects essays from the last two decades by Mark Danner.

And THELONIOUS MONK: The Life and Times of an American Original by my USC colleague Robin D. G. Kelley is reviewed in the New York Times.

Canova on Public Finance and Lincoln's Populist Sovereignty

Lincoln’s Populist Sovereignty: Public Finance of, by, and for the People has just been posted by Timothy A. Canova, Chapman University School of Law. It appears in the Chapman Law Review (2009). Here's the abstract:

This article considers Lincoln’s system of public finance in a broad historical perspective. In the weeks prior to Lincoln‘s inauguration, the financial markets were swept by panic, the hoarding of gold, and a crisis perhaps more dangerous than other classic Keynesian liquidity traps, such as in March 1933 and September 2008. In 1861, there was no central bank with the authority to issue currency and inject liquidity into the financial system to try to restrain the psychology of hoarding. The Lincoln administration was able to break the downward spiral and provide the resources to mobilize for war, as well as for a massive infrastructure investment program, by adopting a populist model that imposed federal sovereignty over the nation’s public finances. The Treasury Department issued $450 million in currency directly into circulation pursuant to express authority delegated by Congress under the Legal Tender Acts. This was the nation’s first fiat currency - “United States Notes,” also known as the greenback - which made up about 40 percent of the nation’s money supply during the peak of the Civil War. This expanded scope of federal authority found precedent in the emergency measures of the Continental Congress during the American Revolution and the economic development strategies of the colonies prior to the Revolution. It also foreshadowed New Deal financing during the Great Depression and is comparable to the low interest rate financing of the U.S. effort in World War II and the early Cold War spending on the Marshall Plan and G.I. Bill of Rights. At a time when the U.S. economy and financial system remains in serious trouble, with unemployment and home foreclosures at dangerously high levels, there are serious concerns how the federal government will finance its growing budget deficits which have increased from more than $485 billion last year to about $1.6 trillion this fiscal year. This article considers Lincoln’s greenback as a model for dealing with the significant financial needs of the federal government today.

Image credit.

Cushman on Kennedy on Classical Public Law

The Structure of Classical Public Law has just been posted by Barry Cushman, University of Virginia School of Law. It appeared in the University of Chicago Law Review (2008). Here's the abstract:

Duncan Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of Classical Legal Thought circulated in manuscript for three decades before it was formally published in 2006. This essay reviews the book's treatment of Classical public law, focusing on its two principal contributions to the historiography of the subject: the concept of legal consciousness, and the structural analysis of constitutional doctrine.

Hall Postdoctoral Fellowships at Indiana-Bloomington

Here's an announcement from the Law-and-Society folks at Indiana-Bloomington:


The Center for Law, Society, and Culture at the Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington will appoint up to three Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellows for the 2010-2011 academic year. We invite applications from pre-tenure scholars, recently awarded PhDs, and those with equivalent professional degrees to conduct research at Indiana University and participate in the activities of the Center, which include an annual symposium, a colloquia series, and regular workshops and lectures.

Scholars of law, the humanities, or social sciences working in the field of sociolegal studies are encouraged to apply. Advanced graduate students may also apply, but evidence of completion of the doctoral degree or its equivalent is required before beginning the fellowship. Fellows will devote a full academic year to research and writing in furtherance of a major scholarly project. The stipend will be $23,000 plus a research allowance, health insurance, other benefits, and workspace at Indiana Law. Fellows are expected to be in full-time residence in Bloomington in order to take advantage of the rich intellectual life of the Center, the School of Law, and Indiana University.

A complete application consists of: (1) a research proposal (up to 10 pages); (2) curriculum vitae (with address and complete contact information), and (3) three letters of recommendation (must be sent separately)

Applications should be sent to:
Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Center for Law, Society, and Culture
Indiana University Maurer School of Law—Bloomington
211 S. Indiana Avenue
Bloomington, IN 47405

Completed applications must be received by Jan. 4, 2010, in order to ensure full consideration. The award will be announced in mid March 2010.

For more information, contact the fellowship coordinator at Hallpd@indiana.edu

Additional information about the Indiana University Center for Law, Society & Culture, and the Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellowship can be found here.

The Iowa Legal History Group

The University of Iowa College of Law announces the formation of the Legal History Group, founded to bring together faculty and students from across the university to foster research and teaching in all areas and periods of legal history. Information about the Legal History Group, the participating faculty, the resources of the Law Library, and the University of Iowa’s joint degree program are available on the Web here.

[At right: "A few books from the Rare Book Room at The University of Iowa College of Law Library."]

National Book Award finalists

The 2009 National Book Award finalists have been announced:

David M. Carroll, Following the Water: A Hydromancer's Notebook (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Sean B. Carroll, Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origins of Species (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Greg Grandin, Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City (Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt)
Adrienne Mayor, The Poison King: The Life and Legend of Mithradates, Rome's Deadliest Enemy (Princeton University Press)
T. J. Stiles, The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (Alfred A. Knopf)

This year's nonfiction judges are: David Blight, Amanda Foreman, Steve Olson, Camille Paglia, John Phillip Santos. The award will be announced November 18.

Call for papers: Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop

University of Southern California Center for Law, History & Culture, UCLA School of Law, Columbia Law School, and Georgetown University Law Center invite submissions invite submissions for the eighth meeting of the Law & Humanities Junior Scholar Workshop to be held at USC Gould School of Law in Los Angeles on June 4 & 5, 2010.

PAPER COMPETITION:
The paper competition is open to untenured professors, advanced graduate students and post-doctoral scholars in law and the humanities; in addition to drawing from numerous humanistic fields, and welcomes critical, qualitative work in the social sciences. Between five and ten papers will be chosen, based on anonymous evaluation by an interdisciplinary selection committee, for presentation at the June Workshop. At the Workshop, two senior scholars will comment on each paper. Commentators and other Workshop participants will be asked to focus specifically on the strengths and weaknesses of the selected scholarly projects, with respect to subject and methodology. Moreover, the selected papers will then serve as the basis for a larger conversation among all the participants about the evolving standards by which we judge excellence and creativity in interdisciplinary scholarship, as well as about the nature of interdisciplinarity itself.

Papers should be works-in-progress between 10,000 and 15,000 words in length (including footnotes/endnotes), and must include an abstract of no more than 200 words. A dissertation chapter may be submitted but we strongly suggest that it be edited so that it stands alone as a piece of work with its own integrity. A paper that has been submitted for publication is eligible so long as it will not be in galley proofs or in print at the time of the Workshop. The selected papers will appear in a special issue of the Legal Scholarship Network; there is no other publication commitment. The Workshop will pay the travel expenses of authors whose papers are selected for presentation.

Submissions (in either Word or Wordperfect, no pdf files) will be accepted until January 8, 2010, and should be sent by e-mail to:

Center for the Study of Law and Culture
culture@law.columbia.edu

Columbia Law School
435 W. 116th Street
New York, N.Y. 10027

Please be sure to include your contact information. For more information: Tanisha Madrid, 212.854.0692 or culture@law.columbia.edu. The full text of the Call for Papers is available here.

Mohr on Irish and Imperial Law in the Irish Free State

Thomas Mohr, University College Dublin, School of Law, has posted The Colonial Laws Validity Act and the Irish Free State. Here’s the abstract:

This article examines the relationship between Irish law and British Imperial law in the 1920s and 1930s. Its primary focus concerns the question of whether the Colonial Laws Validity Act, 1865 applied to the Irish Free State as a Dominion of the British Empire. This important piece of legislation ensured that British Imperial statutes overrode the laws of British colonies and Dominions. This article will examine the importance of the 1865 Act as a means of preventing the Irish Free State from making unilateral changes to the settlement imposed by the Anglo Irish Treaty of 1921. It will also analyse the arguments put forward by the British and Irish governments as to the relationship between Irish law and the Colonial Laws Validity Act. It will conclude by examining the changes made by the Statute of Westminster which ensured that the Irish Free State finally achieved a position of undisputed legislative sovereignty.

Reviewed: Benhabib and Resnik (eds.), Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender

Migrations and Mobilities: Citizenship, Borders, and Gender by Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik (eds). is reviewed on the Law and Politics Book Review by John S.W. Park, Department of Asian American Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara. Park writes:

This edited collection has five interrelated sections that examine the gendered dimensions of global migration, primarily in Europe and the United States. These five sections include: situated histories of citizenship and gender; global markets and women’s work; citizenship of the family, and citizenship within the family; engendered citizenship in practice; and the possibilities for women’s citizenship in a transnational context. Each section has between two to five essays by leading scholars across a range of disciplines, including history, political science, anthropology, and law. The volume itself is over 500 pages, but given the richness of the topic and the multiple ways in which gender and immigration intersect, these things could be much longer. The broad themes brought forth by the contributors – from the protection of refugees and gender-specific forms of persecution, the right to family reunification, wage slavery now common among vulnerable transnational women, and the moral underpinnings of national sovereignty and citizenship rules – offer a rich introduction to the important problems that will occupy scholars of immigration law and policy for many years to come.

Seyla Benhabib and Judith Resnik state the purpose of this collaboration thusly: “Our intervention in this volume is to bring gender equality claims into the discussion of the four other major principles regularly invoked in this area – the free movement of persons; the need for protection of refugees; the jurisdictional authority of sovereign states over their borders; and the obligation to respect family ties, including through family reunification. Our argument is that the laws, policies, moralities, and theories of citizenship, as well as of sovereignty, jurisdiction, family life, and migration, must grapple with the way histories of discrimination and subordination based on gender affect the conceptualization and implementation of opportunities, rights, and burdens, as well as the nation-state’s powers” (p.5). Many scholars have already done this grappling, some appear in this new volume, and some of the essays here are versions of their earlier work. Still, the contributions presented together are deeply illuminating, even though they sometimes miss important new work in the
field.

The essays in the first section offer some historical context, the first by Cynthia Patterson, on citizenship and gender in Athens and Rome, and the second by Linda Kerber, on the recurring problem of statelessness in American history. Both are respected historians drawing upon past scholarly work in their subfields, although with a different spin here....

The second section of this volume has two essays, by Linda Bosniak and by Aiwha Ong, both covering the global comodification and transnationalization of “women’s work,” primarily in domestic labor....

That this volume brings together the unexpected, and also clarifies what is at stake overall in debates about migration, equality, and especially gender, makes this book a valuable resource for a wide range of scholars.

The full review, describing all essays and citing additional works, is here.

John Brown's Raid: The 150th Anniversary Symposium

The Harpers Ferry Historical Association has announced an academic symposium, sponsored by the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park and others, "John Brown Remembered: 150th Anniversary of John Brown's Raid," October 14-17, 2009, at the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park, Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. Plenary speakers include David Blight, Spencer Crew, and Paul Finkelman. The symposium will be held at the Stephen T. Mather Training Center with Keynote and Plenary sessions in the Curtis Freewill Baptist Church in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. The full schedule is here.

Hat tip: Jay Stewart.

The Mezey Dissertation Prize: The Deadline Approaches

The Association for the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities invites submissions for its 2010 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award. This annual prize is awarded to the dissertation that most promises to enrich and advance interdisciplinary scholarship at the intersection of law, culture and the humanities. The award will be presented at the Association's annual meeting in Providence, RI, March 19-20, hosted by Brown University.

The Association seeks the submission of outstanding work from a wide variety of perspectives, including but not limited to law and cultural studies, legal hermeneutics and rhetoric, law and literature, law and psychoanalysis, law and visual studies, legal history, and legal theory and jurisprudence. Scholars completing humanities-oriented dissertations in SJD and related programs, as well as those earning PhDs, are encouraged to submit their work. Applicants eligible for the 2010 award must have defended their dissertations successfully between September 1, 2008 and August 31, 2009. Each submission must be accompanied by a letter of support from a faculty member.

Deadline for nominations for the 2010 award: November 1, 2009. On or before that date, each member of the committee must receive by email the following:

1) a letter of nomination that details the genesis, goal, and contribution of the dissertation;
2) a letter of support from a faculty member familiar with the work;
3) an abstract, outline, and a selected chapter of the dissertation;
4) contact information for the nominee.

All materials should be sent to each of the following:
Professor Eugene Garver, egarver@csbsju.edu
Professor Serena Mayeri, smayeri@law.upenn.edu
Professor Robert L. Tsai, rtsai@wcl.american.edu

Award finalists will be notified by December 1. At that point, they should be prepared to send an electronic version of the entire dissertation to each of the committee members. The winner will be determined by early February and invited to the March meeting of the ASLCH. ASLCH will pay travel and lodging costs.

Questions should be addressed to Eugene Garver, egarver@csbsju.edu

Call for papers: Special issue of French Historical Studies

FRENCH HISTORICAL STUDIES
Special Issue: Towards a French History of Universal Values: Charity, Human Rights and Humanitarianism

Deadline extended to December 15, 2009

The editors of French Historical Studies seek articles for a special issue on French genealogies of universal values and universalist politics such as charity, human rights and humanitarian aid. The focus can either be on the development of ideas and concepts or on the practical developments arising from practices of relief work. Articles on research topics covering all chronological periods are welcome.

Among other possibilities, we invite articles treating the following topics:

• Reflection on a theology of compassion and the relationship between theological doctrine and social practice.


• The impact of space and distance (social, geographical, colonial/post-colonial) on ideas and practices.


• The cultural impact of narratives of relief work on French society, politics and religion


• The genealogy of the development of French notions of universalist politics.


• The tension between rights based and charity based understandings of the social.


• The role and relations between state and non-state agents (or religious versus secular) in the development of charitable and humanitarian work.


• The role and nature of formal, institutional charity versus informal, familial or neighborly charity.


• The gender and racial dimensions of relief work.


• The relationship between cultural experience (i.e. reading) and social/political concepts like human rights.

Queries regarding submissions and all other matters should be addressed to the guest editors, Bertrand Taithe (bertrand.taithe@manchester.ac.uk) and Adam Davis (davisaj@denison.edu). Articles may be either in English or in French but must conform to French Historical Studies style (see http://fhs.umn.edu/ for details) and must be accompanied by 150 word abstracts in both languages. Papers should be between 8,000 and 10,000 words (up to but not longer than 14,000 words including notes). For the inclusion of illustrations written permission must be obtained from the relevant persons or institutions for print and on-line publication.

Manuscripts can be sent by post or electronically to Richard Parks, Managing Assistant, French Historical Studies, Department of History, University of Minnesota-twin cities, 1110 Heller Hall, 271 19th Avenue South Minneapolis, MN 55455 (frhistst@umn.edu) We encourage, but do not require, electronic submission of manuscripts.

Manuscripts submitted electronically should be sent in MS Word or Rich Text Format (RTF). The new deadline for submissions is December 15, 2009.

Hat tip: H-Diplo.

Schor on Marbury and Lochner

Miguel Schor, Suffolk University Law School, has posted The Strange Cases of Marbury and Lochner in the Constitutional Imagination, which also appears in the Texas Law Review 87 (2009). Here’s the abstract:

Embedded deep in the constitutional imagination is the notion that courts can implement rights and effectuate the hope of Marbury v. Madison while avoiding running amok and falling into the abyss of Lochner v. New York. This Article challenges this belief and argues that the two cases are not opposites but fraternal twins. In this story, however, Marbury becomes Lochner’s twin not by the use of drugs, which is how Robert Louis Stevenson imagined that Dr. Jekyll became transformed into Mr. Hyde, but by exposing the workings of the constitutional imagination across space and time. The comparative and historical record evinces deep, albeit hidden, linkages between the two cases. Part I of this Article introduces the dichotomy between these two cases and argues that we need to uncover the linkages between them if we are to understand the jumble of ideas that comprise judicial review. Part II of this Article historicizes the relationship between the two cases and argues that Marbury and Lochner became linked in the nineteenth century as judicial review germinated in the constitutional imagination in the United States and abroad. Part III examines how Lochner shaped the political construction of judicial review around the globe in the twentieth century. When the hope of constitutionalized rights (Marbury) traveled abroad, it was joined with the fear that courts might run amok (Lochner). As a consequence, polities abroad adopted different and stronger mechanisms of political accountability than the United States as the price of granting courts the power of constitutional judicial review. Judicial review transformed not only politics but also courts that suddenly had to grapple with the problem of accommodating legislation to constitutional text. Part IV argues that the judicial elaboration of Marbury has had a perverse impact, as courts in civil law jurisdictions have become more like common law courts whereas the United States Supreme Court has become more like a civil law court. Part V concludes that the spread of judicial review is best understood as the story of Lochner, not Marbury, writ large around the globe. In exposing the workings of the constitutional imagination, debates over the fear of power are considerably more illuminating that those surrounding the hope of its exercise.

Myers on the Supreme Court's singular vs plural use of 'United States'

Supreme Court Usage and the Making of an 'Is' has just been posted by Minor Myers, Brooklyn Law School. It appeared in Green Bag 2D (2008). Here's the abstract:

This survey examines use of the phrases “United States is” and “United States are” in opinions of the United States Supreme Court from 1790 to 1919. The familiar claim, popularized by Shelby Foote in the Ken Burns Civil War documentary, is that the Civil War marked a shift in usage from plural to singular. This survey demonstrates that in the Supreme Court this account of the timing of the change is not accurate. Although patterns of usage changed abruptly in the 1860s, justices continued to use the plural form through the end of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the plural usage was the predominant usage in the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Only in the beginning of the twentieth century did the singular usage achieve preeminence and the plural usage disappear almost entirely.

The Areeda Papers

Thanks to David Warrington, Harvard Law School Library, for drawing my attention to the following inventory for the papers of Phillip E. Areeda at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Library in Abilene, Kansas. According to the inventory, the nine linear feet of papers

cover the years 1952-1962 but most of them deal with the period from 1956 when he was a member of the White House Staff. In July 1956, Mr. Areeda was appointed Special Assistant in the White House and in November 1958, he was appointed Assistant Special Counsel to the President. In this position he helped draft and research White House staff studies dealing with economic and legal matters

The papers consist of a chronological file, a subject file and a book file. Over half of the collection pertains to foreign economic policy, particularly trade agreements programs, imports, Escape Clause, and Section 22 Actions, international aviation, and maritime shipping. The type of material includes memoranda and position papers by the Departments of State, Commerce, Agriculture and other government agencies; statements by Dwight D. Eisenhower; fact sheets; briefing papers and printed material. While the majority of the foreign trade policy material is concerned with Escape Clause and Section 22 Actions on imports, there is some material on several countries and regions including, Cuba, Europe, India, Hong Kong, Japan, South America, the Soviet Union, and the United Arab Republic. Some unclassified reports include a study of Cuba under Castro; a review of reciprocal trade programs since 1934; State Department answers to twenty-two questions set forth by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on U.S. trade with the Soviet Union; and economic briefing papers concerning President Eisenhower’s good will trip to South America in 1960.

Probably a third of the collection is of a legal nature and covers such subjects as jurisdiction of federal courts, antitrust concepts, labor law, international aviation, and maritime flags of convenience. Much of this material consists of briefs, excerpts, and copies of court decisions, Civil Aeronautics Board opinions, and analyses by Mr. Areeda and others of legal issues.

Other subjects in the collection are: the budgets (1958-61) including messages by President Eisenhower; Republican political literature; and speech material used mainly by Mr. Areeda and Gabriel Hauge. Major correspondents include: Sherman Adams; General Andrew Goodpaster; Gabriel Hauge; Bryce Harlow; David Kendall; Gerald Morgan; Robert Merriam; General Wilton Persons; Clarence Randall; and Don Paarlberg.

A small amount of correspondence concerns Mr. Areeda’s personal affairs such as the position on the Harvard Law School Faculty which he accepted in 1961. The book file includes material for a book which Mr. Areeda was working on. This was probably Antitrust Analysis which he published in 1967.

Brewer on Why America Fights, Sunstein on Rumors, and more

WHY AMERICA FIGHTS: Patriotism and War Propaganda From the Philippines to Iraq by Susan A. Brewer is reviewed this weekend in the Washington Post. Colman McCarthy writes:

Brewer examines the narratives of six military efforts: the Philippine War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Under a succession of presidents -- McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and George W. Bush -- American involvement was enshrined as humanitarian and the enemy demonized as barbaric. Whether the United States went to the Philippines to aid what William McKinley called our "little brown brothers" or to Iraq for what Bush called "a divine mission" or to extend Madeleine Albright's credo that America is "the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future than other countries," Americans suffered few civilian casualties and saw other lands ravaged, not their own. With presidents trying to persuade -- not educate -- the public, Brewer writes that a "propaganda campaign seeks to disguise a paradoxical message: war is not a time for citizens to have an informed debate and make up their own minds even as they fight in the name of freedom to do just that."

Brewer's scholarship on the manipulation of public opinion places her in the company of Noam Chomsky, James Loewen, Michael True, Howard Zinn and other historians or social analysts of skeptical bent. Like them, she scours the record to counter the historical amnesia of the public. She documents how presidents at war portrayed themselves as travelers on the high road to peace and justice, not the low road to battle and dystopia: "Throughout the twentieth century, American leaders presented war aims dedicated to the spread of democracy and freedom rather than the expansion of U.S. power."

Continue reading here. Brewer discusses her book on Concurring Opinions.

Cass Sunstein's short new book, ON RUMORS: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done is listed under psychology on washingtonpost.com. Though the WP review is not clear on what the law angle in this book might be, from the press book description, it appears that Sunstein makes an argument that is resonant with 1st amendment concerns. Those spreading rumors know that "the presumed correctives—publishing balanced information, issuing corrections, and trusting to the marketplace of ideas—do not always work." Anthony Lewis suggests in a blurb that Sunstein "convincingly shows that the constitutional marketplace of ideas does not solve the problem."

Ralph Luker notes:

Peter Spiegel and Jonathan Weisman, "Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages," WSJ, 7 October, explores conflicting advice offered by Gordon M. Goldstein's Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam and Lewis Sorley's A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America's Last Years in Vietnam.

Starting Out in Boston, 1878

New on Et seq., the blog of the Harvard Law School Library, is a post on an expense book that provides some insight into the expenses a lawyer might incur in setting out to practice in Boston after the Civil War. The post commences:

As a newly minted lawyer in the late nineteenth century, what did you need--and how much did it cost--to set yourself up as a solo practitioner in Boston? The Library has recently acquired a lawyer’s manuscript expense book that provides an answer. W. Frederick Kimball (1851 – 1915) practiced law in Boston from 1878 until the beginning of World War I. After graduating from Harvard College in 1875 and studying briefly with attorney Alfred Hemenway, he enrolled in the recently opened Boston University Law School where he received his LL.B in 1877. Kimball was admitted to the Suffolk County bar on February 18, 1878 and began his practice a week later. His accounting ledger records the financial details of the first six years of his practice; in his first year, Kimball generated nearly $624 in fees, and by his fifth year was earning more than $2,500 in fees.

More

Justice of the Peace (and Father of Mark Twain)

The on-line edition of the Hannibal (Missouri) Courier-Post has published an interesting article noting the publication of an article by Tim Jon Semmerling in Western Legal History 21 (Winter/Spring 2008) on the Justice of the Peace register of John Marshall Clemens, the father of Samuel Clemens. (The clapboard building on the corner pictured at right, is said to be the office of Clemens senior from 1845 to 1847.) The register, covering the years 1844 to 1846, was deposited in the Mark Twain Boyhood Home and Museum in 2006. The Courier-Post's article is here.

A Message from the ASLH

Charles Donahue, Harvard Law School, and a past-president of the American Society for Legal History, recently announced the following on H-Law:

As some members have already discovered, the Law and History Review will be published by the Cambridge University Press beginning in January of 2010. The transition has proved awkward particularly for those members (and there are many) whose annual memberships expired on October 1. Without notifying us, the University of Illinois Press took down their website for joining the Society and renewing memberships online, and Cambridge is not yet ready with a similar website.

In the interim, we have posted a PDF form for joining the Society and for renewing your membership. The form contains instructions for mailing, faxing, or emailing the form to Cambridge University Press. They are ready to accept your check or credit-card payment by any means other than a secure online website. They hope to have such a site available relatively quickly, but in the meantime, there is no particular reason to wait.

The form is easy to use.

Hat tip: H-Law

Update: Professor Donahue advises that "if you don't know when your membership expires, it probably expires on October 1." FWIW, I'm sending in my renewal now. DRE.

Also: a later posting on H-Law by Professor Donahue is here.

Caron on Tax Archaeology - or - why Tax Stories lack a happy ending

Tax Archaeology has just been posted by Paul L. Caron, University of Cincinnati College of Law. Here's the abstract:

This paper provides an overview and introduction of the second edition of the Tax Stories book, which unpacks ten seminal U.S. Supreme Court federal income tax cases, as well as a recent decision of the U.S. Court of Appelas for the District of Columbia Circuit. Each of the chapters sets forth the social, factual, and legal background of the case, discusses the various court proceedings and judicial opinions, and explores the immediate impact and continuing importance of the case. The University of Cincinnati School of Law's companion web site contains the complete record of the case, including the court opinions, briefs of the parties and amicus curiae, and oral arguments (audiotapes and transcripts, where available).

The paper discusses the concept behind the book, the criteria for selecting the eleven leading cases, and the doctrinal and institutional lessons drawn from the cases. Along the way, the paper explores the pedagogical impetus behind such an archaeological approach. The paper is critical of the performance of the courts and of the government in these cases. But in the end, the fault may lie not in the judges and lawyers for supplying the wrong answers but rather in the Administrations and Congresses that created a tax system that inevitably asks the wrong questions. Until fundamental reform of our income tax becomes more than a chimera, Tax Stories will remain without a happy ending.

Cox's "Gibbons v. Ogden"

Thomas H. Cox, Sam Houston State University, has published Gibbons v. Ogden, Law, and Society in the Early Republic with Ohio University Press. The press writes:

Gibbons v. Ogden is the first book-length treatment of a landmark Supreme Court case from 1824. In this lively and colorful history, Cox engages readers with details of the period, depicting personalities such as Robert Fulton, John Marshall, Daniel Webster, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, all of whom participated in this case involving a steamship monopoly along the Hudson River.

The decision that was made in Gibbons v. Ogden gave Congress the power to regulate commerce among the states. The doctrine has carried forward into our own time and into areas far removed from steamboat transportation in New York harbors, including important issues in the Prohibition and Civil Rights eras. It is considered one of the most significant Supreme Court cases, still taught in constitutional law courses, and still influencing cases involving interstate trade.

Blurbs Richard F. Hamm: "The scholarship is very deep and broad. The tale is important enough and the treatment so well balanced that general readers of American history will find much of use in the work.” And Daniel W. Hamilton writes, “A highly original and much-needed book that puts Gibbons v. Ogden in historical context. … [A] major contribution to our understanding of a landmark case.”

Thanks to Bridget Crawford

The Legal History Blog thanks Bridget Crawford, a legal history fellow traveler, for guest blogging over the past month. Bridget first caught my eye through her fabulous history-related posts at Feminist Law Professors, where you can continue to follow her. Bridget can also be found on SSRN, where she has many papers and an amazing number of downloads.

Bridget's posts have covered

• James A. Miller's Remembering Scottsboro: The Legacy of an Infamous Trial


• an exhibit the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, "Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges"


• Elizabeth Cady Stanton's grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx


• a tax history database


• and more!

Bridget closed with a heartfelt remembrance of our colleague Betsy Clark, her teacher.

Thanks, Bridget!

Fisk's "Working Knowledge"

Just out in Studies in Legal History from the University of North Carolina Press is Working Knowledge: Employee Innovation and the Rise of Corporate Intellectual Property, 1800-1930, by Catherine L. Fisk, University of California, Irvine, School of Law. Here is the press's description:

Skilled workers of the early nineteenth century enjoyed a degree of professional independence because workplace knowledge and technical skill were their "property," or at least their attribute. In most sectors of today's economy, however, it is a foundational and widely accepted truth that businesses retain legal ownership of employee-generated intellectual property.

In Working Knowledge, Catherine Fisk chronicles the legal and social transformations that led to the transfer of ownership of employee innovation from labor to management. This deeply contested development was won at the expense of workers' entrepreneurial independence and ultimately, Fisk argues, economic democracy.

By reviewing judicial decisions and legal scholarship on all aspects of employee-generated intellectual property and combing the archives of major nineteenth-century intellectual property-producing companies--including DuPont, Rand McNally, and the American Tobacco Company--Fisk makes a highly technical area of law accessible to general readers while also addressing scholarly deficiencies in the histories of labor, intellectual property, and the business of technology.

Here are the reviews:

"Working Knowledge is a tour de force. Fisk takes a series of subjects that individually are complex and multi-layered--labor relations, intellectual property rights, control over innovation--and weaves them together into a pattern that is both subtle and clear. Scholars of innovation, of labor relations, of intellectual property, and of legal history will all find something fascinating here. Highly recommended!"

--James Boyle, author of The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind

"Fisk's important and gracefully written book pulls together insights from disparate fields to inform our understanding of the creation and dissemination of intellectual property. The legal ideas are given life through an impressive and judicious use of archival material to illustrate how legal doctrine had an impact on the way lawyers, entrepreneurs, inventors, and capitalists shaped their business practices as well as their legal strategies. An impressive accomplishment."

--Alfred S. Konefsky, University at Buffalo Law School, The State University of New York

Konefsky on the Charles River Bridge Case

Alfred S. Konefsky, SUNY at Buffalo School of Law, has posted Simon Greenleaf, Boston Elites, and the Social Meaning and Construction of the Charles River Bridge Case, which will soon appear in Daniel W. Hamilton & Alfred L. Brophy, eds., Transformations in American Legal History: Essays in Honor of Professor Morton J. Horwitz, vol. 2 (Harvard University Press). Here is the abstract:

This essay examines the complexity of the social and cultural forces in antebellum Boston that led to the framing and resolution of the legal and constitutional issues in the Charles River Bridge Case. Though often viewed as a clash between models of economic development, the lines of conflict in the case in reality were first honed in pamphlet wars in the early Jacksonian turmoil of the 1820s focusing on other often overlooked contemporaneous Boston free bridge disputes and the birth of a free bridge political party. Boston elites were pejoratively termed “aristocrats” for their support of the Charles River Bridge franchise and accused of defending the creation of exclusive and monopolistic privilege and property through government grant, while proponents of a new competing—and ultimately free—bridge were castigated as “agrarians” and accused of forcibly taking property in order to equalize its distribution in the face of a state-sanctioned privilege. The driving force of the dispute, therefore, turned out to be the acute social anxiety and stress of Boston’s investors and commercial elites. No one better signifies the contours of the struggle than Simon Greenleaf [above left], recently arrived in Cambridge as a law professor at Harvard. Greenleaf, as one of the lawyers for the competing Warren Bridge, stood in opposition to the established Charles River Bridge interests and was responsible for shaping the legal arguments that ultimately prevailed. For that sin, he was pilloried in the public press and ostracized in the community. Greenleaf’s unhappy experience then becomes a metaphor of sorts, allowing us to appreciate how understanding a social environment can assist us in cracking the code of legal arguments, particularly in this instance early Contract Clause and Takings jurisprudence. In the process of examining this historical episode, we might wish to consider under what conditions legal history might be entitled to call itself a form of social history and to speculate whether the critical question for legal historians interrogating these events is not whether law matters, but rather of what matter law is made.

Image credit.

Call for Papers: Berkshire Conference on the History of Women

If you've never been to the Berks, this is a fabulous conference. It is held every three years. Not to be missed.

Call for Papers
2011 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women
“GENERATIONS: Exploring Race, Sexuality, and Labor across Time and Space”
June 9-12, 2011, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Proposals due March 1, 2010

The Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians is holding its next conference at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on June 9-12, 2011.2011 marks the 15th Berkshire Conference on Women's History and the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, which was first celebrated in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland and is now honored by more than sixty countries around the globe. The choice of “Generations” reflects this transnational intellectual, political, and organizational heritage as well as a desire to explore related questions such as:

• How have women’s generative experiences – from production and reproduction to creativity and alliance building – varied across time and space? How have these been appropriated and represented by contemporaries and scholars alike?
• What are the politics of “generation”? Who is encouraged? Who is condemned or discouraged? How has this changed over time?
• Is a global perspective compatible with generational (in the genealogical sense) approaches to the past that tend to reinscribe national/regional/racial boundaries?
• What challenges do historians of women, gender, and sexuality face as these fields and their practitioners mature?

To engender further, open-ended engagement with these and other issues, the 2011 conference will include workshops dedicated to discussing precirculated papers on questions and problems (epistemological, methodological, substantive) provoked by the notion of "Generations."

The process for submitting and vetting papers and panels has changed substantially from previous years, so please read the instructions carefully. To encourage transnational discussions, panels will be principally organized along thematic rather than national lines and therefore proposals will be vetted by a transnational group of scholars with expertise in a particular thematic, rather than geographic, field. All proposals must be directed to ONE of the following subcommittees and should be submitted electronically. Please list a second choice for the subcommittee to vet your proposal but do not submit to more than one subcommittee. Instructions for submission will be posted on the Berkshire Conference website (www.berksconference.org) by November 1, 2009. Preference will be given to discussions of any topic across national boundaries and to work that addresses sexuality, race, and labor in any context, with special consideration for pre-modern (ancient, medieval, early modern) periods. However, unattached papers and proposals that fall within a single nation/region will also be given full consideration. As a forum dedicated to encouraging innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship and transnational conversation, the Berkshire conference continues to encourage submissions from graduate students, international scholars, independent scholars, filmmakers, and to welcome a variety of disciplinary perspectives. Paper abstracts should be no longer than 250 words; panel (2-3 papers and a comment), roundtable (3 or more short papers) and workshop (1-2 precirculated papers) proposals should also include a summary abstract of no more than 500 words. Each submission must include the cover form and a short cv for each presenter. If you have questions about the most appropriate subcommittee for your proposal or problems with electronic submission, please direct them to Jennifer Spear (jms25@sfu.ca).

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: March 1, 2010.

• Beauty and the Body, Stephanie Camp
• Migrations: Race, Gender and Activism, Annelise Orleck
• Economies, Labors, and Consumption, Tracey Deutsch
• War, Violence, and Terror, Madhavi Kale
• Youth and Aging, Jennifer Spear
• Race in Global Perspective, Marilyn Lake
• Health and Medicine, Julie Livingston
• Sexuality, Kathy Brown
• Religion: Belief, Practice, Communities, Madhavi Kale
• Politics and the State, Margot Canaday

Clark History Series at Boston University Law School

Clark History Series

Boston University Law School

The Elizabeth Battelle Clark Legal History Series brings several distinguished historians of law to campus each year to lecture and talk with students and faculty. The BU community and the general public are all welcome to attend. For more information, please contact any of the following:

Kris Collins, collinsk@bu.edu
Gerry Leonard, gleonard@bu.edu
David Seipp, dseipp@bu.edu

Fall 2009 Speakers

Wednesday, September 23, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., Room 832

Professor Scott Gerber, Ohio Northern Univ. College of Law

"'The Great Constitutional Question': Judicial Review and the Origins of an Independent Judiciary in Virginia."

Wednesday, October 7, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., Room 832

Professor Arnulf Becker Lorca, Visiting Fellow, Watson Institute for International Studies, Brown University

"Universal International Law: Nineteenth Century Histories of Imposition, Appropriation, and Circulation"

Friday, October 16, 2:30 - 4:30 p.m., Room 832

Professor David Rabban, Univ. of Texas School of Law

"Melville W. Bigelow: The Origins of Historical Legal Science in America"

Wednesday, November 4, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., Room 832

Professor Ariela Dubler, Columbia Law School

"Sexing Skinner"

Wednesday, November 18, 4:30 - 5:30 p.m., Room 832

Professor Susanna Blumenthal, University of Minnesota School of Law

"The Mind in Issue: Consciousness and Liability in the Nineteenth-Century American Courtroom"

To All the Legal Historians I've Ever Loved, Especially Betsy Clark

I have loved all of my teachers who were legal historians. Then-graduate student (now Professor) Richard Ross led the small group discussion to which I was assigned as an undergraduate student in Gaddis Smith’s American History course in 1987. From Richard, I learned the building blocks of critical thinking and writing about scholarly work. He encouraged his undergraduate students to think about how a particular author interpreted historical events, what the author didn’t say (along with what the author said), and how an author’s arguments could be strengthened.

In law school, Bruce Mann was my first-year Property professor. He brought his “A game” to every class. As a teacher, Bruce has incredibly high standards for himself and his students. He maintains a fundamental optimism about law’s promise tempered with a healthy dash of cynicism that makes his work relevant, clear, challenging.

It was meeting Sarah Barringer Gordon at Penn in 1994 that first inspired me to imagine joining a life of the mind with a life in the law. She was and is one of the smartest people I know. She understands how difficult it is to mentor and be mentored, to give to one’s students without giving away one’s sense of self, to let an idea out without letting go of integrity. Sally gets it.

Sally Gordon introduced me to Betsy Clark.

I first met Betsy when she gave a paper at Penn in the Fall of 2004. In retrospect, it must have been an early version of her article, “’The Sacred Rights of the Weak’: Pain, Sympathy, and the Culture of Individual Rights in Antebellum America,” Journal of American History 82 (1995): 463-493. Betsy was already a member of the faculty at Boston University School of Law at that point (with prior stints at Cardozo, Harvard and an appointment at Penn). I was immediately struck by how she carried herself, how she presented her argument, how smart she was. And when I had a chance to talk with her afterwards, I kept thinking to myself, “How can someone this smart and who writes so well be so nice?” Not syrupy-sweet nice. Nice – as in – she connected right then, right there. She wanted to listen; she was willing to talk. She was engaged with the world.

Family reasons took me to Boston for my third year of law school in 1995-1996. That was also the year I spent at BU studying with Betsy. She encouraged me in my research on 19th century woman suffrage strategies. Betsy made me feel like ideas mattered – like my ideas mattered. I kept pestering her for reading lists – not for my project, but for my general education. What should I read next? And then what? I once asked Betsy what she judged to be the best piece of legal history she had read. She didn’t hesitate in naming Leon Litwak’s Been in the Storm So Long. When she asked me what I thought was the best piece of legal history I had read, I was too embarrassed to say it was hers.

Betsy’s seminar on “The Social History of Rights” exposed me to hard questions about how rights arise. To whom do rights accrue? How are rights articulated? When are rights unprotected? She had a conversational way of running the seminar that made us all feel like colleagues. Betsy was “The Professor,” for sure, but she also was just Betsy. That’s how students thought of her. Betsy. That enormous orange watch she wore. The way she could slip out a joke without your even knowing it was coming. A brilliant, brilliant mind. Quick to connect with people and ideas.

Betsy died on December 26, 1997. I miss her terribly. I have so often wanted to tell her what she meant to me.

Now that I am a law professor myself, I know that with each passing semester, students’ faces might tend to blur or blend. If I see a former student out of context, I might be able to remember where that person sat, but not his or her name. On any given day at the podium, I don’t feel especially important. But I know what an influence Betsy had on me -- I think of her often. So I must pause to acknowledge the special magic that the right teacher can bring to the right student at the right time. Betsy was that magic for me.

Rabban on Maine, Maitland and America

David M. Rabban, University of Texas School of Law, has posted "From Maine to Maitland via America," which appeared in the Cambridge Law Journal 68 (July 2009): 410-435. Here is the abstract:

A small group of largely overlooked American scholars linked the two great English legal historians, Henry Maine [left] and Frederic Maitland. Ancient Law, published by Maine in 1861, and The History of English Law Before the Time of Edward I, published by Frederick Pollock and Maitland in 1895 and written primarily by Maitland, are probably the two most important books about legal history ever written in the English language. In Ancient Law, Maine generated provocative conclusions about legal evolution based largely on works by previous scholars on the history of Roman law. For Henry Adams, who initiated the professional study of legal history in the United States, Maine was both an inspiration and a foil. Adams praised Ancient Law and placed Maine at the same level of intellectual importance as Darwin and Spencer. Yet Maine’s “brilliant hypotheses,” Adams declared, remained “hazardous guesses” unsupported by facts.

In his teaching and scholarship, Adams [right] tested Maine’s “brilliant hypotheses” by examining the facts of English legal history, which Maine had not addressed in Ancient Law. Dismissing as amateurish prior work in England on the history of English law, Adams endorsed and directed his students to German “scientific” methods of research in original sources and to German scholars, such as Rudolph Sohm and Heinrich Brunner, who used these methods while studying the history of Teutonic law. In their Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law, published in 1876, Adams and his students relied on primary sources to test, and often to question, many of Maine’s generalizations. Over the next two decades, other American scholars undertook research in later periods of English legal history, most prominently Melville Madison Bigelow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., James Barr Ames, and James Bradley Thayer.

Leading late twentieth-century English scholars, such as S.F.C. Milsom and J.H. Baker, have asserted that Maitland essentially created the field of English legal history. Maitland himself had a different view. Like many of his contemporaries in England, he graciously recognized that American scholars had exceeded the English themselves in the study of English legal history. He generously praised and built upon their contributions in his own work, and he corresponded extensively with Ames, Thayer, and especially Bigelow. By contrast, Maitland frequently criticized Maine, often in terms that echoed Adams and his students.

Image credits: Maine, Adams

Myers, Conquering Peace: Military Commissions as a Lawfare Strategy in the Mexican War

Conquering Peace: Military Commissions as a Lawfare Strategy in the Mexican War has just been posted by Erika Myers, Stanford JD 2008. It appeared in the American Journal of Criminal Law (2008). Here's the abstract:

The War on Terror has provoked much discussion on the proper role of law in war. A considerable amount of this debate has centered on the idea of lawfare: the use of international law as a weapon of war - usually by weaker states or unconventional combatants, and usually to America’s disadvantage. This Note examines this theory of lawfare through our experience with military tribunals in the Mexican War; it provides the most extensive study to date of the use of military commissions and councils of war during that conflict. Other articles have surveyed the history of American military tribunals from the Revolutionary period to the present, primarily focusing on the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches over military tribunals in the absence of specific legislation. Few, however, have devoted any significant attention to the Mexican War, and none have thoroughly explored how the Mexican War tribunals functioned as part of the American occupation strategy. This Note argues that General Scott used military tribunals as part of a counterinsurgency strategy, developing innovations tailored to the needs of his occupation yet exceeding the requirements of international law, and that this strategy worked to hamper public support for and decrease the effectiveness of unconventional enemy combatants. This Note is also the first to relate this history to the idea of lawfare, using it to challenge the common perception that lawfare is a strategy of America’s enemies, by showing how Scott used lawfare to American advantage in the occupation of Mexico.

Gallanis on Counsel at the Old Bailey

Thomas P. Gallanis, University of Iowa College of Law, has posted The Mystery of Old Bailey Counsel, which originally appeared in Cambridge Law Journal 65 (March 2006): 159-173. The article “proffers a hypothesis about a persistent historical mystery: Why did the use of defense lawyers in felony trials at the Old Bailey in London increase so noticeably in the last quarter of the eighteenth century?”

Image credit: Sir William Garrow

Golove and Hulsebosch on Early American Constitutions and the Law of Nations

“On an Equal Footing: Constitution-Making and the Law of Nations in the Early American Republic,” by David Golove and Daniel J. Hulsebosch, New York University School of Law, is available here, in conjunction with their forthcoming appearance in the Foreign Relations Law Colloquium of the Georgetown University Law Center. The paper is forthcoming in the NYU Law Review in 2010. Here’s the abstract:

This article argues that the American founders wrote constitutions not simply to organize their domestic governments but also to position the new states, individually and collectively, in relation to the polities around them. From the first state constitutions in 1776 through, at least, the first two presidential administrations of the 1790s, the founding generation undertook constitutionmaking in a geopolitical environment fraught with peril: They made their constitutions while breaking away from one European empire, courting the assistance of others, and then integrating themselves into the Atlantic world of nations on an equal footing. After the Revolution, the founding generation continued to make and remake their constitutions to earn international “recognition” while avoiding the ever-present prospect of war. The key to obtaining recognition, many founder believed, was to express their commitment to the law of nations and to establish governmental institutions that made that commitment credible. This anxious and cosmopolitan historical context is absent from the modern understandings of American constitution-making.

The cosmopolitan dimension of the founding recovered here provides a critical orientation to understanding the original meaning of the foreign affairs provisions. Our focus on the question of constitutional purpose – why did the founders draft and institute constitutions? – differs from conventional exercises in constitutional history, which usually focuses on disaggregated constitutional provisions. When that broader context is appreciated, those provisions appear in a light that is different from more nationalistic interpretations assume. Our interpretation of cosmopolitan drivers of constitution-making should help inform those more conventional approaches to understanding constitutional meaning.

Bowman on Stories of Crimes, Trials and Appeals in Civil War Era Missouri

Stories of Crimes, Trials and Appeals in Civil War Era Missouri is a new article by Frank O. Bowman III, University of Missouri School of Law. It is forthcoming in the Marquette Law Review. Here's the abstract:

This paper explores criminal appellate practice in Missouri from the time of statehood in 1821 until the 1870s, with particular focus on the decades before and after the Civil War. The article uses the stories of three trials in and around Columbia, Missouri - an attempted rape case against a slave that resulted in a lynching, a murder case against a white farmer that ended in his execution, and another murder case successfully appealed - to explore the legal culture of the period. All three trials involved two prominent central Missouri lawyers, James S. Rollins and Odon Guitar, who were also important political figures in Missouri’s Civil War. The article weaves together the trials, the biographies of Rollins and Guitar, and an exploration of contemporary rules and trial and appellate norms to explain the relative dearth of criminal appeals in mid-19th Century Missouri, and the factors that gradually produced an appellate system more like our own.

Law & Society Assn. election underway

If you are a member of the Law and Society Association, it's time to cast your vote. The polls are open for the Board of Trustees election until October 31.


The Candidates for Trustee, Class of 2012 are:

Taunya Lovell Banks, Law, University of Maryland, USA
George Bishart, Law, Hastings College of Law, USA
Annie Bunting, Law and Society, York University, Canada
David Engel, Law, University of Buffalo, USA
Hiroshi Fukurai, Sociology/Legal Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz, USA
Alexandra Huneeus, Law, University of Wisconsin, USA
Fiona Kay, Sociology, Queen's University, Canada
Ron Levi, Criminology, University of Toronto, Canada
Ethan Michelson, Sociology/Law/East Asian Languages, Indiana University, USA
David Nelken, Sociology, Macerata University, Italy, and Law, Cardiff University, Wales
Doris Marie Provine, Justice Studies, Arizona State University, USA
Sherene Razack, Sociology/Equity Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Canada
César Rodriguez-Garavito, Law/Sociology, University of the Andes, Colombia
Gregory Shaffer, Law, University of Minnesota, USA
Susan Sterett, Political Science, University of Denver, USA

You can vote here. Usernames and PINs needed to login were sent to members recently.

Bach, Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, and more in the book reviews

"The court's decision in Gideon v. Wainwright has been a potent symbol of constitutional rights triumphant. Its holding, that the due process guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment entitles poor criminal defendants to free lawyers in state prosecutions, was all the more appealing because of the romantic story behind it," writes Anthony Lewis, in a review of Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court, by Amy Bach, in the New York Review of Books.

But the Gideon case has not led to a system of criminal justice in which defendants who are poor, as almost all are, are assured the effective assistance of counsel against the power of the state. Many have at best a fleeting encounter with a lawyer, who will probably advise them to plead guilty. After being held in prison because they cannot raise the money for bail, they are likely to take that advice.

Those are some of the shattering conclusions of Amy Bach's remarkable book. Other studies have raised doubts that the high hopes of Gideon v. Wainwright were being met. But Bach has done something different: shown us the reality of the criminal justice process in microscopic, human detail. In different places around the country she watched what went on in courtrooms. Her accounts of what she saw should open others' eyes to unwelcome reality. It is a revealing and important book.

Continue reading here (subscription required).

A MIGHTY LONG WAY: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School by one of the Little Rock Nine, Carlotta Walls LaNier, with Lisa Frazier Page, is reviewed by Kevin Boyle in the Washington Post. He finds it an "affecting new memoir."

On the first day of class 400 whites jammed the streets around Central, screaming racial epithets as the Nine walked stone-faced up to the line of guardsmen, who turned them away. "I was completely stunned," says LaNier, not because she was suddenly at the center of a constitutional crisis -- that thought didn't cross her mind -- but because she'd never missed a day of school in her life.

Continue reading here.

Also in the book pages this week, REHNQUIST: A Personal Portrait of the Distinguished Chief Justice of the United States by Herman J. Obermayer is reviewed in the Washington Post. THE CLINTON TAPES: Wrestling History With the President by Taylor Branch is reviewed in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, where Douglas Brinkley finds it "a weird memoir in which the 42nd president emerges as a self-absorbed political genius and a dazzling player with cunning pragmatism and spot-on observations."

Young Man Lyndon

While rummaging around in the papers of the Hoover-era Reconstruction Finance Corporation at the National Archives, in an attempt to nail down some facts about its Legal Division, I happened upon this letter from a young congressional secretary (and failed Georgetown law student) to Jesse Jones, a Houston banker and the RFC's leading Democratic director, who was about to take charge of the nation's principal vehicle of state capitalism. At 24, Lyndon Johnson already knew which side the bread was buttered on, and how to lay it on thick. (Click on the image for a better view.)

Oral History, Lawyered Up

John A. Neuenschwander, professor emeritus of history at Carthage College and a municipal judge for the City of Kenosha, Wisconsin, has published A Guide to Oral History and the Law (Oxford University Press, 2009). According to Oxford, the book is:

is the definitive resource for all practitioners of oral history. In clear, accessible language it thoroughly explains all the critical legal issues, including legal release agreements; copyright; privacy; screening, editing, and sealing procedures to protect against defamation; the protection of sealed and anonymous interviews from courtroom disclosure; the role of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs); teaching considerations; and the new issues raised by the use of interviews on the Internet. Neuenschwander's central focus is prevention, rather than litigation, and he cites not only the most recent court cases but also examples of procedures and policies that oral history programs have used effectively to avoid legal difficulties. The book provides more than a dozen sample legal release agreements applicable to a variety of situations. This essential volume will be used by professionals, family historians, and students alike.

Blurbs Donald A. Ritchie, the historian of the U.S. Senate:

Here is the essential legal guide for all those who interview, collect interviews for libraries and archives, or use interviews for their own research. As a history professor, lawyer, and judge, John Neuenschwander is uniquely qualified to explain the various aspects of oral history and the law and to help oral historians avoid legal problems and resolve those issues their work may encounter.

And on IRBs and oral history, be sure to read Zachary M. Schrag, "How Talking Became Human Subjects Research: The Federal Regulation of the Social Sciences, 1965–1991" Journal of Policy History 21, No. 1 (2009): 3-37.