Happy 6th Birthday to The Docket!
Five years ago, we took a leap of faith. Professor Sarah Barringer Gordon of the University of Pennsylvania and I had talked about it for a while, and we were willing to take a chance on a new, digital journal of legal history. The American Society for Legal History generously funded the idea and set...
FORUM: Essays in Honor of James Oldham
The Docket is pleased to publish the following essays, which stem from a 2023 symposium in honor of the scholarship of James Oldham, the St. Thomas More Professor of Law and Legal History Emeritus at the Georgetown University Law Center. Oldham's profound influence on English legal history and especially the history of the common law...
FORUM: Anat Rosenberg’s The Rise of Mass Advertising (2022)
In 2022, Oxford University Press published an important new work by Professor Anat Rosenberg on the legal history of advertising in modern Britain. Rosenberg offers the first major cultural and legal history of the British advertising industry. Drawing on a wide array of interdisciplinary sources from various archives and libraries, Rosenberg explores official Home Office...
Sohum Pal Reviews Peter Hoffer’s Seward’s Law: Country Lawyering, Relational Rights, and Slavery
Peter Hoffer’s Seward's Law: Country Lawyering, Relational Rights, and Slavery (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY, 2023) spotlights William Seward (most famous for his purchase of Alaska on behalf of the United States) to argue that Seward’s experiences as a “country lawyer” gave rise to a theory of “relational rights” that sidestepped the traditional antipodes of the slavery...
Ed. Note: This piece is part of The Docket's initiative, A Focus on Undergraduate Scholarship, which aims to spotlight outstanding legal history projects being done by undergraduate students. The Origins of This Project This thesis project began as a term paper for Professor Stephanie McCurry’s Postwars and Reconstruction Seminar. The readings and discussion focus on...
Ed. Note: This piece is part of The Docket's initiative, A Focus on Undergraduate Scholarship, which aims to spotlight outstanding legal history projects being done by undergraduate students. I. Introduction Charles Sumner cannot be accused of having an unwarranted consideration for the virtues of consistency. The New Englander Sumner of the 1840s advocated for...
Meg Foster–From the Ground-Up: Settler Colonial Sources of Legal History
Legal historians often look for legal change in spaces ordained for that purpose. Legislative chambers and courtrooms contain the opinions of legislators, the pronouncements of judges, and arguments of solicitors and barristers. They are spaces sanctioned to test a law’s validity, and for its creation, enactment and amendment. But law is not confined to these...
It is a delight to see my article, “Concrete Leviathan: The Interstate Highway System and Infrastructural Inequality in the Age of Liberalism,” appear in Law and History Review. The article is the culmination of a research process begun nearly three years ago. Like any piece of scholarship, it distills an intellectual journey full of queries...
“Legal Limbo and Caste Consternation”–An Interview with Hayden Bellenoit
Ed. Note: In early 2023, Law and History Review published Hayden Bellenoit's article, Legal Limbo and Caste Consternation: Determining Kayasthas’ Varna Rank in Indian Law Courts, 1860–1930 (vol. 41, no. 1). This spring, Bellenoit took the time to discuss his work with The Docket. Here is our discussion. Thank you, Hayden, for taking the time...