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…
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Zirui Chen–The Great North Carolina Klan Trials: Habeas Corpus, Due Process, and the Southern Redemption of the Fourteenth Amendment, 1870-1871 (Focus on Undergraduate Scholarship)
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…
Sebastián J. Delgado–The Utopian Liberal: Continuity and Change in the Philosophy of Charles Sumner (Focus on Undergraduate Scholarship)
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…
Teal Arcadi–The Making of “Concrete Leviathan”: Law, Inequality, and Accounting for Infrastructural Harm
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…
Students As Gravediggers: A Critical Unpacking of ‘Chandra’s Death’ in the Classroom
“What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.” Karl Marx, and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (1848)[1] Chandra’s Death is a powerful text, that documents the intersections of colonial power, with patriarchal and caste relations.[2] In the text, Ranajit Guha…
David Tanenhaus–Beyond the Scope: Reflections on a Forgotten Speech
This short essay is about the problem of what to do with the accidental discovery of a primary source, a research gem, that is beyond the scope of one’s current projects. It is also a reflection about the legal history community and the subjective necessity for writing. Part I. The Journey to Discovery Thanks to…
FORUM: Christine Desan’s Making Money/ Desan’s Response
Mapping the Field of Money Studies In The Cartographers, a fabulous new tale by Peng Shepard, maps make a world real.[1] In the fiction, mapmakers bring a town into being when they draw it. Those who have the map–and only those–can find the town ever afterwards. Within the fact that prompted Shepard’s flight of fancy,…
FORUM: Desan’s Making Money/ Samuel Knafo, Revisiting the Origins of Modern Money
Christine Desan’s book, Making Money, represents a landmark in the rapidly growing literature on the history of money. It offers a compelling account of the political measures and legal interventions in England that set the foundations for modern forms of money. Desan here demonstrates that money has always been a political affair. Taxation has indeed…