Reenergizing Political Economy: A Methodological Reflection Christine Desan is the eye of an intellectual storm. She has become a magnet for a large group of scholars and a significant group of advocates, some of whom have begun to recognize themselves as linked in networked relations. For more than a decade, Desan’s work has been revitalizing…
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FORUM: Desan’s Making Money/ Katie A. Moore, Unmaking the Myth of Barter
In the conventional narrative about money’s origins and development, inconvenient barter evolved into monetary exchange, an organic byproduct of an ever-expanding “market.” People trading things converged toward a metal medium because it was durable and relatively scarce; over time gold and silver coins progressed into fiat currencies, which eventually yielded to credit systems. Yet as…
FORUM: Christine Desan’s Making Money
Since it appeared in 2014, Christine Desan’s book, Making Money: Coin, Currency, and the Coming of Capitalism (Oxford University Press, 2014) has captured the attention of legal and economic historians interested in some of the most foundational questions of the legal history of money. Desan argues that the way governments–and the people behind them–design money…
An Interview with Sarah Balakrishnan
[Ed. Note. This fall, Law and History Review’s Editorial Assistant, Elinor Aspegren, had the opportunity to discuss Professor Sarah Balakrishnan’s fascinating work. Most historians would bristle at being described as being a historian and writer of fiction, but Professor Balakrishnan in fact has managed to pursue careers as both a scholar as well as an…
An Interview with Jessica Marglin–The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean
[Ed. Note: This past November, Dr. Jessica Marglin took the time to discuss her new book. The Shamama Case: Contesting Citizenship Across the Modern Mediterranean (Princeton University Press, 2022) with The Docket. Here is our conversation.] The Docket [TD]: How did you get interested in the Shamama lawsuit and how long have you been working…
Christopher Tomlins–David Lieberman: A Remembrance
I cannot now remember when I first met David. Probably, it was at a conference – an ASLH annual meeting, perhaps sometime in the 1990s. I have a strong memory of him at a session of the Law & Society Association meeting in Las Vegas (2005), laughing reproachfully at something deprecatory I had said about…
Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in 19th Century America–An Interview with Dr. Felicity Turner
Dr. Felicity Turner’s book, Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century America was published by The University of North Carolina Press in the fall of 2022. Dr. Turner was kind enough to discuss her new book with The Docket. Here is our conversation. The Docket [TD]: Readers will take a look at your…
Islamic Jurists, the Ottoman Empire, and the Principle of Pacta Sunt Servanda
Diplomacy is a branch of art and science that influences the decision-making mechanisms and behaviours of governments through set of established rules and principles. Diplomacy has evolved over thousands of years, and has been shaped by different cultural methods. This paper studies the role of the “ilmiye” or ulama class in the diplomacy of the Ottoman…
Lisa Cowan: Review of Johnston’s Roman Law in Context (2nd Edition)
Some 23 years after the first edition of Roman Law in Context, David Johnston makes his case for the second by pointing to the considerable advances in the study of Roman social and economic history in the interim. Considering the significant new epigraphic material and scholarship which has emerged over recent decades, the point is well…
Bruce W. Dearstyne: Revisiting the “Brandeis Brief”
The “Brandeis Brief” was the first brief in U.S. legal history to present detailed information about actual working conditions rather than just legal and constitutional references. Attorney Louis D. Brandeis, labor reform advocate and later Supreme Court Associate Justice, prepared and submitted the brief in the 1908 U.S. Supreme Court case of Muller v. Oregon. That case tested…