Thank you, Mary Ziegler, for a series of posts as a guest blogger this month relating to her book After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate. They were: |
| Image credit: NASA |
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| The Skylab Orbital Workshop. The red arrow points to the Multiple Docking Adapter's radial port. Image credit: NASA |
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| Skylab rescue crewmen Vance Brand (left) and Don Lind. Though he never flew to Skylab, Brand would reach space as part of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project in July 1975 and as Commander of Space Shuttle missions STS-5 (November 1982), STS-41-B (February 1984), and STS-35 (December 1990). Lind would reach space as a Mission Specialist on Shuttle mission STS-51-B (April-May 1985). Image credit: NASA |
School desegregation is not just a "black and white" issue, and in fact it never has been. In 1931, a county court in Lemon Grove, California ordered a school district to stop segregating its white and Latino students. Fifteen years later in 1946, a court reached the same result in Mendez v. Westminster, becoming the first federal court to order the desegregation of schools. In this piece, Gonzalo Mendez and Sylvia Mendez (both now retired) recall their experiences as the children whose parents initiated the groundbreaking Mendez litigation, and the way in which their parents remembered the litigation. Sandra Robbie, who wrote and produced the Emmy-award winning documentary about the case, discusses its historical context. Frederick Aguirre, now a judge, reflects on the legal and personal significance of the decision. Philippa Strum, author of a book about the case, considers the unique challenges and rewards of writing about school desegregation cases. Kristi Bowman facilitates these various reflections and weaves them together.
This Study endeavors to reconstruct the Vatican’s precursor system of copyright, and the author’s place in it, inferred from examination of over five hundred privileges and petitions and related documents — almost all unpublished — in the Vatican Secret Archives. The typical account of the precopyright world of printing privileges, particularly in Venice, France and England, portrays a system primarily designed to promote investment in the material and labor of producing and disseminating books; protecting or rewarding authorship was at most an ancillary objective.
The sixteenth-century Papal privileges found in the Archives, however, prompt some rethinking of that story because the majority of these privileges were awarded to authors, and even where a printer received a privilege for a work of a living author, the petition increasingly asserted the author’s endorsement of the application. The predominance of authors might suggest the conclusion that the Papal privilege system more closely resembled modern copyright than printer-centered systems. That said, it would be inaccurate and anachronistic to claim that authorship supplied the basis for the grant of a Papal privilege. Nonetheless, a sufficient number of petitions and privileges invoke the author’s creativity that one may cautiously suggest that authorship afforded a ground for bestowing exclusive rights.
The Study proceeds as follows: first, a description of the sources consulted and methodology employed; second, an account of the system of Papal printing privileges derived from the petitions for and grants of printing monopolies; third, an examination of the justifications for Papal printing monopolies and the inferences appropriately drawn regarding the role of authors in the Papal privilege system.
"Professor Christine Desan is the co-founder of Harvard’s Program on the Study of Capitalism. This is a significant and innovative new development in the teaching and researching of legal, business and economic history. It marks a start of a new wave in the way that we teach and think about the history of capitalism. Here the scholars collectively advocate a move away from the more traditional issues of profitability, efficiency, strategy and effective management, and focus upon issues of power, on the
effects of ways of organizing production, distribution, buying and selling, on society, on policy, and politics. ..."
"In sum, this book is of tremendous value and a notable text in legal history and within those subjects at the peripheries surrounding it. It sets a new path in challenging our ways of studying commercial law and viewing money and currency as a purely economic tool and as a mechanism of exchange."
The Washington Post has a review by Cary Franklin of Sisters in Law: How Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg Went to the Supreme Court and Changed the World by Linda Hirshman (Harper)."With a good nose for the big legal story of the moment, Linda Hirshman — author of “Victory” (2012), a popular account of the gay rights movement — is back, this time with “Sisters in Law,” a joint biography of Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor. Ginsburg is attracting a lot of attention these days, especially from the young and hip (who have emblazoned all manner of dry goods with her likeness and blanketed D.C. with “Can’t Spell Truth Without Ruth” stickers). But it’s not just the Ginsburgian subject matter that makes Hirshman’s book seem so vital. “Sisters in Law” tells the life stories of the nation’s first female justices, but it is as much about how we got to the present juncture with respect to women’s legal rights."
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| Sixty-five years ago: the first rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida. A captured German V-2 with an American WAC Corporal sounding rocket on top begins a low-angle flight to a downrange distance of at least 320 kilometers. Image credit: U.S. Army/NASA |
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| Mars pioneer Ernst Steinhoff. Image credit: U.S. Air Force |
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| Image of Mars captured at Mt. Wilson Observatory in 1956, the year of the last close Mars opposition at the time Steinhoff wrote his papers. Because Mars has a decidedly elliptical orbit, the Earth-Mars distance during oppositions varies over a roughly 15-year cycle. The next close opposition would occur in 1971; the next after that was in 1988; and the most recent took place in 2003. Another will take place in 2018. When Steinhoff speculated on the nature of martian resources, this was among the best images of Mars available. Image credit: Mt. Wilson Observatory/NASA |
Sean Vanatta, Princeton University, September 25
Wilfred Prest, University of Adelaide, October 1
Ryan Poe, Duke University, November 6
Richard Paschal, George Mason University, December 4
Renzo Honores, High Point University, January 15
James Campbell, Stanford University, February 12
Ashley Elrod, Duke University, March 4
Anna K. Johns, Duke University, March 25
Matt Sommer, Stanford University, April 22
Sovereign nations may refuse admission to migrants who are either physically or mentally ill or disabled. Nations have commonly preferred an ideal class — the physically and mentally healthy — to the “undesirable” migrant who is unhealthy or disabled. Both exclusions are traditionally justified as a nation’s prerogative to choose its membership. Nations defend exclusionary safeguards by the need to protect their citizens against contagions from the outside world. Immigrants who are physically or mentally disabled do not pose the same threat, but they may require state services and support, what U.S. immigration law terms a “public charge.” Mental illness is a different category altogether, in that public safety may be an issue, in addition to the need for state welfare expenditures.
Mental disorder as a disqualification for entering the U.S., and accordingly disqualification for U.S. citizenship, has a long history. On two notable occasions in the past, Congress has focused specifically on mental health of would-be immigrants — the first decade of twentieth century, and again in the early 1950s. At the same time, state officials desired to rid themselves of “undesirable” non-citizens housed in state institutions. The solution was to collaborate with the federal government to deport them on mental health grounds. In 1926, for example, 796 persons were deported for “insanity” or “epilepsy,” 257 for “other mental conditions,” and 887 as “likely to become a public charge,” out of nearly 11,000 total deportations that year.
With established interests to protect, the United States along with every other nation imposes constraints on citizenship and migration by self-selection. The screen of “health security” is used to cover policy choices — whether to assume the risk of successfully managing contagious disease; whether to assume the burden of managing mental illness — that have shaped immigration policy for more than a century. The foremost difference is that contagious disease presents a verifiable condition, where mental illness has been defined in such hazy terms as to be applicable to just about anyone — or at least, as Justice Douglas argued, anyone “unpopular.”
More information, including the TOC, is available here.Few moments in Canadian history are as intriguing as the "patriation" of Canada’s constitution from Britain. Over the years, the tale of the political battle between Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and the "Gang of Eight" provincial premiers opposing his patriation plans has developed mythical status. Constitutional lore suggests Canadians would not have a patriated constitution or entrenched the Charter of Rights and Freedoms if not for some last-minute negotiations that took place in a hotel kitchen the night of 4 November 1981 – a night Quebec Premier René Lévesque famously described as the "Night of the Long Knives," when his seven provincial allies deserted him.
In an effort to look beyond this familiar narrative, Patriation and Its Consequences: Constitution Making in Canada revisits these negotiations and the personalities, visions, and struggles that shaped the resulting constitutional agreement. Offering fresh perspectives on the politics of this key moment in Canadian history, it focuses on the players behind the patriation process, including First Nations and feminist activists, who helped shape Canada’s new constitution.
The volume also examines the long shadow of patriation, including the alienation of Quebec, the character of Canadian federalism, Indigenous constitutionalism and Aboriginal treaty rights, and the struggle to ensure gender equality rights in Canada.
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| Matteson's "Trial of George Jacobs" (LC) |
This paper looks at the use of spectral evidence during the Salem witch trials and examines whether its use was legitimate and in accordance with the evidential standards of the time (1692). Ultimately this paper finds that the use of spectral evidence was legitimate as it followed the slim guidelines available at the time. The court followed a strong precedent and the limited statutory guidance and instructions that were available. However there was acknowledgement at the time that spectral evidence was limiting the rights of those accused and was leading to unjust convictions. As such these trials invoked an acknowledgement of more modern standards of evidence. Therefore spectral evidence was legitimately used given the guidelines of the time despite the unjust effect that it had.
Cambridge writes of the collection:This essay recounts the historical, political, and legal context in which Judge Ginsburg’s ruling in the Wright case arose. This context explains the importance of her decision to the battle against segregated education and highlights as well the repeated efforts of powerful political forces, including the Reagan administration and congressional conservatives, to cripple efforts to prohibit racially discriminatory private schools from receiving federal subsidies through the tax system. This essay also aims to highlight Wright’s place in the modern doctrine of educational discrimination.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a legal icon. In more than four decades as a lawyer, professor, appellate judge, and associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, Ginsburg has influenced the law and society in real and permanent ways. This book chronicles and evaluates the remarkable achievements Ruth Bader Ginsburg has made over the past half century. Including chapters written by prominent court watchers and leading scholars from law, political science, and history, it offers diverse perspectives on an array of doctrinal areas and on different time periods in Ginsburg's career. Together, these perspectives document the impressive legacy of one of the most important figures in modern law.The TOC is here.
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| Paster Reading Room (credit) |
In the 800th anniversary year of the Magna Carta, Age of Lawyers will offer a close-up look at the rapid increase of lawyers and legal actions in Shakespeare's Britain, from the law's impact on daily life to major political and legal disputes—some invoking the Magna Carta—that still influence American politics and government.
Age of Lawyers will give visitors the chance to explore many of the Folger legal manuscripts on display in further depth through newly digitized images and translated transcripts produced by a current Folger project, Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO).
More information is available here.In 1815, in the Spanish settlement of San Antonio de Béxar, a dying widow named María Concepción de Estrada recorded her last will and testament. Estrada used her will to record her debts and credits, specify her property, leave her belongings to her children, make requests for her funeral arrangements, and secure her religious salvation.
Wills like Estrada’s reveal much about women’s lives in the late Spanish and Mexican colonial communities of Santa Fe, El Paso, San Antonio, Saltillo, and San Esteban de Nueva Tlaxcala in present-day northern Mexico. Using last wills and testaments as main sources, Amy M. Porter explores the ways in which these documents reveal details about religion, family, economics, and material culture. In addition, the wills speak loudly to the difficulties of frontier life, in which widowhood and child mortality were commonplace. Most importantly, information in the wills helps to explain the workings of the patriarchal system of Spanish and Mexican borderland communities, showing that gender role divisions were fluid in some respects. Supplemented by censuses, inventories, court cases, and travelers’ accounts, women’s wills paint a more complete picture of life in the borderlands than the previously male-dominated historiography of the region.
Btw, Cambridge says of Chin and Villazor's collection, due out in October:The 1965 Immigration Act is remembered — and celebrated — for having replaced an immigration system driven by national origins with a preference system privileging family ties and occupational skills. But while the rest of the 1965 Act, in President Johnson’s words, welcomed immigrants “because of what they are, and not because of the land from which they sprung,” the last of its preferences, given to refugees, emphatically did not. Not only did the 1965 Act fail to embrace the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention’s protection for refugees persecuted because of their nationality, the Act itself discriminated on the basis of refugees’ nationality. To qualify, those persecuted had to hail from a “Communist or Communist-dominated country” or “the general area of the Middle East.” A separate provision allowed for entry of those “uprooted by catastrophic natural calamity as defined by the President.” By tying refugees’ status to “the land from which they sprung,” to America’s anti-Communist foreign policy and national security interests, and, importantly, to the discretion of the President, the 1965 Act’s refugee provision suggests a counter-narrative to descriptions of the Act as part the domestic anti-discrimination agenda of the mid-1960s, or as a reassertion of Congressional control over immigration. The 1965 Act turned refugee policy into another weapon of the Cold War, to be deployed largely as the President chose. It would be another fifteen years before Congress again attempted (or at least purported) to do for refugees what the 1965 Act did for most other immigrants: end national origin discrimination and formalize the criteria and procedures governing admission to the United States.
Along with the civil rights and voting rights acts, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 is one of the most important bills of the civil rights era. The Act's political, legal, and demographic impact continues to be felt, yet its legacy is controversial. The 1965 Act was groundbreaking in eliminating the white America immigration policy in place since 1790, ending Asian exclusion, and limiting discrimination against Eastern European Catholics and Jews. At the same time, the Act discriminated against gay men and lesbians, tied refugee status to Cold War political interests, and shattered traditional patterns of Mexican migration, setting the stage for current immigration politics. Drawing from studies in law, political science, anthropology, and economics, this book will be an essential tool for any scholar or student interested in immigration law.
Priceless treasure hoard found in 1st century grave of Sarmatian woman in Russia | Ancient Origins
Lee Miller was famous for her shots of the second world war, but there were many other women in the line of fire whose photographs have faded into obscurity: meet Gerda Taro, Catherine Leroy and Françoise Demulder
It's spectacularly tricky to attach the label of "feminist" to women who were writing, working, and living far before the term became widely used. And I'm talking centuries before. We're all pretty familiar these days with the shortest working definition of a modern feminist, thanks to writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (and Beyonce) — "a person who believes in the social, economic and political equality of the sexes" — but putting that label onto people from a pre-feminist period (i.e. before the "first wave" of the late 19th century) is pretty challenging. Why? One, they're not self-defining as feminists because that didn't exist yet; two, they often champion certain bits of feminist thought while repudiating others; and three, they come from radically different societies than our own. Instead, most historians of feminism use the term "proto-feminists," meaning that these women anticipated the movement (some by nearly half a millennium), but can't be safely seen as part of it.
Stanford historian says falsified medieval history helped create feminism
The controversial “Gospel of Jesus’s Wife” has been undergoing rigorous forensic testing and academic analysis to determine if the fragment of papyrus is authentic or not. The much-debated gospel, if legitimate, might show that at one point it was believed Jesus had taken wife, contrary to the current doctrines of Christianity.
One chapter is Customs Revenue in the British Colony of New South Wales 1827-1859. And Inquiries Concerning Frederick Garling, Artist and Customs Department Employee, by Diane Kraal, Monash University:These are the papers from the 2014 Cambridge Tax Law History Conference revised and reviewed for publication. The papers fall within six basic themes. Two papers focus on colonialism and empire dealing with early taxation in colonial New Zealand and New South Wales. Two papers deal with fiscal federalism; one on Australia in the first half of the twentieth century and the other with salt tax in China. Another two papers are international in character; one considers development of the first Australia-United States tax treaty and the other development of the first League of Nations model tax treaties. Four papers focus on UK income tax; one on capital gains, another on retention at source, a third on the use of finance bills and the fourth on establishment of the Board of Referees. Three papers deal with tax and status; one with the tax profession, another with the medical profession and a third with aristocrats. The final three papers deal with tax theorists, one with David Hume, another with the scholarship of John Tiley and a final paper on the tax state in the global era.
Customs duties in the British Colony of New South Wales provided important funds for the economic development of the settlement. This significant source of revenue led to the Colony's Customs Department being established, in Sydney 1827, to administer the collection process. The shift from physical assessments of duty by powerful individuals to a process with legislated and more regulated procedures was not without challenges. The first aim of this chapter is to provide insights into five early inquiries concerning the system of the Colony's customs duties, legislation and practice. With a particular focus on the last two inquiries, it is asked whether any modifications were made to legislation and practice. The second aim is to provide a fuller account of the employment of Frederick Garling (1806-1873) with the Customs Department, Sydney. He was found guilty of serious neglect of duty by the NSW Board of Inquiry of 1858/59. Today, Garling is a recognised Australian colonial artist for his genre of marine watercolours.Another is A Historical Account of Taxes on Goods and Services in the Transition to Post-Socialist China, by Yan Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong:
The taxes on goods and services, subject to a very brief interruption, have been separately applied since their inception in early times in modern China. Until now, the Value Added Tax (VAT) is still an incomplete tax as the tax on goods is separate from the tax on services according to the basic legislation, although the two taxes are moving towards an integrated system. The adoption of bifurcated taxes on goods and services has caused a number of problems for the economy and businesses. The question is why the government did not choose a normal VAT system in the first instance if the separation is inefficient. This chapter addresses the question by way of an examination of the historical development of the system of taxes on goods and services in modern China and argues that the design of the system was historically constrained by a number of factors including economic foundations, the level of tax administration and inter-governmental fiscal relations.
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| Image credit: NASA |
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| George Mueller. Image credit: NASA |
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| The top of the Apollo 13 Lunar Module Aquarius. The red arrow points to the concave drogue docking unit. Image credit: NASA |
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| Troubled flight: Apollo 6 unmanned Saturn V test, 4 April 1968. Image credit: NASA |
