History Commons^™

A Historical Comparative Analysis Of Executions In The United States From 1608 To 2009, Emily Jean Abili

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The death penalty has been a contested issue throughout American history. The United States has been executing offenders since Jamestown became a colony in 1608 (Allen & Clubb, 2008). Since that time, many issues have been raised about the death penalty including whether or not it is moral, discriminatory, or a deterrent.

This study examines the history of executions, including lynchings, in the United States from 1608 to 2009 using a variety of sociological theories on law and society. Some of the research questions that guide this project are:

* What is the nature of change in the relative prevalence …

States' Rights In The Twenty-First Century, Jay Tidmarsh, Mark Racicot, Robert Miller, Michael Greve

Jay Tidmarsh

No abstract provided.

The Clerks Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

The names of Holmes clerks such as Tommy Corcoran and Francis Biddle, of Brandeis clerks such as Dean Acheson and Henry Friendly, and of Stone clerks such as Harold Leventhal and Herbert Wechsler ring down the pages of history. But how much do we really know about Carlyle Baer, Tench Marye, or Milton Musser? This article follows the interesting and often surprising lives and careers of the men who clerked for the Four Horsemen - Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. These biographical sketches confound easy stereotypes, and prove the adage that law, like politics, can make for strange …

Some Varieties And Vicissitudes Of Lochnerism, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

This article is a contribution to the Lochner Centennial Symposium at Boston University School of Law. Until recently, a consensus appeared to be emerging among constitutional historians concerning how best to interpret Lochner-era decisions involving Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment challenges to state and federal economic regulation. After decades during which the Court's jurisprudence had been characterized as the product of a reactionary judiciary's commitments to Social Darwinism and laissez-faire economics, more recent scholars had come to see the Court's police powers decisions as animated by what Professor Howard Gillman has called the principle of neutrality. On this view, the Court's …

The Structure Of Classical Public Law, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

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.

The Hughes Court And Constitutional Consultation, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

This lecture, delivered to the Supreme Court Historical Society, details the ways in which justices of the Hughes Court provided guidance to members of the political branches in formulating constitutional solutions to the economic crisis of the 1930s. Among the policy areas considered are farm debt relief, energy policy, agricultural policy, civilian relief and public works, retirement pensions, and unemployment compensation.

The Secret Lives Of The Four Horsemen, Barry Cushman

Barry Cushman

"Outlined against red velvet drapery on the first Monday of October, the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as Famine, Pestilence, Destruction, and Death. These are only aliases. Their real names are Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler. They formed the crest of the reactionary cyclone before which yet another progressive statute was swept over the precipice yesterday morning as a packed courtroom of spectators peered up at the bewildering panorama spread across the mahogany bench above." Or so Grantland Rice might have written, had he been a legal realist. For more than two generations scholars …

'Dred Scott V. Sandford' Analysis, Sarah E. Roessler

Student Publications

The Scott v. Sandford decision will forever be known as a dark moment in America's history. The Supreme Court chose to rule on a controversial issue, and they made the wrong decision. Scott v. Sandford is an example of what can happen when the Court chooses to side with personal opinion instead of what is right.

The Virginia House Of Burgesses' Struggle For Power From 1619-1689, Nathanael Kreimeyer

Masters Theses

After experiencing the freedom to choose representatives for the House of Burgesses in 1619, Virginian freemen and freeholders would resist living under a political system that did not allow them to participate in choosing their leaders. In 1619, the Virginia Company set up a new kind of governmental legislature in Virginia where every freeman and freeholder held the right to vote for their representative. Over time, the representatives came to see their legislature as equal with the British Parliament and believed it held the right to make its own laws and choose its own leaders. By Bacon's Rebellion in 1675-1676, …

Guide To Ac006 - Annual Announcements & Bulletins, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

The Annual Announcements of the Kent Law School and Chicago College of Law were intended to inform prospective students. The announcements were mailed to alumni as well as disseminated to prospective students, as evidenced by the notification included in some annual announcements that “The Faculty of the Chicago-Kent College of Law desires to place a copy of each Annual Catalogue in the hands of every genuine graduate.” These notifications also included instructions to send any corrections to names or addresses for the completion of an alumni catalogue on a future date. They include program information and calendars for the upcoming …

Coase, Herbert J. Hovenkamp

All Faculty Scholarship

This brief essay considers the career, contributions, and influence of Ronald Coase, who passed away in September, 2013. Comments are welcome.

Guide To Ac007 - The Record, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

The Record, 1974-1999

The Record is the source for “news and announcements for the Chicago-Kent community” and has been since its first printing, c. 1974. Originating from the Assistant Dean’s office, issues of The Record include notes on student activities, deadlines for grades and graduation applications, policy changes, add/drop guidelines, schedules, academic calendars, and announcements of student and faculty achievements. The Record is published weekly.

Current issues of the publication are available on the Chicago-Kent website, archives of the web version dating from 2000 are also available in reverse chronological order.

Union And States’ Rights: A History And Interpretation Of Interposition, Nullification, And Secession 150 Years After Sumter, Neil H. Cogan

University of Akron Press Publications

Edited by Neil H. Cogan, who is a well-versed legal scholar of constitutional law, civil rights, and civil and criminal procedures, this volume is a collection of papers on a central issue of governance in the United States; namely, what is the power of the States to object to and cancel Federal law with which they disagree. For eighty-one years, from the ratification of the Constitution to the end of the Civil War, this issue of State power was the central issue of governance. Chapters address the history and legal arguments for three assertions of such State power: interposition, nullification, …

"Fare Well To All Radicals": Redeeming Tennessee, 1869-1870, William Edward Hardy

Doctoral Dissertations

On February 10, 1869, Tennessee Governor William G. “Parson” Brownlow tendered his resignation as he prepared to take his seat in the United States Senate, to which his Radical allies in the General Assembly had elected him in the aftermath of the 1867 state election. On resigning, Brownlow expressed full confidence in DeWitt C. Senter, the man who would succeed him. Stunningly, six months later Brownlow’s Radical party verged on collapse after its Conservative rivals captured control of the General Assembly in the August 1869 state election. The new legislature speedily repealed many of the enactments of the five years …

To The Indian Removal Act, 1814-1830, Kyle Massey Stephens

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation offers a history of Indian removal as a political issue from the War of 1812 to the signing of the Indian Removal Act in 1830. Its central argument is that federal removal policy emerged and evolved due to a precise and largely unforeseen sequence of events. Drawing on Indian treaties, journals of negotiations, minutes of cabinet meetings, Congressional debates, personal memoirs, and a variety of other sources, the dissertation charts and elucidates the evolution of United States Indian policy from a diplomatic to a domestic concern. One of the central themes of the dissertation is how most white …

Guide To Ac002 - Records Of The Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity, 1968

Founded in 1902, Phi Alpha Delta is the largest co-ed professional law fraternity in the United States with over 300,000 initiated members to date, approximately one in every six attorneys in the U.S. It was the first law fraternity to admit members of all races, creeds, colors, religions and national origins, as well as the first fraternity to admit women, which took place in September of 1970 with the admission of Anna Carolyn Fox Hinds of McReynolds Chapter.

Phi Alpha Delta was founded due to the Supreme Court’s November 4, 1897 …

Guide To Ac004 - Records Of The Phi Delta Phi Law Fraternity, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Phi Delta Phi Law Fraternity, 1947-1955

Founded in 1869, Phi Delta Phi is the oldest legal honorary association in North America. The Territorial Government of Michigan passed an act on August 26, 1817 to establish the “Catholepistemiad,” or University of Michigania, to be located in Detroit. Dissatisfied with the administration of the university, the Territorial Legislature repealed the act and established the University of Michigan as a successor corporation with full rights. The campus was moved from Detroit to Ann Arbor and the establishment of a law school was planned in 1837, the same year Michigan officially …

Guide To Ac005 - Records Of The Kappa Beta Pi Legal Sorority, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Kappa Beta Pi Legal Sorority, 1908-1958

Kappa Beta Pi, the first legal sorority in the U.S., was founded on December 15, 1908 at the Chicago-Kent College of Law to promote high professional standards among women law students and lawyers. In 1916, the publication of Kappa Beta Pi Quarterly began, and members used these publications to share both serious and lighthearted news, announce professional appointments, office openings, address changes, and accomplishments. In 1924, it also reprinted the article “Indian Country,” the first article written by a woman to be printed in the Journal of the American Bar Association …

Guide To Ac003 - Records Of The Delta Theta Phi Law Fraternity, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Delta Theta Phi Law Fraternity, 1930-1973

Delta Theta Phi was founded at the Cleveland Law School of Baldwin-Wallace College (now Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University) in Ohio in 1900 and became a national fraternity in 1904. In September of 1913, the fraternity amalgamated three other fraternities, Alpha Kappa Phi (begun in Chicago, 1902), Theta Lambda Phi (Pennsylvania, 1903) and Sigma Nu Phi (National University Law School, 1903). In 1969, the fraternity became international with the first two senates chartered outside of the United States. In 1989 Delta Theta Phi merged with Sigma Nu Phi, …

Guide To Mc001 - The Walter L. Oblinger, Jr. Papers, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

The Walter L. Oblinger Jr. Papers, 1935-1990

Walter L. Oblinger (July 5, 1914-April 11,1990) graduated from Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1939 with an LL.B. At Chicago-Kent he met Josephine Kneidle Harrington (February 14, 1913-September 27, 1998) and the two were married in 1940. Upon graduation, Walter entered the FBI. He was appointed to Pittsburgh, then San Antonio, Washington D.C, and Detroit. At the beginning of World War II, Walter was put in charge of the FBI division on German spies in the Detroit area. During his tenure with the FBI, Walter was involved in several infamous cases, including the …

Brooklyn Law School: The First Hundred Years, Jeffrey Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

To Administer Justice On Behalf Of All The People: The United States District Court For The Eastern District Of New York 1965-1990, Jeffrey Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Of American History, Jeffrey Morris, Richard Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Making Sure We Are True To Our Founders: The Association Of The Bar Of The City Of New York, 1970-95, Jeffrey Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Establishing Justice In Middle America: A History Of The United States Court Of Appeals For The Eighth Circuit, Jeffrey Morris

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Calmly To Poise The Scales Of Justice: A History Of The Courts Of The District Of Columbia Circuit, Jeffrey Morris, Chris Rohmann

Jeffrey B. Morris

No abstract provided.

Gaman: How Japanese Americans Persevered In The Face Of Racial Injustice 1941-1988, Derek James Koehler

History

A look at the racial injustice of Japanese Americans during WWII including the internment camps and the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.

Guide To Ac001 - Records Of The Library Of International Relations, Jona Whipple

Finding Aids

Records of the Library of International Relations, 1933-2002

The Library of International Relations was established in 1932 on the basis of documents provided by the League of Nations Association. The original LIR was hosted in a room provided by the John Crerar Library, staffed by Miss Eloise G. ReQua, founder and first director of the Library of International Relations. Miss ReQua’s intent was to encourage the study of international affairs.

During the 1934 and 1935 seasons of the World’s Fair, the Library maintained an exhibit known as the Story Cove on the Enchanted Island, a reading-room, library, and storytelling center. …

Review Of Michael Ostling, Between The Devil And The Host: Imagining Witchcraft In Early Modern Poland. Oxford University Press, 2011, For Polin/American Association For Polish Jewish Studies, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

Witches and witchcraft have fascinated not only the people of the premodern era, but also modern scholars who produced a tremendous amount of scholarship that has covered not only a large geographic area but also a wide variety of topics related to this subject in European history. Scholars have studied the legal and cultural underpinnings of witch-hunts; records of witch trials and works on witchcraft have served scholars as sources for the history of women and gender and the history of folk medical practices in the premodern era. Anyone interested in the history of witchcraft and magic in Europe can …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …