Legal Commons^™

Making Marital Rape Visible: A History Of American Legal And Social Movements Criminalizing Rape In Marriage, Joann M. Ross

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the history of marital rape and related topics in the United States within the broader context of women’s legal and political rights. The project demonstrates the interplay between women’s activists, legislators, the criminal justice system, and an involved public necessary to change both societal and legal views on spousal rape, and eventually its criminalization in all fifty states.

Concentrating on approaches to criminalizing marital rape in three of the fifty states, this dissertation provides a reasonable representation of the existence of the marital rape exemption in America, arguments used to maintain the exemption, and various methods used …

Federal Justice And Moral Reform In The United States District Court In Indiana, 1816-1869, George W. Geib, Donald B. Kite

George W. Geib

In November 1840, William Martin, an Indiana mail stage driver found himself standing in United States District Court, convicted of stealing a letter containing bank notes from the mail.^1 District Judge Jesse Lynch Holman reviewed the evidence that convinced the jury, and then lectured the defendant upon his future prospects: The prospect before you is truly dark and dreary; yet there is a distant ray of hope that may enlighten your path You may do much by a patient submission to the law—by a reformation of life and an upright line of conduct ... to some extent, to regain a …

Ms-187: Papers Of Gregory J. Landrey, Class Of 1977, Devin D. Mckinney

All Finding Aids

In January Term of his senior year, Gettysburg College history major Gregory J. Landrey ‘77 took an individualized study course under Professor Charles Glatfelter. His project—an up-to-date chronicle of the college’s real estate history including land purchases, demolished buildings, and recent construction projects—entailed extensive research in numerous college offices, as well as at the Adams County Historical Society. As the project proceeded, it also expanded, ultimately taking the entire spring semester to complete.

Landrey’s final 68-page paper, titled A History of the Gettysburg College Campus, was submitted on May 27, 1977. Recognized as an important addition to the chronicles …

Department Of History Symposium Series, Featuring Dr. Edward Baptist, University Of Maine Department Of History

Cultural Affairs Distinguished Lecture Series

As the only Ph.D.-granting department int he Humanities in the entire state, the History Department at the University of Maine plays a crucial role training humanists who staff cultural organizations throughout the state, including all other UMS campuses, and many faculty and staff positions at UMaine. The October 16 Lecture will bring an expert to campus to speak about the Morrill Land Grant act and how it transformed US values for the modern era.This lecture is a keystone in CLAS and UMHC programming for the Homecoming Weekend, and it will be followed by a CLAS alumni and friends reception at …

Policing Slavery: Order And The Development Of Early Nineteenth-Century New Orleans And Salvador, Gregory K. Weimer

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My dissertation explores the development of policing and slavery in two early nineteenth-century Atlantic cities. This project engages regionally distinct histories through an examination of legislative and police records in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Salvador, Bahia. Through these sources, my dissertation holds that the development of the theories and practices that guided “public order” emerged in similar ways in these Atlantic slaveholding cities. Enslaved people and their actions played an integral role in the evolution of “good order” and its policing. Legislators created laws and institutions to police enslaved people and promote order. In these instances, local government policed slavery …

The President's Wartime Detention Authority : What History Teaches Us, Anirudh Sivaram

Harvey M. Applebaum ’59 Award

This thesis examines the extent of the President’s wartime detention authority over citizens (in particular, detention authority pursuant to Article II of the U.S. Constitution) through a legal-historical lens. Some Presidents (Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, George W. Bush) have historically relied on Article II authority for detention, while others (Ulysses Grant, Barack Obama) have disclaimed the notion that such authority exists. Clarifying the scope and source of the Presidential detention authority over citizens bears both theoretical and real-world relevance. Theoretically, it lies at the confluence of two central American constitutional traditions – the separation of powers, and the protection of …

Land And Law In The Age Of Enterprise: A Legal History Of Railroad Land Grants In The Pacific Northwest, 1864-1916, Sean M. Kammer

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Federal land subsidies to railroad corporations comprised an important part of the federal government’s policies towards its western land domain in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In all, Congress granted over a hundred million acres to railroad corporations to subsidize construction of a transcontinental railway network. Long after the last such grant in 1871, these land grants continued to incite political contests in Congress and state legislatures and legal disputes in communities across the West. By the end of the century, railroad corporations had become manifestations not just of the threatening growth of corporate power in the United …

A Howl Of Free Expression: The 1957 Howl Obscenity Trial And Sexual Liberation, Jamie L. Rehlaender

Young Historians Conference

The 1957 “Howl” obscenity trial, which covered the constitutionality of utilizing obscene words in literature, was largely influential in the development of literary free expression in America. This case centered on Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems, a work which represented the ideals and culture of the literarily experimental and sexually promiscuous Beat Generation. The expansion of free expression can be discerned through the tolerance of these sexual implications in literature, which is documented throughout the history of sexual suppression in past censorship cases. The victory of the “Howl” obscenity trial was essential for liberating the use of sexual …

Adams County History 2015

Adams County History

No abstract provided.

The Brutal Murder Of George J. Bushman, Conrad B. Richter, Dale J. Molina

Adams County History

In the fall of 1918 there occurred in Adams County a singularly brutal murder that brought the County and the town of Gettysburg to a shocked standstill. The tentacles of this event would reach into four Pennsylvania counties: Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, and Philadelphia, and eventually the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. The investigation of the crime and the trial of the perpetrators involved so many public officials and families, as well as the extended judicial system and geographical locations within and without the County, that we have included a Cast of Characters and Locations to assist the reader in following this convoluted …

New York Oneida: Land Claims, Federal Policies, State Intervention, And Casino Development, Lee M. Hanover

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

This paper examined the relationship between Oneida land sovereignty and their self-determination in establishing the Turning Stone Casino. The paper reviewed general trends in Oneida history with the state of New York, focusing on federal policies aimed at American Indian communities, and the legal cases that the Oneida have brought against New York and the federal government. The study extrapolated that historic cases involving political, legal, and land sovereignty issues prepared them for the fight over their casino’s admittance on Oneida land. The paper then addressed the reoccurring battles with the state of New York over the legality and jurisdiction …

"Spitting Positively Forbidden": The Anti-Spitting Campaign, 1896-1910, Patrick J. O'Connor

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

No abstract provided.

Administrative Equal Protection: Federalism, The Fourteenth Amendment, And The Rights Of The Poor, Karen M. Tani

Karen M. Tani