Law Commons^™

Legislating Morality In The Gilded Age And Progressive Era: Moral Panic And The “White Slave” Case That Changed America, Nancy C. Unger

History

This article is based on the presidential address presented to the Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era at the meeting of the Organization of American Historians in Los Angeles in 2023. Its focus is Maury Diggs and Drew Caminetti, two white men from Sacramento, California, charged with violating the Mann Act (known as the White Slave Trafficking Act) in 1913. The Gilded Age and Progressive Era obsession with white slavery, a phenomenon that has particular resonance in today’s climate, reveals the power of moral panics. Examining the steps, and missteps, that various legal, social, and political …

Belle La Follette’S Fight For Women’S Suffrage: Losing The Battle For Wisconsin, Winning The War For The Nation, Nancy C. Unger

History

A century ago, on May 21, 1919, the US House of Representatives voted difinitively (304 to 89) in support of women’s suffrage. Two weeks later, Wisconsinite Belle La Follette sat in the visitors’ gallery of the US Senate chamber. She “shed a few tears” when it was announced that, by a vote of 56 to 25, the US Senate also approved the Nineteenth Amendment, sending it on to the states for ratification.¹ For Belle La Follette, this thrilling victory was the culmination of a decades-long fight. Six days later, her happiness turned to elation when Wisconsin became the first …

Legacies Of Belle La Follette’S Big Tent Campaigns For Women’S Suffrage, Nancy Unger

History

In countless speeches and articles in La Follette’s Magazine, Belle Case La Follette urged that women needed the vote to secure “standards of cleanliness and healthfulness in the municipal home,” and because “home, society, and government are best when men and women keep together intellectually and spiritually.” This range of often mutually exclusive arguments created an inclusive big tent. However, arguing that women were qualified to vote by their roles as wives and mothers while maintaining that gender was superfluous to suffrage also contributed to an uneasy combination that would continue the conflict over women’s true nature and hinder their …

Undocumented: The Stress Of Status, Terry-Ann Jones, Laura Nichols

Sociology

From 2010 to 2012 researchers from Fairfield University, Loyola University Chicago, and Santa Clara University talked to students who were undocumented and attending Jesuit colleges. The project culminated in a book, Undocumented and in College: Students and Institutions in a Climate of National Hostility (Fordham University Press, 2017).

California Water Reallocation: Where'd You Get That?, Damian Park

Economics

When thirsty, Californians often avoid going to the market for more water. Instead, they might borrow some from their rich neighbors, they might sue them or more commonly, they simply take more from users without much of a voice (e.g. the fish or future generations). These alternatives are often superior to using markets. Within markets, a surprising detail emerges – it is uncommon for farmers to fallow fields in order to sell water to another user. Rather, many water transfers are structured so sellers can have their cake and eat it too. While some of these transfers rightly bring about …

Even Judging Woodrow Wilson By The Standards Of His Own Time, He Was Deplorably Racist, Nancy Unger

History

The news that Princeton acquiesced to student demands that the university confront the racism of Woodrow Wilson set off a series of responses. Some protest that it is unfair to judge the 28th president by present day standards. These pundits, almost all white, proclaim that Wilson must be understood within the context of his own time. The inference of such an assertion is that in times of pervasive racism it is reasonable for a leader to perpetuate it. Setting aside the assumption that morals are relative rather than absolute, let’s examine Wilson’s actions within his times.

California’S Flawed Surface Water Rights, Michael Hanemann, Caitlin Dyckman, Damian Park

Economics

California sprang into existence following the discovery of gold in 1848. Aside from domestic use, the first major use of water in California was in mining. The first mining consisted of placer mining of alluvial deposits in stream beds throughout the Sierra foothills. As those deposits were depleted, hydraulic mining arose, in which high-pressure jets of water were used to remove overlying earth from upland gold- bearing deposits. That type of mining, first employed in 1853, required substantial water diversions.

When California entered the Union in 1850, the English common law was adopted as the “rule of decision” in courts, …

Women’S Work, Stephanie M. Wildman

Gender and Sexuality Studies @ SCU

In 1982, when Lillian Garland, a receptionist at a West Los Angeles branch of California Federal Savings and Loan, took maternity leave to have a baby, she didn’t plan on spending several months away from work. But Garland suffered complications; the doctor delivered her daughter by Caesarean section and prescribed three months’ leave.

When Garland sought to return to work at Cal Fed, the bank told her that her job had been filled; no other positions were available. Garland, a single mother and now unemployed, couldn’t pay the rent on her apartment and was evicted. She agreed to let the …

The Regulatory History Of A New Technology: The Electromagnetic Telegraph, Alexander J. Field

Economics

Attitudes toward economic regulation in the United States have, since colonial times, been influenced by an almost schizophrenic oscillation between dirigiste and laissez-faire ideology. The laissez-faire tradition maintains that within a legal system providing elementary guarantees against force and fraud, business enterprise should be allowed the maximum possible freedom. The dirigiste tradition, on the other hand, recommends government intervention in a variety of situations, including those where the social return may exceed the private rate of return to research and development spending, in cases of natural monopoly, or where a firm has erected barriers to entry that give it effective …