Law Commons^™

Women And Justice For The Poor: A History Of Legal Aid, 1863–1945, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.

The Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Divide, Christopher W. Schmidt

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Contemporary legal discourse differentiates “civil rights” from “civil liberties.” The former are generally understood as protections against discriminatory treatment, the latter as freedom from oppressive government authority. This Essay explains how this differentiation arose and considers its consequences.

Although there is a certain inherent logic to the civil rights-civil liberties divide, it in fact is the product of the unique circumstances of a particular moment in history. In the early years of the Cold War, liberal anticommunists sought to distinguish their incipient interest in the cause of racial equality from their belief that national security required limitations on the speech …

Legal History And The Politics Of Inclusion, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

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This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.

Social Movements, Legal Change, And The Challenges Of Writing Legal History (Book Review), Christopher W. Schmidt

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This Essay identifies the key contributions that Tomiko-Brown Nagin’s Courage to Dissent makes to the legal history of the civil rights movement. It situates the book among several other prominent legal histories of the civil rights era and offers thoughts on the challenge of creating historical accounts that illuminate the complex intersections of legal change and social activism. The Essay argues that Courage to Dissent is among the most thorough and ambitious efforts to confront this challenge in the literature today.

The Tea Party And The Constitution, Christopher W. Schmidt

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This Article considers the Tea Party as a constitutional movement. I explore the Tea Party’s ambitious effort to transform the role of the Constitution in American life, examining both the substance of the Tea Party’s constitutional claims and the tactics movement leaders have embraced for advancing these claims. No major social movement in modern American history has so explicitly tied its reform agenda to the Constitution. From the time when the Tea Party burst onto the American political scene in early 2009, its supporters claimed in no uncertain terms that much recent federal government action overstepped constitutionally defined limitations. A …

The Gendered Lives Of Legal Aid: Lay Lawyers, Social Workers, And The Bar, 1863-1960, Felice J. Batlan

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The Gendered Life of Legal Aid, 1863-1960 (manuscript in process) will be the first monograph on the history of civil legal aid in the United States. By closely examining the history of legal aid in New York, Chicago, and Boston, it presents a number of arguments with wide-ranging implications and it is animated by a host of conflicts. These include the relationship between legal aid and citizenship, the changing status of domestic relations law, the interactions between lawyers and social workers and their different understandings of the role and nature of law, what services legal aid should provide, and even …

Florence Kelley And The Battle Against Laissez-Faire Constitutionalism, Felice J. Batlan

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The usual story of the demise of laissez-faire constitutionalism in the 1930’s features heroes such as Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankfurter and the great male legal progressives of the day who rose up from academia, the bench, and the bar, to put an end to what historians label "legal orthodoxy." In this essay, I seek to demonstrate that Florence Kelley was a crucially important legal progressive who was at the front lines of drafting and defending new legislation that courts were striking down as violating the Fourteenth Amendment and State constitutions. Looking at who was drafting and lobbying for path breaking …

Law In The Time Of Cholera: Disease, State Power, And Quarantine Past And Future, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.

Law And The Fabric Of The Everyday: Settlement Houses, Sociological Jurisprudence, And The Gendering Of Urban Legal Culture, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.

Engendering Legal History, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.

A Re-Evaluation Of The New York Court Of Appeals: The Home, The Market And Labor, 1885-1905, Felice J. Batlan

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No abstract provided.