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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush
Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush
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This brief essay offers a selective overview of recent trends in the historical scholarship on American childhood from the origins of the American Revolution to the early years of the Cold War. This overview of the literature has two purposes. First, it highlights recent socio-cultural scholarship that presents substantive challenges to the conventional ways of understanding the history of children and the law. Second, in so doing, it points out that legal histories concerned solely with doctrinal matters can, and often do, present a limited and distorted window into the past. Instead, the essay argues that the place of children, …
Between Dependency And Liberty: The Conundrum Of Children’S Rights In The Gilded Age, David S. Tanenhaus
Between Dependency And Liberty: The Conundrum Of Children’S Rights In The Gilded Age, David S. Tanenhaus
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Although legal scholars often assume that the history of children's rights in the United States did not begin until the mid twentieth century, this essay argues that a sophisticated conception of children's rights existed a century earlier, and analyzes how lawmakers articulated it through their attempts to define the rights of dependent children. How to handle their cases raised fundamental questions about whether children were autonomous beings or the property of either their parents and/or the state. And, if the latter, what were the limits of parental authority and/or the power of the state acting as a parent? By investigating …
Book Review, David S. Tanenhaus
Book Review, David S. Tanenhaus
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This concise book explores the origins and early history of the Cook County Juvenile Court, the world’s first such court. The court, which opened on July 3, 1899, in Chicago, reflected its founders’ profound faith both in science to solve social problems and the power of the state to provide for the best interests of its children. Yet, as Getis argues, the juvenile court did not live up to its initial promise, and “instead of a place of experimentation and reform—which it could have been—or a place of individualized justice guided by science—perhaps an unattainable goal—the court became an institution …