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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
The Beginning Of The End Of Coverture: A Reappraisal Of The Married Woman's Separate Estate, Allison Anna Tait
The Beginning Of The End Of Coverture: A Reappraisal Of The Married Woman's Separate Estate, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
Before statutory enactments in the nineteenth century granted married women a limited set of property rights, the separate estate trust was, by and large, the sole form of married women's property. Although the separate estate allowed married women to circumvent the law of coverture, historians have generally viewed the separate estate as an ineffective vehicle for extending property rights to married women. In this Article, I reappraise the separate estate's utility and argue that Chancery's separate estate jurisprudence during the eighteenth century was a critical first step in the establishment of married women as property-holders. Separate estates guaranteed critical financial …
Family Model And Mystical Body: Witnessing Gender Through Political Metaphor In The Early Modern Nation-State, Allison Anna Tait
Family Model And Mystical Body: Witnessing Gender Through Political Metaphor In The Early Modern Nation-State, Allison Anna Tait
Law Faculty Publications
The preferred political metaphor in the constitutionalist context was the mystical political body, a concept that defined a system in which power was shared and the well-being of the community was linked to the well-being of the individual. Within the mystical political body, the theoretical possibility exists for women not only to occupy a civic space through organic (and organological) association but also to articulate their perspective and its consequences for the political community in a civically approved way. In the mystical body, women approach a citizenship status impossible within the traditional family framework and their witnessing is closely associated …