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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Juvenile Justice In Global Perspective: From Chicago To Shanghai And Back To First Principles, David S. Tanenhaus Jan 2016

Juvenile Justice In Global Perspective: From Chicago To Shanghai And Back To First Principles, David S. Tanenhaus

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No abstract provided.


‘Let’S Change The Law’: Arkansas And The Puzzle Of Juvenile Justice Reform In The 1990s, David S. Tanenhaus, Eric C. Nystrom Jan 2016

‘Let’S Change The Law’: Arkansas And The Puzzle Of Juvenile Justice Reform In The 1990s, David S. Tanenhaus, Eric C. Nystrom

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No abstract provided.


Toward A History Of Children As Witnesses, David S. Tanenhaus, William Bush Jan 2007

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 Jan 2005

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 Jan 2003

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 …


“Owing To The Extreme Youth Of The Accused”: The Changing Legal Response To Juvenile Homicide, David S. Tanenhaus, Steven A. Drizin Jan 2002

“Owing To The Extreme Youth Of The Accused”: The Changing Legal Response To Juvenile Homicide, David S. Tanenhaus, Steven A. Drizin

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In this essay, the authors seek to dispel the myth that the juvenile court was never intended to deal with serious and violent offenders; a myth that has largely been unchallenged, especially in the mainstream media, and one that critics of the juvenile court have used to undermine its legitimacy. The discovery of homicide data from the Chicago police department from the early twentieth century, the era in which modern juvenile justice came of age, provides us with new historical date with which to put this dangerous myth to rest, by showing that the nation’s model juvenile court—the Cook County …


Growing Up Dependent: Family Preservation In Early Twentieth-Century Chicago, David S. Tanenhaus Jan 2001

Growing Up Dependent: Family Preservation In Early Twentieth-Century Chicago, David S. Tanenhaus

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Beginning in 1911 with Illinois’ passage of the Funds to Parents Act—the first statewide mothers’ pensions legislation—the Chicago Juvenile Court built a two-track system for dependency cases that used the gender of single parents to track their children. The first or “institutional” track followed a nineteenth century model of family preservation that poor families had relied upon since before the Civil War, in which parents had used institutions to provide short-term care for their children during hard times. The juvenile court also established a “home-based” track for dependency that reflected a new model of family preservation. Progressive child-savers denounced the …