Legal History Commons^™

The Fall And Rise Of Bengali Muslim Conciousness: Conceptualising The Identity Of The Bangla Universal, Habib Khan

Theses and Dissertations

The emergence of modern-nation states saw the end of the empirical era of exploitation and exercise of inherent racist tendencies towards the 'other'. However, the effect of that colonial system is still ever-present in the creation and governance of these newly independent states. While every new state aims to be 'modern', they adopt the international legal framework of the West as their own - a system they had initially wanted to escape. The concept of Muslim universality in the form of the ummah should have freed Pakistan from the shackles of its former colonial masters. Instead, this phenomenon was replaced …

Higher Law And Lincoln's Antislavery Constitutionalism: What It Means To Say The Civil War Was Fought Over Slavery, Joel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Civil War was fought over slavery. But what do we really mean when we say that? This paper examines that question, first by exploring the idea of “higher law,” which gained tremendous traction in American society starting around 1850. Proponents of the idea claimed that laws such as the Fugitive Slave Act are immoral; that the immorality of such laws is self-evident, and that such immoral laws should be resisted—sometimes even with violence. Meanwhile, opponents of the idea of higher law were not necessarily in favor of slavery, but they opposed the use of extra-Constitutional means to bring …

Women’S Sexuality And The State: A Beginning Look At Virginity’S Relationship To The Law, Ariana Strieb

Senior Projects Spring 2023

This is a beginning look at the relationship the state has with women's sexuality in the United States, specifically looking at how virginity animate the way rape trials are prosecuted.

The Restitution Of Nazi-Looted Art In The United States: A Legal And Policy Analysis, Katharine J. Namon

Senior Theses and Projects

Restitution of Nazi-looted art in the United States is a complicated legal and policy issue. Victims and their heirs seeking restitution of their stolen art frequently encounter inconsistent legal standards at the state, federal, and international levels. Moreover, there are many different parties involved in these cases, including countries, museums, private collections, auction houses, heirs, and individuals who may have an interest in the particular work of art. Ethics must also be considered, and in the past, international principles for nations have been established to guide the process of delivering victims of wartime looting justice. Unfortunately, the current legal framework …

Johnson V. M'Intosh: Christianity, Genocide, And The Dispossession Of Indigenous Peoples, Cynthia J. Boshell

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Using hermeneutical methodology, this paper examines some of the legal fictions that form the foundation of Federal Indian Law. The text of the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 Johnson v. M’Intosh opinion is evaluated through the lens of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide to determine the extent to which the Supreme Court incorporated genocidal principles into United States common law. The genealogy of M’Intosh is examined to identify influences that are not fully apparent on the face of the case. International jurisprudential interpretations of the legal definition of genocide are summarized and used as …

A Workers' Paradise: Re-Integrating Newfoundland Into Colonial American History, Elena Hynes

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The island of Newfoundland is conspicuous in colonial British and North American histories, most particularly and paradoxically, in its absence, a state of affairs which this study aims to help address. Multiple factors, including a paucity of documentary sources and various historiographic trends, have traditionally contributed to Newfoundland’s marginalization within colonial historical narratives. However, developments in recent years have made Newfoundland’s potential integration into the broader colonial dialogue more feasible including the advent of the Atlantic perspective, the expansion of available sources, and the work of multiple regional historians who have challenged enduring historiographic trends characterizing Newfoundland colonial settlements as …

Intolerable Histories And Imperfect Narratives: Nationhood, Identity, And The Integrity Of Law In Post-Vichy France And Beyond, Kaela S. Holmen

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

The principal aim of this thesis project is to examine the socio-legal context of the Vichy regime in World War II France, and to provide an understanding of how that context informed, and continues to inform, the integrity of French nationhood. With Ernest Renan’s oubli serving as a framework for the solidification of nationhood, I will demonstrate that the betrayals to French law and custom that were committed in an attempt to right the wrongs of the Vichy resulted in an imperfect forgetting, and ultimately, a more fragmented national sense of self. I contend that this imperfect oubli resulting from …

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

Victim Impact: The Manson Murders And The Rise Of The Victims’ Rights Movement, Merrill W. Steeg

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind: Analyzing Inhumane Practices In Mississippi’S Correctional Institutions Due To Overcrowding, Understaffing, And Diminished Funding, Ariel A. Williams

Honors Theses

The purpose of this research is to examine the political, social, and economic factors which have led to inhumane conditions in Mississippi’s correctional facilities. Several methods were employed, including a comparison of the historical and current methods of funding, staffing, and rehabilitating prisoners based on literature reviews. State-sponsored reports from various departments and the legislature were analyzed to provide insight into budgetary restrictions and political will to allocate funds. Statistical surveys and data were reviewed to determine how overcrowding and understaffing negatively affect administrative capacity and prisoners’ mental and physical well-being. Ultimately, it may be concluded that Mississippi has high …

"They Would Do As They Pleased, As They Had The Power": Gender Violence And The American Settler-Colonial Project, 1830-1890, Noelle Iati

Women's History Theses

This thesis investigates the role of gender violence and sexual terror in westward settler expansion of the United States in the nineteenth century. I posit that gender violence was not simply a symptom of war and colonization, but an integral piece of the American colonization strategy. Using studies of three locations during three different periods, I have found that the local, territorial, state, and federal governments all actively deployed sexual assault and other forms of gendered terror as methods of removing Indigenous peoples to reservations and rancherías, opening their lands to settlement and resource exploitation for the purpose of acquiring …

Anti-Anarchist Legislation And The Road To The 1919 Red Hysteria, Evan Crumb

College Honors Program

In my thesis, I connect anti-anarchist legislation from the early 1900s with the excesses of the 1919 Red Scare. I tie the actions of anarchist leaders Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman to legislative responses, which were then weaponized after the hysteria of the Russian Revolution culminating in the deportations of 249 Russian “radicals” on the Soviet Ark. I find that the Supreme Court’s legal interpretation of the 1903 Immigration Act’s anti-anarchist provision in Turner v. Williams (1904), and the 1902 Criminal Anarchy Act in Gitlow v. New York (1925) were rational—understandable—within their legal and social context.

My legal history bridges …

The Relationship Between Lgbtq+ Representation On The Political And Theatrical Stages, Brett V. Ries

Honors Thesis

This thesis examines the relationship between LGBTQ+ representation on the political and theatrical stages. During some decades, LGBTQ+ theatre was dictated by the politics of the time period. During other times, theatre educated and filled the silence when the government and society turned the other way. By examining LGBTQ+ plays, musicals, and political events over the past century, there are clear themes that emerge. In both the theatrical and political arenas, LGBTQ+ representation has been limited by a concept called “repressive tolerance.” Every step of progress has been met with another restriction, ranging from stereotypical caricatures to legal discrimination. In …

The Hydraulic Dimension Of Reconstruction In Louisiana, 1863-1879, Matthew P. Carlin

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Louisiana developed an extensive system of levees throughout the Atchafalaya Basin and along its territorial Mississippi River. This system reached its zenith on the eve of the American Civil War. It went into dramatic decline following the conflict due to the confluence of military activity, protracted irregular warfare, and neglect stemming from labor and capital revolution. These shifts intensified with the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and finally consolidated after the ratification of Louisiana’s Constitution of 1879. The shift of responsibility for the construction and maintenance of levees during the Reconstruction Era led to many significant changes in the character and function …

Oral Argument Tactics On The Supreme Court Bench: A Comparative Analysis Of Verbal Tools Used By Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, And Gorsuch, Corinne Cichowicz

Politics Honors Papers

Oral argument scholars like Adam Feldman have categorized the Supreme Court justices’ behavior during oral argument using the approach-based method, labeling each as one-sided, even-handed, or restrained. This approach is too narrowly constructed. Scholars sometimes categorize justices in terms of the tools they use, which include questions, hypotheticals, declarations, interruptions, tone of voice, and silence (Feldman 2018a). Neither of these methods alone produce a nuanced analysis of each justice’s actions during an individual case or across a Term. As the Court’s composition and dynamics are continuously changing, scholarship on oral argument needs to adapt to …

Vi Et Armis: Londoners And Violent Trespass Before The Common Pleas In The Fifteenth Century, Lindsey Mcnellis

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

Civil litigation in early fifteenth-century England encompassed a variety of actions, but only one writ covered acts of violence: trespass vi et armis. These writs, all before the central Court of Common Pleas, detail a variety of violent torts, or wrongs, such as housebreaking, theft, imprisonment, abduction, and assault. The Londoners who entered pleadings in this court between 1405 and 1415 have left a fascinating glimpse into both interpersonal violence and the world of savvy litigators. Through a close examination of eighty-two cases, I demonstrate that Londoners were knowledgeable litigants who used the Court of Common Pleas and its …

Of Queens, Incubi, And Whispers From Hell: Joan Of Arc And The Battle Between Orthopraxy And Theoretical Doctrine In Fifteenth Century France, Helen W. Tschurr

Honors Program Theses

This project focuses on examining the nuances of fifteenth century religious gender theory through an exploration of the Trial of Condemnation (unduly maligned in the historiography) against Joan of Arc. Employing a lens of the theological concept of the “Bride of Christ,” (as defined by Dylan Elliot, Johanne Chamberlyne, Gilbert of Hoyland, and Peter Abelard) in studying this text, as well as the contemporary pro-Joan propaganda texts of Christine de Pizan, Jacques Gelu, and Jean Gerson,suggest a departure from current historiographical positions on medieval perceptions of gender and sex identity. Both Joan (in the trial) and her popular supporters understood …

The Significance Of Mongolia's Foreign Policy And Security Apparatus On A Global And Regional Scale, Bolor Lkhaajav

Master's Projects and Capstones

Mongolia, land-locked between two politically, economically, and militarily powerful nations — Russia and China — often must balance its foreign and security policies with its two neighbors and countries beyond. When discussing Mongolia’s foreign policy and security apparatus, historians and scholars look at the international relations of East Asia as a whole. This is the case not because Mongolia’s foreign policy is insignificant but because greater powers impose greater influence on smaller states. Mongolia’s partial involvement in World War II (WWII), and the Cold War introduced new challenges as well as opportunities for Mongolia to modernize its foreign policy principles …

The Unsuspected Francis Lieber, Richard Salomon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

"The Unsuspected Francis Lieber" examines paradoxes in the life and work of Francis Lieber. Lieber is best known as the author of the 1863 "Lieber Code," the War Department's General Order No. 100. It was the first modern statement of the law of armed conflict. This paper questions whether the Lieber Code was truly humanitarian, especially in view of its valorization of military necessity. Also reviewed is the contrast between the Code's extraordinarily favorable treatment of African-Americans and Lieber's personal history of slave-holding.

Lieber's shift from civil libertarian to authoritarian after 1857, as exemplified by his support of Lincoln's suspension …

Colonial Control And Power Through The Law: Territoriality, Sovereignty, And Violence In German South-West Africa, Caleb Joseph Cumberland

Senior Projects Spring 2018

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College

Is ‘Military Necessity’ Enough? Lincoln’S Conception Of Executive Power In Suspending Habeas Corpus In 1861, Evan Mclaughlin

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

In May 1861, President Abraham Lincoln's decision to suspend habeas corpus in Baltimore following an attack on Federal troops as they marched through Baltimore on April 19th to answer Lincoln’s call to defend the Capitol. To complicate matters further, Congress was still in recess, so they could not legislate a solution to the growing insurgency. In order to check these actions, Abraham Lincoln authorized General Scott to suspend Habeas Corpus between Baltimore and Philadelphia. When John Merryman was arrested, detained, and denied habeas corpus, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney issued an in-chambers decision, Ex Parte Merryman, to voice his …

Liberal Translations: Secular Concepts, Law, And Religion In Colonial Egypt, Jeffrey Culang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is a conceptual history of Egypt’s national formation between the 1880s and the 1930s. This period involved the convergence of nationalism, colonial rule, missionary activity, and new modes of governance at the national and international levels. Drawing on state and missionary archival material, periodicals, legal compendia, laws, and parliamentary transcripts, and adapting methods developed by Reinhart Koselleck, I trace shifts within Egypt’s socio-political lexicon through processes of translation and demonstrate their effects upon social experience and political aspiration. I focus on a set of liberal-secular concepts critical to national politics—religious freedom, public interest, nationality, and the minority—as they …

La Vida Y Andanzas De Un Libro Antiguo En Nueva España Y La Península Ibérica. Cultura Escrita En La Obra Hierofánica Del Doctor Don Alonso Alberto De Velasco, Raul Manuel Lopez Bajonero

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In 1688 a legal text, Renovación, was printed in Mexico City, the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, that explains a twelve year trial that focuses on determining if a 16^th century sculpture miraculously renewed itself. The final decision came from the Archbishop of Mexico City. A year after the book’s publication, the sculpture was recognized as miraculous. In 1699, ten years after this event, the author of Renovación wrote another book that narrates the same sculpture's history, Exaltación, but addressed a wider audience, and from a religious and pious perspective. The Exaltación was republished a …

Capitalism And Unfreedom: Louis D. Brandeis And A Liberty Of The Left, Eric L. Apar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The American Right features a well-developed—and well-heeled—infrastructure for promoting a conception of freedom as inextricable from capitalism. The American Left, by contrast, has seemed content to cede the territory, abandoning the ground of freedom for the terrain of “equality,” “justice,” “fairness,” and “prosperity.” This paper is an effort to address this asymmetry in the public discourse over the meaning of freedom. Its principal objective is to capture the vision of freedom embodied in the political and economic thought of Louis D. Brandeis, one of the American Left’s ablest expositors of freedom.

In addition, the paper has three subsidiary objectives. The …

The One Exhibition The Roots Of The Lgbt Equality Movement One Magazine & The First Gay Supreme Court Case In U.S. History 1943-1958, Joshua R. Edmundson

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The ONE Exhibition explores an era in American history marked by intense government sponsored anti-gay persecution and the genesis of the LGBT equality movement. The study begins during World War II, continues through the McCarthy era and the founding of the nation’s first gay magazine, and ends in 1958 with the first gay Supreme Court case in U.S. history.

Central to the story is ONE The Homosexual Magazine, and its founders, as they embarked on a quest for LGBT equality by establishing the first ongoing nationwide forum for gay people in the U.S., and challenged the government’s right to engage …

Creating Difference: The Legal Production Of Race In American Slavery, Shaun N. Ramdin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation examines the legal construction and development of racial difference as considered in literature written or set during the final years of American slavery. While there had consistently been a conceptual correspondence between black skin and enslavement, race or racial difference did not become the unqualified explanation of enslavement until fairly late in the institution’s history. Specifically, as slavery’s stability became increasingly threatened through the nineteenth century by abolitionism and racial slippage, race became the singular and explicit rationale for its existence and perpetuation. I argue that the primary discourse of this justificatory rationale was legal: through law race …

The Development Of Personal Status Law In Jordan & Iraq, Kelsey Cherland

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis explores the historical development of personal status law, which governs a person’s marriage, divorce, and custody rights. It is significant because it is part of a framework that has defined women’s rights for centuries. I will argue that personal status law is a patriarchal framework that has been reinforced over time, leading up to the creation of nation-states in the Middle East. As such, this is the “institution” of personal status that will be traced using historical institutionalism theory. In this thesis I will argue that personal status has undergone a critical juncture, or crucial moment of potential …

Lawyers And Their Books: The Augusta County Law Library Association, 1853-1883, Gregory Harkcom Stoner

Masters Theses

During the eighteenth and nineteenth century, law books of various types contained the vital information needed by Virginia’s practicing attorneys and judges. Access to these resources, however, was generally limited to personal collections and a handful of libraries. Despite numerous calls for the creation of libraries by theVirginiagovernment, state legislators took little action of note.

This study explores the history and origins of law libraries in Virginia by focusing on the formation and evolution of the Augusta County Law Library Association, one of the first libraries organized in Virginia under state legislation enacted in 1853 that authorized the creation of …

Gambling With Lives: A History Of Occupational Health In Southern Nevada, 1905--2010, Michelle Ann Turk

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

In April 2009, the Pulitzer committee awarded its public service prize to the Las Vegas Sun for its coverage of the high fatalities on Las Vegas Strip construction sites. The newspaper attributed failures in safety policy to "the exponential growth in the Las Vegas market." In fact, since Las Vegas' founding in 1905, rapid development in the region has always strained occupational health standards. From transporting hazardous railroad cargoes to building Hoover Dam, chemical processing at Basic Magnesium, nuclear testing, and dense megaresort construction on the Strip, workers, residents, and tourists alike have been exposed to the threat of living …

Gender And Justice: The Experience Of Female Lawyers In Indiananapolis, Jessica Louise Nelson

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

"Gentleman M.B". is recorded in United States history as far back as 1638, and was a successful landowner, local leader, and attorney to the governor. What is not translated is that this gentleman was, in fact, a woman: Margaret Brent was the first known female attorney, and would be the only one allowed entrance to the Bar for more than 200 years. Even though centuries later, in 1869, Myra Bradwell (Illinois), Mary Magoon (Iowa) and Belle Mansfield (Iowa) gained access to the legal community, women remained an outcast minority until very recently. A mere two percent of the profession was …