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Civic Membership, Family Status, And The Chinese In America, 1870s–1920s, J. Novkov, Carol Nackenoff

Political Science Faculty Works

Chinese women and children, or their advocates, brought many legal challenges to decrees denying them entry into the United States or seeking to deport them. Relying on more than 150 reported habeas corpus cases decided in West Coast federal courts between 1875 and 1924, we examine how courts helped to structure the rise of the administrative state through controversies involving the boundaries of citizenship, legal residency, and familial status. Cases involving those particularly vulnerable individuals whose statuses were conditioned upon their familial bonds helped to shape the meaning and scope of civic membership. Amid political conflict within institutions of the …