Legal Commons^™

Making Marital Rape Visible: A History Of American Legal And Social Movements Criminalizing Rape In Marriage, Joann M. Ross

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study examines the history of marital rape and related topics in the United States within the broader context of women’s legal and political rights. The project demonstrates the interplay between women’s activists, legislators, the criminal justice system, and an involved public necessary to change both societal and legal views on spousal rape, and eventually its criminalization in all fifty states.

Concentrating on approaches to criminalizing marital rape in three of the fifty states, this dissertation provides a reasonable representation of the existence of the marital rape exemption in America, arguments used to maintain the exemption, and various methods used …

Land And Law In The Age Of Enterprise: A Legal History Of Railroad Land Grants In The Pacific Northwest, 1864–1916, Sean M. Kammer

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Federal land subsidies to railroad corporations comprised an important part of the federal government’s policies towards its western land domain in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. In all, Congress granted over a hundred million acres to railroad corporations to subsidize construction of a transcontinental railway network. Long after the last such grant in 1871, these land grants continued to incite political contests in Congress and state legislatures and legal disputes in communities across the West. By the end of the century, railroad corporations had become manifestations not just of the threatening growth of corporate power in the United …

Accounts Of Settler Colonialism: A Comparative Study Of The Dakota & Palestinians’ Plight, Baligh Ben Taleb

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Over the course of the nineteenth century, American settlers spread throughout the Western frontier, driving out indigenous populations to establish unique and permanent homelands of their own. In doing so, they caused the death and displacement of thousands of Plains Indians, including the Dakota people in the young state of Minnesota in 1862. Indeed, the US-Dakota War represented a salient instance of settler colonial expansion on the frontier, triggering a bloody conflict between the Dakota Sioux and American military expeditions led by Henry H. Sibley. This paper attempts to contextualize this war within the broader framework of settler colonialism and …

A Plea For Freedom: Enslaved Independence Through Petitions For Freedom In Washington D.C. Between 1810 And 1830, Trevor J. Shalon

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Between 1810 and 1830, over 190 petitions for freedom by African Americans went through the District Court of Washington D.C. The free African American community which had emerged following the American Revolution had been restricted in the beginning of the nineteenth century and the rights granted to free and enslaved African Americans were retracted. The methods by which enslaved African Americans had used to obtain their freedom were eliminated and more innovative methods would needed in order to continue the expansion of the free community.

As the nineteenth century progressed, as other methods were eliminated, the number of petitions issued …

Smoke And Mirrors: A History Of Nagpra And The Evolving U.S. View Of The American Indian, Lindee R. Grabouski

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

While paintings of Native Americans and Europeans exchanging goods and cultural values adorn the walls of museums around the United States, actual Native/non-Native interaction over the past 500 years has been one of illusion, not cooperation. Until recently, legislation “protecting” Native Americans appeared altruistic on the surface, but, instead, served only as a facade for keeping Native artifacts in the hands of scientists and collectors. Even the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), the most recent legislative attempt to reconcile the past mistreatment of Native Americans, is riddled with obstacles and optical illusions.

Certainly, NAGPRA demonstrates the most …

The Railroads Must Have Ties: A Legal History Of Forest Conservation And The Oregon And California Railroad Land Grant, 1887–1916, Sean M. Kammer

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Historians have! for the most part! left unchallenged a similar negative view of Edward H. Harriman, who headed both the Union Pacific and the Southern Pacific and was perhaps the most powerful of the railroad tycoons during the first decade of the twentieth century.4 Prior to Harriman's takeover of the Southern Pacific in 1901, that railroad's long-standing policy had been to subdivide and sell lands to farmers, miners, and loggers, the purpose being lito encourage long-term settlement, economic growth, and rail traffic," but Harriman questioned and ultimately rejected this policy.s In January 1903, he ordered the termination of sales of …