Law Commons^™

Accumulating Risk: Environmental Justice And The History Of Capitalism In Detroit, 1880-2015, Josiah John Rector

Wayne State University Dissertations

This dissertation is an environmental history of Detroit, Michigan from the 19th century to the present. Recent scholarship on the history of capitalism has largely ignored the problem of environmental inequality, and the negative externalities of economic growth. In contrast, studies of the environmental justice movement have richly documented race, class, and gender inequalities in environmental risk exposure. However, they have neglected the relationship between the development of the environmental justice movement and the restructuring of American capitalism since the 1970s, including deindustrialization and the shift to neoliberalism. Bringing these fields together, this dissertation connects Detroit’s long-term economic transformation to …

Absentee Soldier Voting In Civil War Law And Politics, David A. Collins

Wayne State University Dissertations

During the Civil War, twenty northern states changed their laws to permit absent soldiers to vote. Before enactment of these statutes, state laws had tethered balloting to the voter's community and required in-person participation by voters. Under the new laws, eligible voters - as long as they were soldiers - could cast ballots in distant military encampments, far from their neighbors and community leaders. This dissertation examines the legal conflicts that arose from this phenomenon and the political causes underlying it.

Legally, the laws represented an abrupt change, contrary to earlier scholarship viewing them as culminating a gradual process of …

Minor Courts And Communities At The Frontier: The Justice Of The Peace In Early Missouri, Bonnie Aileen Speck

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

MINOR COURTS AND COMMUNITIES AT THE FRONTIER JUSTICES OF THE PEACE IN EARLY MISSOURI

by

BONNIE A. SPECK

May 2011

Advisor: Sandra VanBurkleo

Major: American Legal and Constitutional History

Degree: History

This study focused on local and county courts operated by Missouri's justices of the peace between the Louisiana Purchase and roughly 1875. Its purpose was to investigate the role of township justices’ courts and county courts of commissioners in terms of interactions with local residents; effects of rulings and other court actions on everyday affairs; and wider impacts on Missouri society. Sources included territorial and …