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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Centering Women In Prisoners' Rights Litigation, Amber Baylor Mar 2019

Centering Women In Prisoners' Rights Litigation, Amber Baylor

Amber Baylor

This Article consciously employs both a dignity rights-based framing and methodology. Dignity rights are those rights that are based on the Kantian assertion of “inalienable human worth.”29 This framework for defining rights spans across a number of disciplines, including medicine and human rights law.30 Disciplinary sanctions like solitary confinement or forced medication might be described as anathema to human dignity because of their degrading effect on an individual’s emotional and social well-being.

This Article relies on first-person oral histories where possible. Bioethics scholar Claire Hooker argues that including narratives in work on dignity rights “is both a moral and an …


The "Rabbi's Daughter" And The "Jewish Jane Addams": Jewish Women, Legal Aid, And The Fluidity Of Identity, 1890-1930, Felice Batlan Dec 2015

The "Rabbi's Daughter" And The "Jewish Jane Addams": Jewish Women, Legal Aid, And The Fluidity Of Identity, 1890-1930, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This symposium article discusses an unexamined area of legal aid and legal history—the role that late nineteenth and early twentieth century Jewish women played in the delivery of legal aid as social workers, lawyers, and, importantly, as cultural and legal brokers. It presents two such women who represented different types and models of legal aid—Minnie Low of the Chicago Bureau of Personal Service, a Jewish social welfare organization, and Rosalie Loew of the Legal Aid Society of New York. I interrogate how these women negotiated their identities as Jewish professional women, what role being Jewish and female played in shaping …


Women And Justice For The Poor: A History Of Legal Aid, 1863–1945, Felice Batlan Dec 2014

Women And Justice For The Poor: A History Of Legal Aid, 1863–1945, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

No abstract provided.


"Well-Behaved Women Don't Make History": Rethinking English Family, Law, And History, Danaya C. Wright Nov 2014

"Well-Behaved Women Don't Make History": Rethinking English Family, Law, And History, Danaya C. Wright

Danaya C. Wright

In 1857 Parliament finally succumbed to public and political pressure and passed a bill creating a domestic relations court: the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. This new court for the first time in common-law history, combined the following jurisdictions: the ecclesiastical court's jurisdiction over marital validity and separation; the Chancery court's jurisdiction over child custody and equitable estates; the common-law court's jurisdiction over property; and Parliament's jurisdiction over divorce and marital settlements. Wives were given the legal right to seek a divorce or judicial separation in a court of law, receive custody of the children of the marriage, and …


Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page Feb 2014

Tell Us A Story, But Don't Make It A Good One: Resolving The Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories And Federal Rule Of Evidence 403, Cathren Page

Cathren Page

Abstract: Tell Us a Story, But Don’t Make It A Good One: Resolving the Confusion Regarding Emotional Stories and Federal Rule of Evidence 403 by Cathren Koehlert-Page Courts need to reword their opinions regarding Rule 403 to address the tension between the advice to tell an emotionally evocative story at trial and the notion that evidence can be excluded if it is too emotional. In the murder mystery Mystic River, Dave Boyle is kidnapped in the beginning. The audience feels empathy for Dave who as an adult becomes one of the main suspects in the murder of his friend Jimmy’s …


Legal History And The Politics Of Inclusion, Felice Batlan Dec 2013

Legal History And The Politics Of Inclusion, Felice Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This review considers four very different books that explore how gender and race have structured law and the legal profession. Each interrogates the legitimacy of law by demonstrating how it has produced multiple injustices, thereby challenging the myth that law is about equity or fairness, and that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights produced a set of inalienable rights and liberties that applied to all. 


Deadly Dicta: Roe’S “Unwanted Motherhood”, Gonzales’S “Women’S Regret” And The Shifting Narrative Of Abortion Jurisprudence, Stacy A. Scaldo Mar 2013

Deadly Dicta: Roe’S “Unwanted Motherhood”, Gonzales’S “Women’S Regret” And The Shifting Narrative Of Abortion Jurisprudence, Stacy A. Scaldo

Stacy A Scaldo

For thirty-four years, the narrative of Supreme Court jurisprudence on the issue of abortion was firmly focused on the pregnant woman. From the initial finding that the right to an abortion stemmed from a constitutional right to privacy[1], through the test applied and refined to determine when that right was abridged[2], to the striking of statutes found to over-regulate that right[3], the conversation from the Court’s perspective maintained a singular focus. Pro-life arguments focusing on the fetus as the equal or greater party of interest were systematically pushed aside by the Court.[4] The consequences of an unwanted pregnancy, or as …


Jus Sanguinis: Determining Parentage For Assisted Reproduction Children Born Overseas, Kristine Knaplund Feb 2013

Jus Sanguinis: Determining Parentage For Assisted Reproduction Children Born Overseas, Kristine Knaplund

Kristine Knaplund

Jus Sanguinis: Determining Citizenship for Assisted Reproduction Children Born Overseas Professor Kristine S. Knaplund Abstract The United States has long followed the English common law view that citizenship can be attained at birth in two ways: by being born in the U.S. (jus soli), or by being born abroad as the child of a U.S. citizen (jus sanguinis). The first, jus soli, is now part of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and the state wherein they reside.” …


Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2012

Spirit Injury And Feminism: Expanding The Discussion, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

To discuss spirit injury, it is at first necessary to articulate a space in the theoretical diaspora to conceptualize spirit injury as a concept deeply tied to the historical tradition of several theoretical frameworks. “Spirit injury” is a phrase popularized by critical race feminist Adrien Katherine Wing. It is a term utilized in critical race feminism (CRF) that brings together insights from critical legal studies (CLS) and critical race theory (CRT). Wing’s training is as a lawyer and legal scholar, not as a communication scholar, yet her work may help communication scholars more keenly theorize harm and violence. Her scholarship …


Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan Dec 2011

Women's Legal History Symposium Introduction: Making History, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This essay introduces the Chicago-Kent Symposium on Women's Legal History: A Global Perspective. It seeks to situate the field of women's legal history and to explore what it means to begin writing a transnational women's history which transcends and at times disrupts the nation state. In doing so, it sets forth some of the fundamental premises of women's legal history and points to new ways of writing such histories.


The Birth Of Legal Aid: Gender Ideologies, Women, And The Bar In New York City, 1863-1910, Felice J. Batlan Dec 2009

The Birth Of Legal Aid: Gender Ideologies, Women, And The Bar In New York City, 1863-1910, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

This article provides a case study and an in-depth analysis of the WWPU. It then discusses how by the turn of the century, when the Society became the dominant provider of legal aid in New York City, women’s roles as legal providers and recipients of legal aid was even further expanded. By doing so, I demonstrate that gender was foundational to the development of legal aid and that women played crucial roles as lawyers, benefactors, and clients. Although this article focuses on New York, legal aid organizations in cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia also first arose to provide free …


Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg Dec 2008

Behavioral Economic Issues In American & Islamic Marriage & Divorce Law, Ryan M. Riegg

Ryan M. Riegg

The article critiques traditional economic theory, which frequently fails to address issues like "trust" in the forming of both contractual and marital relationships, and addresses problems within both the American and Islamic marriage & divorce systems from a behavioral economic, and comparative, perspective.


The Ladies' Health Protective Association: Lay Lawyers And Urban Cause Lawyering, Felice J. Batlan Dec 2007

The Ladies' Health Protective Association: Lay Lawyers And Urban Cause Lawyering, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

The legal history of women and gender is a crucial and radical project that seeks to rewrite the dominant legal narratives that we tell about the development of law and the role that law has played. It is in part about how law shapes culture and society and how society and culture shape law. Crucial to any understanding of law, culture, and society is how gender functions. Yet gender is a slippery term that is at once historically contingent, malleable, shifting, and unstable. This indeterminacy makes gender such a rich mode of analysis.' Creating a women's or gendered legal history …


Comparing Remedies For School Desegregation And Employment Discrimination.Pdf, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer Dec 2003

Comparing Remedies For School Desegregation And Employment Discrimination.Pdf, Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

Candace Kovacic-Fleischer

INTRODUCTION: Ten years after the Supreme Court decided Brown v. Board of Education, now a symbol of the beginning of the end of racial discrimination, Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII opened the workplace to all races and women in ways that had not previously existed. While discrimination in the workplace has not disappeared in the forty years since Title VII's enactment, one sees minorities and women in a greater variety of jobs, and at higher levels, than one would have seen a generation ago. The promise of Brown, however, has not been …


A Journal Of One's Own? Beginning The Project Of Historicizing The Development Of Women's Law Journals, Felice J. Batlan Jan 2003

A Journal Of One's Own? Beginning The Project Of Historicizing The Development Of Women's Law Journals, Felice J. Batlan

Felice J Batlan

Since the 1970s, feminism has helped transform the university and the production of knowledge. Not only have increasing numbers of female students, professors, and administrators entered universities, they have also created women's studies programs and courses, which have been slowly integrated into the various disciplines and university curricula. Further, feminism has spurred scholars to question traditional ways of knowing and teaching, academic disciplines, categorizations of knowledge, scholarly methodologies, and the university's separation from the broader community. One component in this production and distribution of new knowledge has been the establishment of feminist academic journals such as Feminist Studies (1972), Women's …