The U.S. Legal History Survey Revisited: I

This is the start of a series of posts on my first time teaching an introductory legal and constitutional history course. Guest blogger Anders Walker has covered this ground before, and I hope readers continue to benefit from his terrific posts (here). We ought to revisit this topic regularly, as pedagogical methods change, the field shifts, and the appetite for legal history waxes and wanes.

Some of my comments will be specific to teaching legal history in a law school setting, but I hope the conversation will extend to courses taught at the undergraduate and graduate level in history departments. I imagine that my law school course is not in fact so different from an undergraduate level survey. For example, I taught in lecture format and did not assume a strong background in U.S. history. The main differences seem to be the assignments (one final exam/paper as opposed to various projects and shorter papers over the course of the semester) and my operating assumptions about the students' knowledge of legal doctrine and legal institutions.

First, the syllabus. For all you first-time legal history teachers, there are a few great collections of legal history syllabi on the web: check out the links on H-Law, here, and on the Triangle Legal History Seminar's website, here. Anders Walker's syllabus is here, on SSRN. (To those of you who have contributed to these syllabi banks -- thank you!) I also emailed a few legal historians whom I admire, and without fail, they were very generous about sharing with me.

My syllabus is shamelessly derivative of the "Legal History: Law in American Life" course that Sarah Barringer Gordon teaches at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, but I revised a bit to reflect my strengths and interests, as well as to take into account student feedback (e.g., they voted for "Law and the 'War on Terror'" for the final week). I'm sure I will continue to tweak this syllabus, but for the purposes of discussion, here it is:
Read more »

Palm Trees

The Brigham City Temple is great! But there is one thing that would make it even more fantastic. Palm Trees. OK, I'm just kidding. I went to the Orlando Temple this month and took a few snap shots of the palm trees that surround it. But, as always, I was a day late and a dollar short. It was dark when I was there. Here are the photos anyway.

A Spicy, Dicey, Mango Relish

I’m sure I’ve done at least 50 videos where I promise I’ll show a side dish or technique seen therein at a future date. Of course, I usually forget about it shortly thereafter, unless someone pokes me, but in the case of this spicy mango relish, I actually reminded myself.

I found myself in possession of some nice, fat shrimp, which I planned to spice up and sear simply (I promise to show that recipe at a future date). I was thinking of topping with some kind of fresh salsa, when I saw Michele had bought some mangoes for a lassi (I promise to show that recipe at a future date).

As luck would have it, the mangoes were sitting near a can of coconut milk, and I remembered the rice pudding video, and the diced mango technique I had so casually promised. The rest of the story is kind of anti-climatic.

This mango relish is wonderfully versatile and infinitely adaptable. It might be at its best simply enjoyed with tortilla chips, but a close second would be as I used it here, to dress some kind of spicy meat. It was crazy good on these shrimp. Promise me you will give it a try soon…or at a future date. Enjoy!

Ingredients for about 3/4 cup Mango Relish:

1 mango, prepped as shown

2 tsp chopped cilantro

2 tsp sambal chili sauce, or other type of fresh or jarred chilies

2 tsp rice wine vinegar

big pinch of salt

Please Note: everything here is “to taste.”

View the complete recipe

Levinson to Lead ICH Seminar, "Assessing the U.S. Constitution"

[We are moving these two announcements up as the deadline of May 15 is approaching.]

The Institute for Constitutional History announces another Robert H. Smith seminar for advanced graduate students and junior faculty. This one is "Assessing the U.S. Constitution: Twenty-First-Century Responses to Eighteenth-Century Assumptions." It is to be led by Sanford Levinson, the W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, University of Texas Law School, and Professor of Government, University of Texas at Austin. Our friends at the ICH explain:

The United States Constitution was drafted at least in part under the sway of particular conceptions of government and politics (putting entirely to one side the role that out-and-out political bargaining played at the Philadelphia Convention). This seminar will examine some of these central assumptions, particularly concerning the nature of what the Constitution itself calls a "Republican Form of Government" and ask to what degree we-or, more accurately, you as students within the seminar-agree in 2013 with the assumption set out, often with both candor and eloquence, in 1787-88. Course materials will be drawn almost entirely from primary sources, including materials collected in Philip Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founder’s Constitution and The Federalist, though it is also likely that Professor Levinson's recent book Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance will also be assigned. Reading will not be particularly heavy in quantity, but the assumption is that what is assigned will be read and then discussed quite intensely.

The seminar will meet Thursday evenings, 6:00-8:00 p.m., September 12, 19, October 3, 10, 24, and November 7 at The George Washington University Law School, 2000 H Street NW, Washington, DC 20052.

Further:

The seminar is designed for graduate students and junior faculty in history, political science, law, and related disciplines. All participants will be expected to complete the assigned readings and participate in seminar discussions. Although the Institute cannot offer academic credit directly for the seminar, students may be able to earn graduate credit through their home departments by completing an independent research project in conjunction with the seminar. Please consult with your advisor and/or director of graduate studies about these possibilities. Space is limited, so applicants should send a copy of their c.v. and a short statement on how this seminar will be useful to them in their research, teaching, or professional development. Materials will be accepted only by email at MMarcus@nyhistory.org until May 15, 2013. Successful applicants will be notified soon thereafter. For further information, please contact Maeva Marcus at (202) 994-6562 or send an email to MMarcus@nyhistory.org.

There is no tuition or other charge for this seminar, though participants will be expected to acquire the assigned books on their own.

We accurately predicted the current rate of unemployment in Italy in 2008 !

A year ago, we revisited our prediction of the rate of unemployment in Italy made in 2008and found that it was excellent. The model worked well. As it has an 11-year horizon, we can check our old prediction for 2012 and 2013 (preliminary). A new estimate of unemployment rate in 2012 is 10.6%. For 2013, the rate is 11.5 in March. There is no doubt, these values fully validate our model of unemployment as a function of the change in labour force.

We introduced the model of unemployment in Italy in 2008 with data available only for 2006. The rate of unemployment was near its bottom at the level of 6%. The model predicted a long-term growth in the rate unemployment to the level of 11% in 2013-2014.

The agreement between the measured and predicted unemployment estimates in Italy validates our concept which states that there exists a long-term equilibrium link between unemployment, u_t, and the rate of change of labour force, l_t=dLF/LFdt. Italy is a unique economy to validate this link because the time lag of unemployment behind l_t is eleven (!) years.

The estimation method is standard – we seek for the best overall fit between observed and predicted curves by the LSQR method. All in all, the best-fit equation is as follows:

u_t = 5.0l_t-11 + 0.07 (1)

As mentioned above, the lead of l_t is eleven years. This defines the rate of unemployment many years ahead of the current change in labour force.

Figure 1 presents the observed unemployment curve and that predicted using the rate of labour force change 11 years ago and equation (1). Since the estimates of labour force in Italy are very noisy we have smoothed the annual predicted curve with MA(5). All in all, the predictive power of the model is excellent and timely fits major peaks and troughs after 1988. The period between 2006 and 2013 was predicted almost exactly. (If anybody knows a better prediction in 2008 of 2013 unemployment rate please give us the link.) This is the best validation of the model – it has successfully described a major turn in the evolution of unemployment near its bottom. No other macroeconomic model is capable to describe such dramatic turns many years ahead. Four years ago, we expected the peak in the rate of unemployment in 2013-2014 at the level of 11% (+5% from the level in 2008) and it has come!

The evolution of the rate of unemployment in Italy is completely defined ten year ahead. Since the linear coefficient in (1) is positive one needs to reduce the growth in labour force (see Figure 3) in order to reduce unemployment in the 2020s. For the 2010s everything is predefined already and the rate of unemployment will be high, i.e. above 9%.

Figure 1. Observed and predicted rate of unemployment in Italy.

Figure 2. The rate of growth in labour force.

More on the Blackwell Companion to American Legal History

Yesterday we spotlighted the new Blackwell Companion to American Legal History. Alfred L. Brophy (University of North Carolina), one of the editors, has posted some thoughts about the volume here, at the Faculty Lounge. Here's a taste:

I think the volume comes at precisely the right moment for American legal history, because the field is going in so many different directions at once. A while back -- like when I was in graduate school -- the field was still dominated by studies of appellate opinions and jurisprudence. So judges, treatise writers, and high brow legal thinkers predominated in the field. There has been an extraordinary expansion in subjects over the past several decades. Legal historians are looking closely at enslaved people, women, gay people, immigrants, workers, welfare recipients, as well as lawyers in big firms and small. And they're looking at the procedures of justice of the peace and police courts, local trial courts, as well as state supreme courts and the United States Supreme Court. The methods have broadened dramatically, too: we're interested in how fictional literature critiqued law (and in some cases supported it); how the technology of law brought down irrational authority and (more commonly) supported it. As Sally and I say in the introduction -- and as I've observed elsewhere -- legal history is expanding so much in subjects and methods that it is beginning to look like almost all of history fits somewhere in its boundaries.

There's just a lot of literature to deal with and a great many moving parts. Most of this is positive -- it's great to be in such a broad field. One thing, however, is negative here. And that is that the field is going in search of unifying principles. . . .

Read on here.

NX Records

Tony Wilson: Most of all, I love Manchester. The crumbling warehouses, the railway arches, the cheap abundant drugs. That's what did it in the end. Not the money, not the music, not even the guns. That is my heroic flaw: my excess of civic pride.
- 24 Hour Party People

Goldsmiths says:

Goldsmiths, University of London has partnered with leading electronic producer Matthew Herbert, founder of Accidental Records, to launch NX Records - a new independent label, run by and for artists and students.

An evening of eclectic live performances on Thursday 9 May at London's Southbank Centre will officially launch NX Records and PureGold - a six-week festival showcasing the wealth of musical talent from Goldsmiths.

Talking about the partnership, Matthew commented: "It feels really exciting to be partnering up with an institution, and in particular an educational institution rather than a bigger record company, or heaven forbid - a brand, to support new artists making music.

"Goldsmiths has a proud and impressive pedigree and I know the next generation there will be likely to produce broad and brilliant music. Instead of the tired major label model of throwing money at something and hoping it works, we will endeavour instead to give the many artists on the label the tools, skills, confidence and backing to be able to not only realise a meaningful version of their music, but to own the rights in it and to take an active role in how that music is made public.

"After all, who better to render a convincing re-imagining of the currently unstable music industry than those most likely to be inventing what it will sound like in the years to come."

Simon Deacon, Director of Popular Music at Goldsmiths, commented: "NX Records exists to showcase the talents, and hopefully launch the careers, of up and coming artists who have begun their creative journey at Goldsmiths. Initially it is intended as a platform for students from the popular music course."

Students on the Popular Music programme, who came up with the name NX to reflect the label and the College's home in New Cross, will also be involved with A&R, organisation and the running of the label alongside Matthew and Accidental.

NX Records has its official launch party on Thursday 9 May at the Queen Elizabeth Hall at London's Southbank Centre, as part of the launch for the PureGold Festival.

The launch evening will run across three stages: The Front Room (NX Records launch with live performances from featured acts & DJs), The Purcell Room (a combination of contemporary, classical & pop performances) and The Queen Elizabeth Hall (featuring audio & visual work from the Electronic Music Studios).

For the PureGold festival programme, click here. To find out more about the Department of Music, click here.

To download the NX Records mixtape, click here. To stream, click here.

Trade and Legal Pluralism in the Era of the Geniza

The Fourth Berg International Conference, In-Between: Trade and Legal Pluralism in the Era of the Geniza, will be convened by the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law, May 29-31, 2013. The organizers explain,

The conference is devoted to the study of the legal history of medieval trade, mainly based on the Cairo Geniza documents, but also dealing with other pre-modern contexts. It brings together many of the leading legal, social and economic historians of medieval Jewish trade and its law as well as leading global experts of the history of other medieval and early modern trade law systems.

Program and further information here.

Brock Party

Dave Chappelle: Attention, Huxtables, there is a block party down the street. Bring Yourselves. BRING YOURSELVES! And bring Rudy, Theo, and Denise.
- Block Party

Bored of Big Lunches, Nina wants to step it up a notch by trying to organise a Brockley block party. She writes:

I was enjoying the sun last weekend and the idea came in to my head to try and organise a community block party this summer.

Would it be something it's something people might be interested in attending? I was thinking something along the lines of a DJ, a couple organised, child-friendly games and one or two local food vendors. I was looking at the last weekend in June as a possible date.

If this comes back as a terrible idea no worries, equally if people are interested in forming an organisational committee then please get in touch.

Lyrics: Chicane & Ferry Corsten ft. Christian Burns - One Thousand Suns

One Thousand Suns
Chicane & Ferry Corsten ft. Christian Burns

If I feel like another part of me
The silence starts to falter
The lights above will help to guide you home

I can't bleed and hear the empty sound of me
The silence it's getting louder
The lights above will shine to bring you home

Will help to guide you home and home

One Thousand Suns (MDA010):
One Thousand Suns (Soundprank Vocal Edit)
One Thousand Suns (Original Vocal Edit)
One Thousand Suns (Danny Howard Vocal Edit)
One Thousand Suns (Soundprank Vocal Mix)
One Thousand Suns (Danny Howard Vocal Mix)

2012 saw two of EDM’s pioneers join forces. This time however, Chicane and Ferry Corsten are in the company of the talented singer Christian Burns. Ever warm and enchanting, is the vocal version of their ‘One Thousand Suns’!

A perfect tune to get warmed up for summer, ‘One Thousand Suns’ sees another round of airplay and club duty. The Balearic spirit ever still present, it’s the emotional, powerful voice of Christian Burns that completes it. Including the remixes of Soundprank and Danny Howard, this is the one E.P. you’re going to have stuck on repeat these days!

Cummings's "Democracy of Sound"

Alex Sayf Cummings, an assistant professor in the Department of History at Georgia State University, has recently published Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press). Saith the Press:

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself.

In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States. When copyright emerged, only visual material such as books and maps were thought to deserve protection; even musical compositions were not included until 1831. Once a performance could be captured on a wax cylinder or vinyl disc, profound questions arose over the meaning of intellectual property. Is only a written composition defined as a piece of art? If a singer performs a different interpretation of a song, is it a new and distinct work? Such questions have only grown more pressing with the rise of sampling and other forms of musical pastiche. Indeed, music has become the prime battleground between piracy and copyright. It is compact, making it easy to copy. And it is highly social, shared or traded through social networks--often networks that arise around music itself. But such networks also pose a counter-argument: as channels for copying and sharing sounds, they were instrumental in nourishing hip-hop and other new forms of music central to American culture today. Piracy is not always a bad thing.

An insightful and often entertaining look at the history of music piracy, Democracy of Sound offers invaluable background to one of the hot-button issues involving creativity and the law.

Here’s a blurb that matters:

"Beautifully crafted, intelligently researched, and cogently argued, Democracy of Sound offers readers a compelling analysis of the changing legal status of recorded music in the United States from the 1870s to the present. Many books have been written about intellectual property; few have done more to make its significance accessible to the general reader. It will appeal not only to specialists in American studies, music, and law, but also to anyone who cares about American popular culture, past and present." --Richard John, author of Network Nation

Lyrics: Sander van Doorn, Dubvision vs. Mako ft. Mariana Bell - Into The Light

Into The Light
Sander van Doorn, Dubvision vs. Mako ft. Mariana Bell

Out of the shadow, into the light
Come to the music, into the light
Out of the shadow, into the light
Come to the music, into the light

Out of the shadow, into the light
Come to the music, into the light
Out of the shadow, into the light

DOORN103 - After the worldwide success of hit singles 'Koko' 'Nothing Inside' and 'Joyenergizer', Sander van Doorn is ready to drop another bomb on the EDM scene. His new single 'Into The Light' is a rock-steady collab between the Duch-bred duo DubVision and up-and-coming American, LA-based duo Mako. Needless to say, this track is one that every DJ should use as a secret dancefloor weapon. Powerfull progressive beats combined with a beautiful vocal by Mariana Bell that will take everyone out there into complete awe.

Lewisham Labour selects The Minister Six

The all-woman shortlist of Labour's prospective Parliamentary candidates for Lewisham Deptford has been announced. And since whoever Labour selects to replace Dame Joan Ruddock as their representative is pretty much guaranteed to get the seat, the competition to become the Anointed One matters.

The list of six includes Brockley Councillor Vicky Foxcroft, who has done a decent job since she was elected in 2010, Whitefoot's Councillor Janet Daby, Lambeth Councillor Florence Nosegbe, Southwark Councillor Catherine McDonald, Mendora Ogbogbo and Paula Hirst.

The candidate will be chosen on May 18th.

Ex-Ladywell resident Paula Hirst is a Director of Urban Development and Regeneration for accountancy firm Mazars and was previously the Head of Sustainable Development at the Olympic Delivery Authority, where she "helped deliver jobs, business opportunities, and the first new urban park in London for 100 years."

Hutchinson on Revising the Lochner Revisionists

Harry G. Hutchison, George Mason University School of Law, has posted Lochner, Liberty of Contract and Paternalism: Revising the Revisionists? which is forthcoming in volume 47 of the Indiana Law Review. Here is the abstract:

Given the resilience of the opposition to the liberty of contract jurisprudence, a doctrine that is epitomized by Lochner, and given the insistent dedication of scholars and jurists to a largely mistaken understanding of economic substantive due process argumentation, it is an appropriate time to review David Mayer’s contribution to the literature surrounding Lochner. In his new book, "Liberty Of Contract: Rediscovering A Lost Constitutional Right", Mayer rightly contends that the Court, during the Lochner era, was protecting liberty of contract as a fundamental right rather than enacting laissez-faire constitutionalism as Justice Holmes and his intellectual heirs supposed. Building upon Professor Sawyer’s exposition of Hammer and its origins in the mind of one of America’s most influential legal theorists, Philander Knox, I offer a contrasting conception of the Lochner Court. This conception implies that the Supreme Court’s decision making during the Lochner era corresponds with the Court and the nation’s capitulation to progressive values. Given Sawyer’s analysis, I argue that Mayer’s bracing defense of liberty of contract jurisprudence is diminished by analytical gaps that fail to satisfactorily account for the history and potency of the social, cultural and quasi-scientific currents permeating the nation before, during and after the onset of the Lochner era. This Article shows, notwithstanding the elegance of liberty of contract jurisprudence, that the emergence of today’s welfare state resembling a dystopian reality that richly manifests itself in legions of “one percenters,” who insist on occupying America’s capital city, was an unfortunate, but predictable, outcome. Finally, I contend that until citizens, politicians and judges display modesty about the nation’s capacity to solve the human problem and immodesty about an individual’s right and responsibility to solve her own difficulties in voluntary communion with others, it remains doubtful that the rediscovery of liberty of contract as a lost constitutional right can become anything but an attractive anachronism.

Leadership Lessons from the Royal Navy

By Virgil R. Carter

While few environments may be tougher than a warship or submarine, it may be striking to many that much is done using “soft” leadership skills. For example, officers leading small teams in constrained quarters, there’s no substitute for cheerfulness and effective storytelling. In fact, it’s said that naval training is predicated on the notions that when two groups with equal resources attempt the same thing, the successful group will be the one whose leaders better understand how to use the softer skills to maintain effort and motivate.

Andrew St. George, writing in McKinsey Quarterly, writes, “I believe that the same principle holds true for business”, as holds true for the Royal Navy. St. Andrew, a business school professor and communications advisor, wrote the Royal Navy’s first new leadership handbook since 1963, which was based on research “of unprecedented length and breadth.

Here are some of his findings:

Cheerfulness counts: No one follows a pessimist and cheerfulness is a choice. It has long been understood to influence happiness at work and therefore productivity. There’s an old saying that every organization reflects the personality of its leadership, and mood travels fast. Royal Marine commanders understand particularly well that cheerfulness is fueled by humor. Conversely, empty optimism or false cheer can hurt morale. As one naval captain put it, “Being able to make the uncertain certain is the secret to leadership. You have to understand, though, that if you are always uber-optimistic, then the effect of your optimism, over time, is reduced.

The relevance of many of these techniques to the corporate workplace should be obvious, particularly given a world of rapid job rotation, team-based work, and short-term projects that may be set up in response to sudden, unexpected challenges and require an equally fleet-footed response.

Keep spinning ‘dits’: The Royal Navy has a highly efficient informal internal network. Leadership information and stories, known as dits are exchanged across it—between tiers of management, generations, practices and social groups. Through dits, the Royal Navy’s collective consciousness assimilates new knowledge and insights, while reinforcing established ones. These dits are one way the Royal Navy fosters what a business would call its culture, or philosophy.

There’s a fine line, of course, between respecting timeless values that can sustain an organization when times get tough and becoming a prisoner of the past or desensitized to changes in the forces at work on that organization. The power of the Royal Navy is to focus on what individuals actually did in situations big and small, thereby providing inspiration for new challenges.

According to the author, “navy life has created a style of leadership that fosters trust, respect, and collective effort. Softer skills such as cheerfulness, storytelling and the creations of a collective memory—all of which make indispensable contributions to the effectiveness of ships and fleets—merit serious reflection by business leaders, too.” For the full article, go to: https://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Organization/Strategic_Organization/Leadership_lessons_from_the_Royal_Navy_3053

The Brockley Boxes

Brockley is pioneering the community adoption of the area's old red phone boxes. Phone box guardian Ali provides an update on one of Brockley's coolest projects:

Now that the sun's been shining, volunteers from the neighbourhood have taken the first step towards looking after the two BT phone boxes adopted for the community. They've both had a good sweep-out and a scrub of all the years of collected grime.

Now that they're more welcoming, we'd like suggestions from the community as to what they'd like to see inside the boxes. A lending library? Performances? Please send us your ideas of what you'd like to see in them, and what you might like to do. We're starting a schedule for the use of the boxes.

Please contact us via our Facebook page at this link. And LIKE us too for further updates.

Lyrics: Topher Jones ft. James Bowers - Save Me

Save Me
Topher Jones ft. James Bowers

With nothing is normal
Faces of horror, shock
Courage from my eyes
Don't forsake me
Come and save me from the tide

Craving the feeling
Break through the ceiling
and let my body soar

Save me, save me
Save me, I beg you please Lord
Repeat 2x

Released April 23, 2013 via Ultra Records.
Update (05/21/13) - UL4031 - Remix package released with remixes by Candyland, Vanic, Nordean and Josef Belani.

Topher Jones - Facebook | SoundCloud | @djtopherjones
James Bowers - website | Facebook | @TheJamesBowers

Nat's Back

Nat's Bake and Juice, the Brockley Cross Caribbean takeaway, has reopened after a prolonged closure. The area's been less chaotic, but also a little less interesting since the shutters came down.

:Zong Ready To Participate in 3G Auction: CEO Zong:

Zong Ready To Participate in 3G Auction: CEO Zong

Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Zong Fan Yun Jun has said that the company is ready to participate in auction of Third Generation (3G) technology.

Fan Yun Jun said that the government should give tax incentives to the telecom sector for attracting further investment. We have invested on the required infrastructure to participate in auction for 3G technology and now waiting for the government’s move in this regard, the CEO added.

CEO Zong also shared future investment plans and company’s strategy to expand the consumer-base with focus on tax concessions for the cellular companies for encouraging new investment in the country. He also highlighted importance of promoting broadband, mobile internet and other latest technology to increase market share.

He said that the law and order situation and power outages were the major issues, adding that Pakistan possessed huge potential and they would have to convince the government to provide a level playing field to boost telecom sector in a major way.

EnjOy..:)

MamoOn..

New Release: Blackwell Companion to American Legal History

The much-anticipated Blackwell Companion to American Legal History, edited by Sally E. Hadden (Western Michigan University) and Alfred L. Brophy (University of North Carolina), is now out in the world. Here's the Table of Contents:

Introduction 1
Sally E. Hadden and Alfred L. Brophy

Part I Chronological Overviews 5

1 Reconsidering the Seventeenth Century: Legal History in the Americas 7
Elizabeth Dale

2 What’s Done and Undone: Colonial American Legal History, 1700−1775 26
Sally E. Hadden

3 1775−1815 46
Ellen Holmes Pearson

4 The Antebellum Era Through Civil War 67
Alfred L. Brophy

5 Beyond Classical Legal Thought: Law and Governance in Postbellum America, 1865−1920 86
Roman J. Hoyos

6 American Legal History, 1920−1970 105
Christopher W. Schmidt

Part II Individuals and Groups 125

7 Native Americans 127
Christian McMillen

8 African Americans in Slavery 152
Thomas J. Davis

9 African Americans in Freedom 171
James Campbell

10 Women’s Legal History 190
Felice Batlan

11 Families 209
David S. Tanenhaus

12 Who Belongs? Immigrants and the Law in American History 228
Allison Brownell Tirres

13 The Legal Profession 247
Mark E. Steiner

Part III Subject Areas 267

14 Law and the Economy of Early America: Markets, Institutions of Exchange, and Labor 269
Christine Desan

15 Law and the Economy in the United States, 1820−2000 289
Harwell Wells

16 Law and Labor in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries 308
Deborah Dinner

17 Siting the Legal History of Poverty: Below, Above, and Amidst 329
Felicia Kornbluh and Karen Tani

18 Taxes 349
Robin L. Einhorn

19 Law and the Administrative State 367
Joanna L. Grisinger

20 Law and Religion 387
Steven K. Green

21 Legal History and the Military 406
Elizabeth L. Hillman

22 Criminal Law and Justice in America 422
Elizabeth Dale

23 Intellectual Property 441
Steven Wilf

Part IV Legal Thought 461

24 Law and Literature 463
Jeannine Marie DeLombard

25 Legal Thought from Blackstone to Kent and Story 484
Steven J. Macias

26 American Jurisprudence in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries 506
James D. Schmidt

27 Critical Legal Studies 524
John Henry Schlegel

28 The International Context: An Imperial Perspective on American Legal History 543
Clara Altman

Maveal reviews Woeste's "Henry Ford's War on Jews"

Gary Maveal, University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, reviews Victoria Saker Woeste’s Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (Stanford University Press, 2012) in 92 Michigan Bar Journal 54 (February 2013), which is to say, here.

Lawyers in the WPA's Life Histories Collection

Particularly at the end of the semester, with paper drafts to read and exams to write and grade, one can easily think of teaching and research as a zero-sum game. This semester I have an antidote in a term-paper-in-progress by one of my students, Elizabeth Hira (Georgetown Law Class of 2013). Ms. Hira has been working in the “life histories” by the staff of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936-1940. Some “2,900 documents representing the work of over 300 writers from twenty-four states” survive in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division as part of a larger collection, The U.S. Work Projects Administration Federal Writers' Project and Historical Records Survey.

A webpage of at the Library of Congress:

Typically 2,000-15,000 words in length, the documents consist of drafts and revisions, varying in form from narrative to dialogue to report to case history. The histories describe the informant's family education, income, occupation, political views, religion and mores, medical needs, diet and miscellaneous observations.

Only what the Library terms “a coherent portion” of the originals have been digitized, but these include contributions from lawyers, including several African Americans:

James W. Bawser
Charles Rufus Brice
Thomas M. Cathcart
O. H. Cross
James Earl Doolittle
Thomas J. Henry
M. J. Pinkett
Robert Lee Wright

A Humbling Strawberry Rhubarb Reminder

I was checking Twitter mentions last week, and saw that a viewer by the name of

nguyen4 had posted a strawberry rhubarb pie photo on Instagram (left), and credited me for the recipe. At first, I thought they were mistaken, as I didn’t recognize the pie as one of my creations, but then I realized that was because they’d made it so much better looking than mine. I hate/love when that happens.

Anyway, once I got over this blow to my ego, I decided to repost this in case you missed it the first time, or just needed a little reminder as to what a fantastic spring pie this really is. Enjoy!

To read the original post and get the ingredient amounts, click here.

Lyrics: Giuseppe Ottaviani & Eric Lumiere - Love Will Bring It All Around

Love Will Bring It All Around
Giuseppe Ottaviani & Eric Lumiere

Living in this world feels like I'm in the middle yeah
And when it's going wrong, it's far too much to bear
Watching news on tv, looks like we're all so little yeah
Life's pushing us around like we won't change a thing

Living day to day like there's not another one
One step at a time, just grateful that I'm alive
It's easier to see the dark, painful side of things
But when I look back, I'm learning from everything

No we can't let hope burn out
If we hold peace inside ourselves

Though I know that this life lives inside of me
It can feel like the world's crashing down
When I'm lost in the pain life is frightening
But I remember love can bring it all around
Yeah someday our love will bring it all around

Love Will Bring It All Around (BH5460):
Love Will Bring It All Around (Original Remix)
Love Will Bring It All Around (Radio Edit)

Love Will Bring It All Around (BH5470):
Love Will Bring It All Around (Rank 1 Remix)
Love Will Bring It All Around (On Air Mix)
Love Will Bring It All Around (Crossover Mix)

Already using it to set floors ablaze during his recent sets, the track represents the vanguard single for Giuseppe's highly anticipated sophomore artist album...

On his Original Mix, he initially dials into a trance-progressive ethic. Locked around thunderous, purposeful drums, tight, stripped-back percussion loops and mood fuelling, floor-engaging FX, it lights the way for the vocal. To 'Love Will Bring It All Around', Eric Lumiere brings his profound, thought provoking, (not to mention devilishly catchy) lyrical/vocal touch. In the drop, channelled by Giuseppe's masterful dark-to-light, piano-paving transition, the tone turns, with Eric delivering a spiritually uplifting chorus that takes the track to boiling point. Together, on 'Love Will Bring It All Around', Ottaviani and Lumiere deliver trance-land a virtuoso, summer-gateway anthem. Watch this one run to the sun!

Tracklist:
01 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Lo-Fi Sugar - Rush
02 Giuseppe Ottaviani with Eric Lumiere - Love Will Bring It All Around
03 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Linnea Schössow - Stars
04 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Stephen Pickup - Illusion
05 Giuseppe Ottaviani - Cold Flame
06 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Seri - Gave Me
07 Giuseppe Ottaviani with Audiocells ft. Shannon Hurley - I Am Your Shadow
08 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Faith - Nothing Wrong
09 Giuseppe Ottaviani - Feel The Music
10 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Alana Aldea - Heal This Empty Heart
11 Giuseppe Ottaviani - Waterpark
12 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Vitamin B - Waiting On Someday
13 Giuseppe Ottaviani with Aly & Fila - Brilliant People
14 Giuseppe Ottaviani ft. Audrey Gallagher - Walk This World With Me
15 Giuseppe Ottaviani with Ferry Corsten - Magenta

Greenspaces: St Paul's Churchyard

Sitting just off Deptford High Street, St Paul's church is an 18th century, Baroque masterpiece. The churchyard itself is a walled garden and a retreat from the throng of market day, with low Portland Stone walls that offer a good place to sunbathe.

The gardens look like an isometric video game, with pristine benches, gravestones, lampposts, flowerbeds and square hedges dotted around as if they've been generated at random - an island of twee in Deptford's sea of grit.

This has been added to the Greenspaces map - our guide to local parks and open spaces.

Waveform cross correlation at the International Data Centre: comparison with Reviewed Event Bulletin and regional catalogues

Another poster at the EGU 2013.

Abstract

Waveform cross correlation substantially improves detection, phase association, and event building procedures at the International Data Centre (IDC) of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. There were 50% to 100% events extra to the official Reviewed Event Bulletin (REB) were found in the aftershock sequences of small, middle size, and very big earthquakes. Several per cent of the events reported in the REB were not found with cross correlation even when all aftershocks were used as master events. These REB events are scrutinized in interactive analysis in order to reveal the reason of the cross correlation failure. As a corroborative method, we use detailed regional catalogues, which often include aftershocks with magnitudes between 2.0 and 3.0. Since the resolution of regional networks is by at least one unit of magnitude higher, the REB events missed from the relevant regional catalogues are considered as bogus. We compare events by origin time and location because the regional networks and the International Monitoring System are based on different sets of seismic stations and phase comparison is not possible. Three intracontinental sequences have been studied: after the March 20, 2008 earthquake in China (m_b(IDC)=5.4), the May 20, 2012 event in Italy (m_b(IDC)=5.3), and one earthquake (m_b(IDC)=5.6) in Virginia, USA (August 23, 2011). Overall, most of the events not found by cross correlation are missing from the relevant regional catalogues. At the same time, these catalogues confirm most of additional REB events found only by cross correlation. This observation supports all previous findings of the improved quality of events built by cross correlation.

Sharafi on Parsi Legal Culture

Over at Mitra Sharafi’s South Asian Legal History Resources, Professor Sharafi, Wisconsin Law, has posted a pointer to an audiorecording of her presentation in the spring of 2011 to the University of Wisconsin’s Center for South Asia on her forthcoming book, Law and Identity in Colonial South Asia: Parsi Legal Culture, 1772-1947.

Lyrics: Touchstone & Ian Standerwick - She's Wonderful

She's Wonderful
Touchstone & Ian Standerwick

So stupid and so blind
been here too many times
I wish I had the wisdom
To shelter me tonight

But then you came along
A light inside the storm
Reaching out to touch me
This is where I belong

Living in a world with you
Is all I want to do
I'm living in dream with you
Is all I want to do

And you're all I want to see
You're everything to me
And your everything I need

She's wonderful
So wonderful to me

Released on October 15, 2012. Remixed package will be released soon (50th release by Digitized Recordings) with remixes by Photographer, TrancEye, Magdelayna, A.R.D.I., Corbossy and Scott Lowe.

Touchstone - website | Facebook | YouTube | @Touchstonedj
Ian Standerwick - Facebook | SoundCloud | @ianstanderwick

She's Wonderful (DR036):
She's Wonderful (Original Vocal Mix)
She's Wonderful (Instrumental Mix)

Touchstone and Ian Standerwick have created something very special here. The track written for Touchstones partner is a beautiful and heartfelt vocal trance track. The vocal coming from Ian is just incredible. The track has a nice progressive feel to it, and it just builds and builds before it just takes it off to a more uplifting sound. Easily one of the best tracks Digitized Recordings has had the pleasure to sign. There is also a instrumental version for those who are not fans of vocal tracks. Listen for yourself, it's amazing. Worldwide release - 15th October 2012

Seismicity of the North Atlantic as measured by the International Data

I have uploaded a posterpresented at the EGU 2013.

Abstract

The Technical Secretariat (TS) of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) will carry out the verification of the CTBT which obligates each State Party not to carry out nuclear explosions. The International Data Centre (IDC) receives, collects, processes, analyses, reports on and archives data from the International Monitoring System. The IDC is responsible for automatic and interactive processing of the International Monitoring System (IMS) data and for standard IDC products. The IDC is also required by the Treaty to progressively enhance its technical capabilities. In this study, we use waveform cross correlation as a technique to improve the detection capability and reliability of the seismic part of the IMS. In order to quantitatively estimate the gain obtained by cross correlation on the current sensitivity of automatic and interactive processing we compared seismic bulletins built for the North Atlantic (NA), which is a seismically isolated region with earthquakes concentrating around the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This allows avoiding the spill-over of mislocated events between adjacent seismic regions and biases in the final bulletins: the Reviewed Event Bulletin (REB) issued by the IDC and the cross correlation Standard Event List (XSEL). To begin with, we cross correlated waveforms recorded at 18 IMS array stations from 1500 events reported in the REB between 2009 and 2011. The resulting cross correlation matrix revealed the best candidates for master events. We have selected 60 master events evenly distributed over the seismically active zone in the NA. High-quality signals (SNR>5.0) recorded by 10 most sensitive array stations were used as waveform templates. These templates are used for a continuous calculation of cross correlation coefficients in the first half of 2012. All detections obtained by cross-correlation are then used to build events according to the current IDC definition: at least three primary stations with accurate arrival times, azimuth and slowness estimates. The qualified event hypotheses populated the XSEL. In order to confirm the XSEL events not found in the REB, a portion of the newly built events was reviewed interactively by experienced analysts. The influence of all defining parameters (cross correlation coefficient threshold and SNR, fk-analysis, azimuth and slowness estimates, relative magnitude, etc.) on the final XSEL has been studied using the relevant frequency distributions for all detections vs. only for those which were associated with the XSEL events. These distributions are also station and master dependent. This allows estimating the thresholds for all defining parameters, which may be adjusted to balance the rate of missed events and false alarms.

Two sales this weekend

Telegraph Hill Leaving Sale Today

Ian writes:

We're planning a move out of London and so we're selling off a lot of stuff including some good quality furniture, lots of books (paperback and hardback), good quality clothing and textiles, toys and games, household items etc. There's no set finishing time but we'd expect to stop around five-ish.

The sale is at 53 Jerningham Road from 11.30am this coming Saturday, April 27.

Myatt Garden Table Top Sale Tomorrow

The sale runs from 10am-1pm. Full details here.

Henry Adams and the Origins of Professional Legal History in America

[Here is another installment in Guest Blogger David Rabban's series of posts on Law's History.]

In my first post about my new book, Law’s History: American Legal Thought and the Transatlantic Turn to History, I highlighted its contents and major conclusions. This second post addresses the importance of Henry Adams as the first major professional legal historian in the United States, which I knew nothing about when I started my research for the book.

During an understandably overlooked period of his varied and productive career, Henry Adams taught history at Harvard from 1870 until he resigned in 1877 to pursue a more active and cosmopolitan life in Washington, D.C. Neither Adams himself nor subsequent biographers and scholars attached much significance to his few years as a Harvard professor. Compared to his subsequent multi-volume works of American history and especially to his great books, The Education of Henry Adams and Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, his brief career at Harvard seems minor. For an understanding of the history of legal history in the United States, however, the years Adams spent at Harvard were crucial. During this period, Adams and his students virtually created the field and provided a model for subsequent legal historians in England as well as in their own country. Most importantly, Adams applied the methods and the findings of German legal historians to the study of Anglo-American law while emphasizing its Teutonic origins.

For two years after his graduation from Harvard College in 1858, Adams, like many Americans of his generation, studied law in Germany. At the invitation of Charles W. Eliot, the recently appointed president of Harvard who soon transformed it into a major research university, Adams returned in 1870 to teach medieval history and to become the editor of the North American Review. Adams recognized that he was “brought in to strengthen the reforming party in the University,” led by Eliot, which assured him “of strong backing from above.” Soon after his appointment, Adams indicated his commitment to Eliot’s reforms by publishing an article in the North American Review stating that successful education must “make the scholar its chief object of interest.”

In a series of book reviews in the North American Review in the early 1870s, Adams assessed the work of major European legal scholars and set forth his own views about legal history. The Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (1876) by Adams and three of his students, whose contributions earned the first Ph.Ds granted by the History Department, carried out the research in primary sources that Adams had urged in his reviews. Their publication announced a new school of American legal history, received international acclaim, and stimulated further historical research by American law professors.

Mostly reviewing books by English and German authors, Adams repeatedly criticized the English for not emulating the scientific history practiced in Germany. Particularly embarrassing for the English, Adams emphasized, German legal scholars had written numerous books that bore directly on the legal history of England and that the English themselves had not even consulted. Indeed, little of this outstanding German scholarship had even been translated into English. He declared German “scientific” scholarship vastly superior to the mostly insular and amateurish work produced in England, which was constrained by the historical fictions of the English common law and the weaknesses of the English educational system. According to Adams, the German scholars had demonstrated what English scholars resisted, that archaic German law, rather than Roman law or “William the Conqueror’s brain,” was the source of the English common law and of its constitutional system. Adams viewed Henry Maine’s Ancient Law, published in 1861, as a promising exception to the poverty of English scholarship, placing Maine at the same level of intellectual importance as Darwin. But Adams complained that Maine often advanced theories he did not attempt to prove, that his “brilliant hypotheses” remained “hazardous guesses.”

The Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law stressed the Germanic origins of Anglo-Saxon law in England, and thus the relevance of archaic German law on the continent to understanding the history of English law. More generally, they identified Germanic sources of positive English values, such as equal rights and democratic government. Differentiating German law from Roman law, they maintained that the archaic German family did not resemble the Roman patriarchal family, whose structure Maine assumed had been a universal stage of social development. From the extensive archival research I did for my book, one of the most interesting discoveries was an unpublished letter from Maine to Adams in the Lamont Library at Harvard, which praised the Essays by Adams and his students and acknowledged that he should have treated German law more extensively in his own work. Thus Maine, the most famous legal scholar in England, recognized the importance of the emerging American legal historians. I was also struck that Patrick Wormald, in his important book published in 1999, The Making of English Law: King Alfred to the Twelfth Century, called the Essays “serious, though now rarely cited,” and praised the one by Adams as “lastingly important.”

[The series continues here.]

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