S. Spencer Wells has published Disciplining Conscience: Judging Ecclesiastical Courts in the Early American Republic in the Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities:American Protestants during the Second Great Awakening participated in one of the largest experiments in lay judging the nation has ever seen. It was not initiated among the countless (initially property-owning) white men sitting on local juries—but amidst those determining the social and spiritual fate of fellow church members accused of wrongdoing within local congregations. In a republic lurching towards official disestablishment of church and state, questions concerning the rights of lay members to judge others’—and their own—potential relationships with the church continually bubbled to the surface. Did lay members retain authority to visit possible offenders within the home, in an effort to reclaim them before initiating a church trial which might possibly endanger their membership? Were witnesses of such trials duty-bound to speak on behalf of those brought up on charges? When confronted with the dread sentence of excommunication, who held the final power to judge the state of one’s relationship to the church, or even to God? The body as a whole, or those threatened with discipline? Such internal struggles often revolved around questions of biblical procedure and due-process, defined as a legitimate form of law in the eyes of ministers and members alike. In a world where believers espoused the “right of private judgment” as their Protestant birthright over and against the church, controversy inevitably arose in the conflicts that followed.
--Dan Ernst
We have of course noted the death of the great historian of the American Revolution Gordon Wood. As it happens, the Yale Journal of Law and Humanities has just published online its 36.6 issue: Festschrift in Honor of the Scholarship of Professor Gordon Wood, with the following note:On November 22-23 of 2024, Yale Law School hosted a special Conference on the Scholarship of Gordon Wood. The Yale Journal of Law & Humanities has the honor of publishing a festschrift volume of papers presented at this conference. Professor Wood was the leading historian of the US Revolution, and it was an honor to bring his work into dialogue with contemporary legal scholarship. This issue is dedicated to Professor Wood's memory.
The editorial team would like to note that Professor Wood, in addition to being a brilliant scholar and wonderful writer, was an extremely kind person. We were all deeply saddened to learn of his passing. It was our genuine pleasure to have had the chance to work with him in preparation of this special issue.1. Akhil Reed Amar, The Revolution and the Constitution: Two Grand Narratives
2. Mary Sarah Bilder, The Character of the Constitution: Instrument and Constitution
3. Richard D. Brown, Gordon Wood’s The Radicalism of the American Revolution (1992): A Comment
4. Jane E. Calvert, Beyond Whig Constitutionalism: New Perspectives on the Constitutional Debates in Creation of the American Republic
5. John O. McGinnis, Gordon Wood’s Republic of Ideas
6. Johann N. Neem, Gordon Wood’s Anti-Elitism and the Crisis of the History Discipline
7. Jack N. Rakove, Being Schooled with Gordon Wood
8. Jeffrey Rosen, Gordon Wood's Radical Achievement
9. Coleen A. Sheehan, Gordon Wood, James Madison, and American Memory
10. William Michael Treanor, Creation and the Republican Revival
11. Michael Zuckert, Clio, Minerva, and the American Republic
12. Gordon S. Wood, Response
--Dan Ernst
Josiah M. Daniel III has posted The Affinity of Lawyers and History: The Dallas Bar Association's Legal History Discussion Group as a Case in Point, which appears in the Journal of Texas Supreme Court History:Legal history may be conceived as the story of the evolution of legal doctrines and rules or as the analysis of the effects of law on society and vice versa. In all events, the irreducible elements of the subject matter of the field of legal history are not only the law but also the lawyer and the judge.
To begin, the lawyer is the quintessential element because what lawyers "do" is to invoke and apply the processes of the law, either in resolving disputes or in effectuating transactions, on behalf of a client. Lawyers are the ones who know or learn what the law is in order to be able to seek to accomplish—ideally with highest ethics, not merely as an agent—the objectives of a client. Such work is known as “lawyering.”
But not only have lawyers always been key actors within the activities and events that are comprehended within the ambit of legal history but today quite a number of them are researchers and authors—legal history scholars—knowledgeable of the literature and interested in learning and creating more in publications and oral presentations. As undergraduates, many attorneys and judges majored or minored in history, but even those who studied business administration or accounting in university are often found reading and discussing legal-historical books and articles. Some even write them.
The scholarly discipline of history has been called "the art of reconstructing the past." The endeavor to do so, known as the historical method, requires, first, finding the sources. Lawyers are experienced in fact finding and determining causation, and engaging in historical research is a natural extension.
This essay argues that the multiple affinities of lawyers and judges for history are demonstrated in the legal history activates of Dallas and Texas lawyers.
--Dan Ernst
Franziska Niedrist has posted Crime and Criminal Justice: Habsburg's Supreme Court, Tyrol and Vorarlberg (1814-1844):This paper examines criminal justice practices in Austria during the Vormärz period on the basis of a series of criminal case files from the Supreme Judicial Authority (Oberste Justizstelle) of the Habsburg Monarchy. The interdisciplinary study investigates a wide range of offenses prosecuted in Tyrol and Vorarlberg. At the same time, it provides a nuanced picture of Austrian criminal justice, offering insights into the decision-making practices of the supreme court as well as its interaction with lower judicial authorities. By combining traditional approaches in legal history with innovative methods drawn from the history of crime (historische Kriminalitätsforschung) and discourse analysis, the study adopts a novel perspective. Moreover, it offers valuable insights into the history of Austrian criminal law, crime and society, while also illuminating everyday life in the early 19th century.
--Dan Ernst
[We have the following CFP. DRE]
Comparative Legal History: Transition and Transfers
Lund: Lund University, June 21-23, 2027. Deadline: October 31, 2026.
The organisers and the Executive Council of the European Society for Comparative Legal History are pleased to call for papers and posters for the upcoming European Society for Comparative Legal History 9th Biennial Conference to be held from 21 to 23 June 2027 at Lund University, Sweden.
The conference series started in Valencia (2010), followed by Amsterdam (2012), Macerata (2014), Gdansk (2016), Paris (2018), Lisbon (2022), Augsburg (2023), andSzeged (2025). The 2027 conference is hosted by the Olin Foundation for Legal History and supported by the Faculty of Law at Lund University.
The theme of the conference is ”Transitions and Transfers.” We are living in a time of unpredictability and changes, and this gives reason to pay attention to periods of transition in history. How and why did changes occur, who were the proponents and opponents? Changes in legal history have often had elements of transfer. Sometimes, legal needs have been met through drawing inspiration from other legal systems. On other occasions, legal rules have been imposed on other systems.
The papers, panels, and posters offered should deal with either transitions or transfers, or both. They should engage in dialogue with aspects of law across time and/or space that are of interest for comparative legal historians.
To offer a paper, please submit an abstract of up to 400 words. The abstract should include the title of your proposed paper and your personal data (full name, email address, work affiliation). Please also send a short CV (no more than 400 words). Anyone at any stage in their research career can offer a paper.
Abstracts will be assessed against: (1) the aim to have a diverse conference; (2) the novelty of the work; and (3) a professionally grounded proposal including a description ofthe methodology and most important sources, and a concise description of the expected research results.
It is also possible to submit a proposal for a complete panel. Panels normally consist of three papers. A panel proposal should – in addition to the abstracts and CVs of those who wish to present a paper in that panel – include an abstract for the entire panel, as well as a CV of the panel organizer.
Further, it is possible to submit a proposal for a poster. To offer a proposal for a poster, please submit an abstract of up to 400 words. The abstract should include the title of your project and your personal data (full name, email address, work affiliation). Please also send a short CV (no more than 400 words).
Anyone at any stage in their research career can propose a poster. Accepted participants will be asked to submit to the organisers a PDF file in size A0 with the poster design, and the posters will be printed in Lund.
One author may only propose to give one paper or present one poster at the conference in order to allow as many people as possible to present their work.
All submissions – for papers, panels, and posters – should be in English and be sent to [email protected], no later than 31 October 2026.
The list of accepted papers, panels, and posters will be announced by December 2026.
A conference website will be launched with further details of the conference in the autumn of 2026. The conference website will also contain information on the attendance fee for those not members of the ESCLH, and transport to and from Lund. The conference website will allow registration for the conference, starting early in 2027. Finally, the conference will be preceded by a PhD-workshop on 21 June 2027. Further information about the workshop will also be published in the autumn of 2026.
The American Political History Conference convenes this week in Washington, D.C., and the program includes many panels and events that may interest readers of this blog:
On Friday, June 5:
Roundtable: The Politics of Jurisdiction in 19th Century United States
Moderator: Adam Rothman, Georgetown University
Panelists:
* Cynthia Nicoletti, University of Virginia
* Heather Carlquist Walser, Southern Methodist University
* Cooper Wingert, Fordham University
* Edward Green, Pennsylvania State University
The Politics of Bodies and Sexuality: From the Antebellum Era to Modern America
Moderator: Cassandra Good, Marymount University
Panelists:
* Chris Del Santo, City University of New York. “The Politics of Bodies, Missing and Masonic: Gender and Visualizing Conspiracy in Antimasonry,
* 1826-1835.”
* Claire Simone Roth, University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill. “Spartan Mothers No More: Yeomen Women, Desertion, and the Collapse of the
* Confederate State.”
* Christen Hammock Jones, University of Pennsylvania. “Sufficiently Entangled: The Legal and Political ‘State’ of Reproductive Rights in the 1970s.”
* Eva Baylin, Vanderbilt University. “The Right to Sex: Pick-Up Artists and the Crisis of Masculinity.”
America at 250 Roundtable: Executive Power from the Founding Era to Trump
Moderator: Lindsay Chervinsky, George Washington Presidential Library
Panelists:
* Julian Davis Mortenson, University of Michigan
* Jane Manners, Fordham Law School
* Garrett Graff, journalist
* Edward O. Frantz, University of Indianapolis
* Amanda Hollis-Brusky, Pomona College
America at 250 Roundtable: Debating Congress from the Founding Era to Today
Moderator: Seth Blumenthal, Boston University
Panelists:
* Katlyn Carter, University of Notre Dame
* Daniel Peart, Queen Mary University of London
* Kevin M. Baron, Siena University
* Abe Silberstein, New York University
* Sarah Rowley, Depauw University
Representation and Voting Rights from Reconstruction to Today
Moderator: Frank Towers, University of Calgary
Panelists:
* Eileen Cheng, Sarah Lawrence College. “Hijacking the Memory of Defeat: The Federalists and the Legacy of the Confederacy.”
* Alma Steingart, Columbia University. “The Mathematization of Representation: Rethinking United States Political Representation in the Twentieth
* Century.”
* Zachary Clary, Vanderbilt University. “‘You Can’t Kill an Idea’: The NAACP and the Martyrdom of Medgar Evers and Harry and Harriette Moore.”
* Robinson Woodward-Burns, Howard University. “Roll Back of State Constitutional Voting Rights, 1968-2025.”
America at 250 Roundtable: The Past, Present, and Future of Judicial Supremacy
Moderator: Gautham Rao, American University
Panelists:
* Jamelle Bouie, New York Times
* Stephen I. Vladeck, Georgetown University
* Nikolas Bowie, Harvard University
* Rachel Shelden, Pennsylvania State University
* Karen Tani, University of Pennsylvania
On Saturday, June 6:
New History of Sex, Reproduction, and Anti-Discrimination Law in the 1970s and 1980s
Moderator: Sara Matthiesen, George Washington University
Panelists:
* Jennifer Holland, University of Oklahoma. “Lesbian-Homoville, CO: How Anti-Abortion Activists Started the Modern Anti-Queer Movement.”
* Sarah Milov, University of Virginia. “‘A Malformed Child Could Sue the Company’: Fetal Protection and the Specter of Childhood Cancer in the 1970s.”
* Karen Tani, University of Pennsylvania. “‘Productive Life or Tragedy’: Disability Rights, Deregulation, and Anti-Abortion Politics in the Reagan Era.”
Roundtable: Political History as Legal History and Legal History as Political History
Moderator: Matthew Lassiter, University of Michigan
Panelists:
* Sam Erman, University of Michigan
* Amanda Hughett, University of Illinois Springfield
* Kate Masur, Northwestern University
* Karen Tani, University of Pennsylvania
Book Roundtable: White Power: Policing American Slavery [by Gautham Rao]
Moderator: Adam Malka, University of Oklahoma
Panelists:
* Gautham Rao, American University
* Kellie Carter Jackson, Wellesley College
* Heather Ann Thompson, University of Michigan
* Anna O. Law, CUNY Brooklyn College
* Kevin Arlyck, Georgetown University
-- Karen Tani
[We have the following announcement. DRE]
Making Connections: New Works in Legal History Series
Sponsored by the American Society for Legal History
Deadline for Applications: June 30, 2026
The ASLH Making Connections: New Works in Legal History Series aims to foster conversations and connections beyond the Annual Meeting about exciting new work in the field of legal history or publications likely to be of interest to legal historians. The series is hosted by the ASLH Committee on Digital Initiatives.
Schedule: Most of the series events will be held on Zoom at 6-7 pm Central on Wednesdays. In addition, the committee plans to hold events outside of the regular schedule to accommodate for presentors and interlocutors living in different time zones.
Event Structure: Each event opens with a brief introduction of the work by the author, followed by conversation between the author and an interlocutor of their choice, and closing with conversation with the audience. In panels featuring more than 1 book or article, we expect the authors to serve as interlocutors for each other. There is no expectation that audience members have read the work.
Eligibility: Books, Articles, or Digital Legal Histories published January 2025-December 2026
We encourage both U.S. based and international scholars at all career stages working in all geographic and chronological fields to apply. We welcome applications for events featuring one book, two books or articles in conversation, and events coordinated with another professional society. ASLH membership is encouraged, but not required. Books featured on a New Directions panel at the Annual Meeting are eligible.
Applications: (max. 1 page; 12 pt font)
* Book/Article/DLH Author, Title, Publisher (for articles: Journal title; for DLH: url) and Publication date
* Book/Article/DLH Abstract and explanation about the relevance of the work to an audience of legal historians (1-2 paragraph)
* Author Bio, including email & ASLH membership status (1 paragraph)
* Interlocutor Bio, including email & ASLH membership status (1 paragraph)
FAQ:
Does the same 1-page limit apply to applications for more than 1 book or multiple articles? Yes. We are especially interested in hearing how featuring the works together would make for an interesting conversation.
Do I have to find my own interlocutor? Yes. Only complete submissions, including those with an interlocutor, will be considered.
Please direct questions & submissions to: Naama Maor, [email protected]
* Via the American Branch of the International Law Association (ABILA): a recording is now available of the recent webinar on "Indigenous Legal Orders, Legal Pluralism, and the Coloniality of Method Across Comparative Law, International Law, IP, and Trade Governance."
* From In Custodia Legis (the blog of the Law Library of Congress): "Introducing Chew Heong and Chinese Exclusion: A New Story Map from the Law Library"; "Supporting Art Through Hardships: The Federal Theatre Project."
* ICYMI: The lower house of the Rhode Island legislature has unanimously approved a bill to rescind the state's "approval–in May 1861–of a proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have permanently protected slavery from federal interference" (Providence Journal). The Supreme Court’s long history of racial profiling in immigration (SCOTUSblog). The "idea of changing the number of Supreme Court justices is hardly new" (NCC)--just ask Rachel Sheldon, who says as much in Made by History (now behind a paywall at the Philadelphia Inquirer).
Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.
Joy Milligan, University of California, Berkeley Law School, has posted The Constitution of Racial Repair: A Reconstructed History, which is forthcoming in the Iowa Law Review:If affirmative action is dead, we should remember it accurately.
Dominant narratives claim that bureaucrats invented affirmative action in the 1970s as a policy of voluntary racial preferences in jobs and university admissions, undermining merit and provoking long-running conflict with the Constitution. That account is misleading, distorting our grasp of the nation’s racial history and the Constitution itself.This Article offers a new, more complete constitutional history. Affirmative action was once constitutionally required, consisted of far more than preferences, and represented the Supreme Court’s own best interpretation of Brown v. Board of Education. The “positive theory” of Equal Protection required government to repair the past century’s worth of constitutional violations under Jim Crow, using a broad range of race-conscious and race-neutral measures. Lower courts and agencies applied the mandate beyond schools, to the many public institutions throughout the North and South in which government had imposed segregation. However, an opposing “negative theory” of Equal Protection persisted, which required only government inaction and claimed that any remedial steps violated white people’s freedoms or material interests. Over time, the Court increasingly sided with the negative theory, diluting the Constitution’s remedial requirements and fragmenting Equal Protection jurisprudence. The very concept of an affirmative duty to remedy the nation’s unconstitutional past dissipated.Forgetting affirmative action’s true history biases our judgments of the nation’s present, its past, and the Constitution. As the modern proponents of the “negative theory” of Equal Protection attempt to halt all efforts at racial equality, it is crucial to recover the Constitution’s prior meanings—and imagine alternative futures.
--Dan Ernst
Anthony Michael Kreis, Georgia State University College of Law, has posted Discovering the Historical Anglo-American Constitution:
The controversy over birthright citizenship in the United States and the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment has exposed two urgent needs in American constitutional scholarship: a meticulous account of the history of the law of natural-born subjects and citizens, and a rigorous methodology for responsibly engaging with constitutional developments over long periods. This article answers both. It advances the "historical constitution" as a framework for assessing longarc legal developments, attending at once to continuity and change, to the form and formation of law, and to legal and socio-political authority-the high law and the low law. The framework gives American constitutional scholars a disciplined approach to Anglo-American inquiry, one that asks how law operated across time rather than at isolated moments. Drawing on rich archival sources, Year Book entries, and Privy Council records-including the original manuscript record of Calvin's Case-it demonstrates that the territorial rule of birthright citizenship held with remarkable consistency across five English legal systems, surviving political, social, and economic pressures alike. The article traces that principle's transatlantic journey to the Americas, illuminating what the historical constitution reveals about national identity and citizenship at the origins of constitutionalism in the United States. The method's promise extends well beyond this Article; its utility is not exhausted by the question that occasions it.
--Dan Ernst
