The Erickson Legal History Lecture SeriesThe Ronald A. and Kristine S. Erickson Legal History Lecture Series is named for Ronald A. Erickson ('60) and Kristine S. Erickson ('72), who have been strong philanthropic supporters of the Law School's Legal History Program. 2012 Erickson Legal History LectureMarch 7, 2012 Lauren Benton
"The Trial of Arthur Hodge: Petty Despots and the Making of an Imperial Legal World" In April, 1811, a wealthy planter named Arthur Hodge was tried, convicted, and hanged for the murder of a slave on the island of Tortola. Often appearing as a footnote in the history of abolition or treated as a minor incident in colonial criminal law, the trial and its context illuminate broader legal trends. Conflicts over the exercise of local authority were prompting calls to contain "petty despotism" in subordinate jurisdictions across the British empire. Interimperial wars were highlighting the role of prize courts within the Atlantic world and placing strains on elite access to colonial sinecures – trends that urged new interest in imperial legal hierarchies. Together such practices transformed the early nineteenth century into a distinctive legal period. The hallmark of the age was not, as some scholars have suggested, a pivot from natural to positive international law, a new kind of human rights law forged by abolitionists, or the legal consequences of a wave of anti-imperial revolutions. In responding to the Hodge trial and other similar events, diverse sets of legal actors in European capitals and remote colonies joined in elaborating a vision of imperial law as a uniquely effective framework for local, regional, and global order. 2011 Erickson Legal History LectureMarch 30, 2011 Michael Grossberg "The Politics of Childhood: Law and Child Protection in Modern America" Since the 1870s fears about the physical and moral well-being of American children have led to recurrent campaigns to protect them. Those policies of protection began with the creation of the first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children in 1874 and continue into our time with the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children in 1984, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1990, Amber Alerts and Meagan’s Laws in the 1990s, the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000, and current clashes over sex-texting and cyber-bullying. I will argue that these wide-ranging policies of child protection are a particularly revealing way of understanding the changing place of children in American society and in the development of modern American law and social policy. By chronicling the politics of childhood since the late 19th century, I also explain why child protection became a vital way for Americans to express their most fundamental hopes and fears about their children and, through them, about the republic itself. 2010 Erickson Legal History LectureMarch 10, 2010 Sarah Barringer Gordon "The Spirit of the Law: Religion and the Constitution in Modern America" A new constitutional world burst into American life in the mid-twentieth century. For the first time, the national constitution's religion clauses were extended by the United States Supreme Court to all state and local governments. As energized religious individuals and groups probed the new boundaries between religion and government and claimed their sacred rights in court, a complex and evolving landscape of religion and law emerged. Passionate believers turned to the law and the courts to facilitate a dazzling diversity of spiritual practice. Legal decisions revealed the exquisite difficulty of gauging where religion ends and government begins. Controversies over school prayer, public funding, religion in prison, and same-sex marriage roiled long-standing assumptions about religion in public life. Professor Gordon's faculty profile is available at http://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/sgordon/. 2009 Erickson Legal History LectureApril 20, 2009 "Individual Conscience in European Legal History, 1200-1650"Richard Helmholz, Professor Helmholz is a past president of the American Society for Legal History and an expert on the history of canon law in England. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy. Professor Helmholz's bio is available at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/faculty/helmholz 2008 Erickson Legal History LectureApril 18, 2008 "Statelessness in America"Linda K. Kerber Kerber is the May Brodbeck Professor in the Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Iowa, and is a lecturer in the College of Law, where she teaches courses in Gender and Legal History. In 2006-07, she was the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University. Professor Kerber's bio is available at http://www.uiowa.edu/~history/People/kerber.htm |
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