Triangle Legal History Seminar

The next meeting of the Triangle Legal History Seminar will be this Friday, April 21, at the National Humanities Center from 4-6 pm.  Our presenter will be Mandy Cooper, PhD Candidate in History at Duke University. Her paper is entitled "The Family State: Family Credit and the Public Good in the Antebellum U.S.": What you'll be reading is the fourth chapter of my dissertation. My dissertation as a whole uses emotions as a lens to examine the economic and political work done by elite families in building the U.S. in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War. I focus on two large family networks - the Coles and the Camerons - which were centered in the South, spread across the U.S., and extended across the Atlantic. My introduction will have the main historiographical points as well as introduce the different individuals in these large families. Since there won't be much background on many of the individuals in this chapter, I've included the attached

Please see below for an exciting new course taught jointly by faculty in law and history at Duke University, which will be offered next year as part of a Mellon Sawyer Seminar. Contact Phil Stern for more information. The Corporation and International Law: Past, Present and Future  Sawyer Seminar Course Rachel Brewster (Law) and Philip Stern (History) History 590S.02 Fridays, 11:45-1:35 From politics to popular culture, from the East India Company to Walmart, the corporation has become one of the most critical economic, political, and cultural institutions of the modern era. It has also been one of the most controversial. Are corporations people, societies, or even governments? Do they have rights? If so, what are their civic, social, ethical, and political responsibilities? Moreover, though they are born of varying forms of domestic law, many corporations have a global footprint and influence on our conceptions of sovereignty and governance, the functioning of international

Named after the late Kathryn T. Preyer, a distinguished historian of the law of early America known for her generosity to young legal historians, the program of Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars is designed to help legal historians at the beginning of their careers. At the annual meeting of the Society two early career legal historians designated Kathryn T. Preyer Scholars will present what would normally be their first papers to the Society. The generosity of Professor Preyer’s friends and family has enabled the Society to offer a small honorarium to the Preyer Scholars and to reimburse, in some measure or entirely, their costs of attending the meeting. The competition for Preyer Scholars is organized by the Society’s Kathryn T. Preyer Memorial Committee. Submissions are welcome on any topic in legal, institutional and/or constitutional history.  Early career scholars, including those pursuing graduate or law degrees, those who have completed their terminal degree within the previous ye

The next meeting of the Triangle Legal History Seminar will be this Friday, February 24, at the National Humanities Center from 4-6 pm.  Our presenter will be Rebecca Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan and John Hope Franklin Visiting Professor of Law at Duke University for spring 2017. Her paper is entitled "Luisa Coleta and the Capuchin Friar: Slavery, Salvation, and the Legal Adjudication of Status": This essay explores the adjudication of status, asking to what extent the exercise of authority under slavery was constrained by law. Was the Caribbean war refugee named Coleta a slave, or was she a free woman? When a Capuchin friar prepared to administer the last rites at Coleta’s deathbed in Havana in December of 1816, she refused absolution, instead obliging the friar on pain of conscience to transcribe her final confession and submit her words to a judge in order to initiate a suit for f

Please join us for the next meeting of the Triangle Legal History Seminar, this Friday, February 10 , at the National Humanities Center from 4-6 pm. Anna Johns Hrom, J.D., is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department at Duke University.  She will be presenting a chapter from her dissertation, "Through Tort Hell and Back: The Rise and Fall of the Consumer Class Action in Alabama," entitled "Alabama is Open for Business." This chapter is a historical case study tracing the political battle over Alabama’s first comprehensive tort reform package.  A major component of this story is the rise of a new business lobbying group that sought to build a conservative “grassroots” social movement around the issue of tort reform.  This battle over tort reform would ultimately reshape both the state’s law and its political order.  This chapter is part of a larger dissertation project, "Through Tort Hell and Back: The Rise and Fall of the Consumer Class Action in Alabama,

From my UNC colleague Emily Burrill comes this exciting news of a workshop on "Legal History as Feminist Porject." Please join us  on  Wednesday, January 25th   from  3:00-4:30 pm ​ at the  Campus Y (seminar rooms 207/208 upstairs)  at UNC   for a panel discussion with  Professors Katie Turk (History) and Emily Burrill (Women's and Gender Studies/History) on  "The Legality of Women, Gender, and Sexuality: Legal History as a Feminist Project​."  Professor Turk and Professor Burrill will discuss different approaches to combining legal, gender, and feminist history. Refreshments will be provided. For more information, see our website ( http://wgfh.web.unc.edu/ ​​​) or check our Facebook page ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/WGFH.FWHG/ ).  Meeting Details Location: Campus Y,  180A E. Cameron Avenue, University  of North Carolina at Chapel Hill​ Date and Time:  Wednesday, January 25th, 3:00-4:30pm Parking: There are parking garages on Rosemary S