The Legal History Podcast

In this episode guest host Shaayan Tiwari talks with Tamar Herzog and Thomas Duve about their co-edited volume, "The Cambridge History of Latin American Law in Global Perspective"(CUP, 2024). The book is the first volume to construct a truly pan-Latin American legal narrative and set it within the larger global frame. Professor Tamar Herzog is the Monroe Gutman Professor of Latin American Affairs...

In this episode, Catherine Evans talks with Chloe Kennedy about Kennedy's book " Inducing Intimacy: Deception, Consent and the Law " (Cambridge University Press, 2024). Chloe Kennedy is Professor of Law and History at The University of Edinburgh Law School where she focuses on intellectual and cultural legal history. More particularly, she studies the ways prevailing ideas have shaped the law's de...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Gijs Kruijtzer about his book " Justifying Transgression: Muslims, Christians, and the Law - 1200 to 1700 " (De Gruyter, 2023) Since obtaining a PhD from Leiden University, Gijs Kruijtzer has held postdocs at Yale University, Humboldt University, and the University of Vienna, and worked as a lecturer and archivist. Starting from a background in the history of So...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Hendrik Hartog about his book " Nobody’s Boy and His Pals: The Story of Jack Robbins and the Boys’ Brotherhood Republic ” (The University of Chicago Press, 2024). Hendrik "Dirk" Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Emeritus at Princeton University. For a decade, he was the director of Princeton University...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Dylan C. Penningroth about his prize-winning book “ Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights ” (Liveright, 2023). Dylan C. Penningroth is Alexander F. & May T. Morrison Professor of American History & Citizenship and Associate Dean for the Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy and Legal Studies at UC Berkeley. He specializes in A...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Robert Alpert , Merle Eisenberg , and Lee Mordechai about their book "Diseased Cinema: Plagues, Pandemics and Zombies in American Movies."   (Edinburgh UP, 2023). Robert Alpert is an Adjunct Instructor at Fordham University where he has taught courses on computers and robots in film, movies and the American experience, and media law. Merle Eisenberg is assistant...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Michael Willrich about his book American Anarchy: The Epic Struggle Between Immigrant Anarchists and the US Government at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Basic Books, 2023). It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History. Willrich is Leff Families Professor of History at Brandeis University where he teaches and researches in the areas of American politica...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Natasha Wheatley about her book The Life and Death of States: Central Europe and the Transformation of Modern Sovereignty (Princeton, 2023). It is listed among the best books of the year by the New Statesman and Just Security. Wheatley is Assistant Professor of History at Princeton University where she teaches and researches in the areas of modern European and in...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Kate Masur, Professor of History and Board of Visitors Professor at Northwestern University about her book, Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction  (W. W. Norton, 2021). Until Justice Be Done was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History and winner of the Littleton-Griswold Prize from the American Hi...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Felicity Turner, Associate Professor of History and Honors Program Coordinator at Georgia Southern University about her book Proving Pregnancy: Gender, Law, and Medical Knowledge in the Nineteenth-Century United States (UNC Press, 2022). Her teaching and research interests include legal history; history of medicine; women, gender, and sexuality; law and society;...

In this episode Siobhan talks with Professors Peter Grajzl and Peter Murrell about their June 2022 Law and History Review article “Using Topic-Modeling in Legal History, with an Application to Pre-Industrial English Case Law on Finance.” Peter Grajzl is Professor of Economics at Washington & Lee University, where he teaches courses in introductory economics, microeconomic theory, comparative insti...

Jonathan Gienapp is an assistant professor in Stanford’s Department of History. He is a scholar of Revolutionary and early republican America specializing in the period’s constitutionalism, political culture, legal history, and intellectual history. He is also interested in the method and practice of the history of ideas. His first book, The Second Creation: Fixing the American Constitution in the...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr . about his book North Carolina’s Free People of Color, 1715-1885  (LSU Press, 2020). Milteer is an assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. His other publications include Beyond Slavery’s Shadow: Free People of Color in the South (UNC Press, 2021), the independently published Hertford County, No...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Samantha Barbas about her book The Rise and Fall of Morris Ernst: Free Speech Renegade (UCP, 2021). Barbas is Professor of Law at the University at Buffalo School of Law. She researches and teaches in the areas of legal history, First Amendment law, and mass communications law. Her work focuses on the intersection of law, culture, media and technology in United...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Samuel Fury Childs Daly about his J. Willard Hurst Prize winning book  A History of the Republic of Biafra: Law, Crime, and the Nigerian Civil War  (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Daly is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University. He is a historian of twentieth century Africa whose research combines legal, mi...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Nurfadzilah Yahaya  about her book  Fluid Jurisdictions: Colonial Law and Arabs in Southeast Asia (Cornell University Press, 2020). She is Assistant Professor of History at the National University of Singapore where she specializes in the history of the Indian Ocean, Southeast Asia, Islamic law, and mobilities. Her second book project will be on the history of...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Joseph E. David about his book Kinship, Law and Politics: An Anatomy of Belonging (CUP, 2020). David is a Visiting Professor (Adjunct) of Law at Yale Law School and a Visiting Professor at the Program in Judaic Studies at Yale University. He is an Associate Professor of Law at Sapir Academic College in Israel. His research focuses on Law and Religion, Legal Hist...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Charles L. Zelden about the new expanded edition of his book, “ Bush v. Gore: Exposing the Growing Crisis in American Democracy ” (University Press of Kansas, 2020). Zelden is a professor in the Department of History and Political Science at Nova Southeastern University's Halmos College of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches courses in history, government and le...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Philip Thai about his book, “The War on Smuggling: Law, Illicit Markets, and State Power on the China Coast” (Columbia University Press, 2018). Thai is Assistant Professor of History at Northeastern University. He is a historian of Modern China with research and teaching interests that include legal history, economic history, and diplomatic history. Smuggling al...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela Gross about their book, “ Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom, and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana ” (Cambridge University Press, 2020). How did Africans become 'blacks' in the Americas? Becoming Free, Becoming Black tells the story of enslaved and free people of color who used the law to claim freedom and citizens...

In this episode, Lesa Redmond talks with Paul Finkelman about his book " Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South (Second Edition) " (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2020). Finkelman is an American Legal Historian and President of Gratz College.  Guest host Lesa Redmond is a first year student in the Department of History at Duke University. Her research focuses on colleges and universities an...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Robert Chase about his book, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America  (UNC Press, 2020). Chase is Associate Professor of History at Stony Brook University. His areas of research and teaching include state and racial politics, African American and Latino/a history, urban history, labor history and working-class c...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Maddalena Marinari  about her book,  Unwanted Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882–1965  (UNC Press, 2020)  Maddalena Marinari is Assistant Professor in History; Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies; and Peace Studies at Gustavus Adolphus College. She has published extensively on immigration restriction and immigrant mobiliz...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Sophie White  about her book,  Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana.  (UNC Press, 2019) Sophie White is Associate Professor of American Studies and Concurrent Associate Professor in the Departments of Africana Studies, History, and Gender Studies at the University of Notre Dame. She is an historian of early America with an interdi...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Gregory P. Downs about his book  The Second American Revolution: The Civil War-Era Struggle over Cuba and the Rebirth of the American Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Downs is professor of history at the University of California, Davis where he studies the political and cultural history of the United States in the 19th and early 20th centurie...