The Legal History Podcast

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Jane Hong about her book Opening the Gates to Asia: A Transpacific History of How America Repealed Asian Exclusion (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). Hong is an assistant professor of history at Occidental College where she specializes in 20th-century U.S. immigration and engagement with the world, with a focus on Asia. This episode is part of a series...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Kimberly M. Welch  about her book  Black Litigants in the Antebellum American South  (University of North Carolina Press, 2018). Kimberly Welch is Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Professor of Law at Vanderbilt University. She is a scholar of race, slavery, and law in the early American South.  Black Litigants has won numerous awards, including the...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  William P. Hustwit about his book  Integration Now: Alexander v. Holmes and the End of Jim Crow Education (UNC Press, 2019). Hustwit is the Associate Professor of History and Chair of the History Department at Birmingham-Southern College. Fifty years after the Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Holmes (1969), Integration Now explores how studying Alexander ...

In this podcast, Siobhan talks with  Hendrik Hartog about his book The Trouble with Minna: A Case of Slavery and Emancipation in the Antebellum North (UNC Press, 2018) . The Trouble with Minna is also used as a vessel to explore some of the topics discussed in Law and Social Inquiry's May 2019 “Review Symposium: Retrospective on the Work of Hendrik Hartog.” Hartog is the Class of 1921 Bicentennial...

In this podcast, Siobhan talks with Paul Finkelman , President of Gratz College, about his book  Supreme Injustice: Slavery in the Nation’s Highest Court (HUP, 2018) . Finkelman is a specialist on the history of slavery and the law. He is also the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books on a broad range of topics including American Jewish histor...

In this podcast, Siobhan talks with Martha S. Jones , Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, about her book  Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America (CUP, 2018) . Professor Jones is a legal and cultural historian whose interests include the study of race, law, citizenship, slavery, and the rights of women...

In this podcast, Siobhan talks with  Holly Brewer , Burke Chair of American History and Associate Professor at the University of Maryland, about her October 2017 article in the American Historical Review,  “Slavery, Sovereignty and ‘Inheritable Blood’: Reconsidering John Locke and the Origins of American Slavery .” She is a specialist in early American history and the early British Empire. The art...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with  Fahad Ahmad Bishara , Assistant Professor of History at the University of Virginia, about his book  A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 . He specializes in the economic and legal history of the Indian Ocean and Islamic world. Bishara discusses his sophisticated work that explores the intricate legal and economic regimes t...

In this episode, Siobhan interviews  Daniel J. Sharfstein , professor of law and history and co-director of the George Barrett Social Justice Program at Vanderbilt University, about his book  Thunder in the Mountains: Chief Joseph, Oliver Otis Howard and the Nez Perce War . Sharfstein’s scholarship focuses on the legal history of race in the United States. In this discussion, he explores ideas of...

In this episode, Siobhan discusses law in the Reconstruction era with  Eric Foner , the Dewitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Foner, the author of seminal work  Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution , has dedicated much of the last year to public outreach about Reconstruction to mark its 150th anniversary.

In this episode, Siobhan interviews attorney and author  William Domnarski  about his new biography of  Richard Posner , an influential judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and great force behind the law and economics movement. Domnarski candidly sets forth the factors which underlie an individual who is arguably the most influential legal mind of the past half-century. With...

In this episode, Siobhan meets with  University, Court and Slave: Pro-Slavery Thought in Southern Colleges and Courts and the Coming of Civil War  author  Alfred L. Brophy , the Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law. In his new book, Brophy brings to life the dynamic interplay between law and culture by mapping out the crisscrossing i...

In this episode, Siobhan talks with Associate Professor of English at The Ohio State University at Marion,  Sara L. Crosby , about her new book,  Poisonous Muse: The Female Poisoner and the Framing of Popular Authorship in Jacksonian America . Crosby discusses how the trope of the female poisoner permeated popular literature in the mid-nineteenth century. In her analysis of the 1840 murder trial o...

In this podcast, Siobhan interviews  Samantha Barbas , Professor of Law at University of Buffalo School of Law, about her new book  Laws of Image: Privacy and Publicity in America , which provides a history of Americans’ use of law to manage their public image. Barbas approaches this endeavor from the perspective of a legal and cultural historian, tracking the correlation between a growing America...

In this podcast, Siobhan talks with  Mary Ziegler , Stearns Weaver Miller Professor of Law at Florida State University College of Law, about her book,  After Roe: The Lost History of the Abortion Debate . Ziegler’s work uses the landmark American abortion rights case, Roe vs. Wade to explore litigation as a vessel for social change and the role the court plays in democracy. In addition to traditio...