Digital Legal Research Lab Roundtable
U.S. Law and Race Initiative
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08/10/2023
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Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky and Dr. William Thomas introduce the broader goals of the Digital Legal Research Lab and the U.S. Law & Race Initiative. This webinar features the outstanding student research in the 2023 Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funded by the National Science Foundation. Each student researched previously unpublished habeas corpus petitions and reflected on the significance of these cases. We hope you gain fresh insights from these presentations on cases of marginalized people who engaged with U.S. law.
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- [00:00:06.210]I think I'll go ahead and get started.
- [00:00:08.689]I wanted to give folks just a minute to join us online.
- [00:00:13.309]Well, first of all, thanks
- [00:00:15.770]everybody for coming this afternoon.
- [00:00:17.670]My name is Katrina Jagodinsky
- [00:00:19.330]I'm the Susan J. Rosowski
- [00:00:20.830]Associate Professor of History
- [00:00:22.409]here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln,
- [00:00:24.350]and co-founder along with Dr.
- [00:00:26.210]Will Thomas of the Digital Legal Research Lab.
- [00:00:29.109]We are a collaborative community of scholars and
- [00:00:32.989]specialists who are using
- [00:00:34.690]digital tools to tell critical legal histories.
- [00:00:38.429]This summer we've had the pleasure of working
- [00:00:41.469]with our eight NSF REU researchers,
- [00:00:45.670]all of whom are gathered here
- [00:00:47.409]this afternoon to talk to you about the work
- [00:00:49.530]they've been doing in mostly 19th century habeas petitions.
- [00:00:53.970]The Digital Legal Research Lab
- [00:00:56.030]is a number of initiatives,
- [00:00:57.950]including our summer program,
- [00:00:59.750]and we really are able to
- [00:01:02.609]do tremendous work because of our partners across campus.
- [00:01:05.549]I want to make sure and thank everyone from
- [00:01:08.129]the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities
- [00:01:10.589]in the University Libraries.
- [00:01:12.590]I also want to thank our partners
- [00:01:14.390]and friends in the College of Arts and Sciences,
- [00:01:16.569]particularly those in the Department of History.
- [00:01:19.069]And then also acknowledge that we have scholarly partners
- [00:01:22.710]both across the university and within the community as well.
- [00:01:27.129]So very grateful for all of
- [00:01:28.790]those partners and all of those supporters.
- [00:01:32.250]Today's presentations will come
- [00:01:35.069]from our undergraduate researchers who
- [00:01:37.889]spent the last ten weeks
- [00:01:40.669]working in 19th century legal records.
- [00:01:44.410]They've been doing the work of
- [00:01:46.470]transcribing and encoding original archival material,
- [00:01:51.509]and will talk to you today about
- [00:01:53.809]the habeas project, Petitioning for Freedom,
- [00:01:56.589]which is a comparative database
- [00:01:59.810]of habeas petitions from the American West,
- [00:02:03.089]from 1812-1924. And we'll be
- [00:02:06.609]excited to launch database
- [00:02:08.549]to the public in just a few months.
- [00:02:10.550]You'll hear more about that very soon.
- [00:02:12.889]But in the meantime,
- [00:02:14.430]we're going to start with Ellis Chen, who
- [00:02:17.349]will share a little bit about the work he's been doing.
- [00:02:20.330]And then we'll continue down, and you'll
- [00:02:22.209]get to hear from all of these bright scholars,
- [00:02:24.429]and Dr. Thomas will help us wrap up and
- [00:02:26.869]field your questions so that we can also
- [00:02:29.309]have a conversation about these projects and about
- [00:02:33.030]the ideas that they're growing and
- [00:02:35.309]sharing around 19th century legal history,
- [00:02:38.210]but also the use of
- [00:02:39.709]digital tools to tell and craft these stories.
- [00:02:42.670]So, thanks again to all of you for joining us in person.
- [00:02:45.230]Thanks to those of you who are joining us remotely.
- [00:02:48.250]And I'll let everyone get started. Thanks.
- [00:02:51.929]Thanks to Dr. Jagodinsky.
- [00:02:54.030]Like she said, my name is Ellis.
- [00:02:55.630]I'm a senior at Grinnell College.
- [00:02:57.409]And what I've spent the summer studying is opium in 1880s
- [00:03:00.850]Washington, as well as federal prohibition
- [00:03:03.369]of narcotics under the 1914 Harrison Act.
- [00:03:06.349]A lot of work that I've been doing has been
- [00:03:08.290]sort of sifting through petitions, reading through them.
- [00:03:10.810]You can see an example on the board
- [00:03:12.269]where I've been looking at this and, like, making
- [00:03:14.130]quantitative notes of what arguments
- [00:03:16.190]are made in each of the petitions.
- [00:03:18.250]In addition to that, I've been doing a lot
- [00:03:20.170]of newspaper-based research to find out
- [00:03:22.069]more context for the cases that are going
- [00:03:23.869]on, and what was going on in the back story,
- [00:03:26.610]as well as a lot of secondary
- [00:03:28.449]source review and looking at
- [00:03:29.610]the statutes that were in place in Washington and federally at the time.
- [00:03:33.850]I think one finding that I was very
- [00:03:36.509]interested in was just that there
- [00:03:39.230]were four Chinese petitioners who challenged
- [00:03:41.729]the constitutionality of
- [00:03:43.049]the opium laws in their petitions.
- [00:03:45.069]The majority of people who made habeas petitions at this time
- [00:03:49.210]were Chinese, because they were
- [00:03:51.630]especially targeted by the opium prohibitions.
- [00:03:54.849]They were basically using habeas as a vehicle
- [00:03:58.149]to challenge the constitutionality of these ordinances.
- [00:04:01.629]And this is really interesting, because it sort of took me
- [00:04:04.269]down a rabbit hole, because at this time,
- [00:04:06.549]in the 1880s, the constitutionality of
- [00:04:10.410]prohibiting the use of opium versus
- [00:04:12.250]possession versus distributing was a little bit up in the air.
- [00:04:15.270]There were laws, but it was pretty consistently
- [00:04:17.289]challenged by jurists and legislators.
- [00:04:19.950]I was quite interested in that,
- [00:04:21.210]especially thinking about parallels
- [00:04:22.750]for now, and in places like Oregon,
- [00:04:24.869]possession of drugs has been decriminalized, but
- [00:04:27.370]distribution is still penalized heavily.
- [00:04:30.769]One thing that I was especially interested in was
- [00:04:33.209]there was a coordinated legal effort by
- [00:04:36.089]a Chinese merchant named Gee Lee who essentially
- [00:04:39.209]organized a challenge against
- [00:04:40.949]the constitutionality of the opium laws.
- [00:04:42.669]I thought that was an interesting thing to
- [00:04:44.090]see that it was organized,
- [00:04:45.829]that they used habeas in that way.
- [00:04:48.570]In terms of what I've learned this summer
- [00:04:50.589]about digital legal research,
- [00:04:52.809]I've learned that I like it a lot. It is really interesting.
- [00:04:55.869]It is a lot of work at times,
- [00:04:58.769]it's a lot of looking at petitions
- [00:05:00.349]and trying to read the handwriting,
- [00:05:02.250]even though I wasn't really taught that in fourth grade,
- [00:05:04.849]which is a little bit tricky for me, but I
- [00:05:07.070]found it to be really, really gratifying.
- [00:05:09.509]And something that it has made me think
- [00:05:11.150]about is, like, how many petitions
- [00:05:13.530]and just other legal documents are just out
- [00:05:15.690]there sitting in some box that haven't been looked at.
- [00:05:18.170]I think what's happened to
- [00:05:19.910]me this summer is I've really gained
- [00:05:21.489]an interest, and I want to go look in
- [00:05:23.270]those boxes and see what's down there.
- [00:05:26.650]My name is Isabelle Childs, and I'm a
- [00:05:29.310]senior at the University of Oklahoma.
- [00:05:31.270]I wanted to start by summarizing some of the work I've done
- [00:05:34.009]on my project titled, "Habeas at Home and Heart."
- [00:05:37.210]The picture on the slide right
- [00:05:39.510]there is a page from one of the petitions
- [00:05:41.429]that I featured as a case study in my project.
- [00:05:44.029]Her name was Anna Sultz, and she was institutionalized by
- [00:05:46.889]her husband in 1906 to
- [00:05:48.410]a psychiatric hospital in Nebraska.
- [00:05:50.830]I became interested in psychiatric confinement to
- [00:05:54.490]America's hospitals after I
- [00:05:57.050]started investigating these
- [00:05:58.390]psychiatric confinement petitions.
- [00:06:00.209]And then I discovered that
- [00:06:01.490]along with the habeas petitions,
- [00:06:03.330]there was divorce petitions included in the case files.
- [00:06:06.129]This piqued my interest in the role that
- [00:06:08.050]divorce played in institutional confinement.
- [00:06:10.509]I focused primarily on Nebraska,
- [00:06:12.430]because my largest dataset was from that state.
- [00:06:15.170]But I also featured Florida, Iowa, and Missouri
- [00:06:17.989]in my paper. Through my research,
- [00:06:21.189]I discovered that spouses
- [00:06:22.629]used institutional confinement to
- [00:06:24.309]employ several different legal strategies
- [00:06:26.189]to serve their marital interests.
- [00:06:27.709]And they employed this strategy at
- [00:06:29.350]the expense of the spouse that they institutionalized,
- [00:06:31.789]in punitive and coercive natures.
- [00:06:34.049]The dissolution of coverture during
- [00:06:36.190]the Progressive Era, in the letter of the law,
- [00:06:38.690]played a role in how the spouses leveraged and challenged
- [00:06:41.109]institutional confinement and
- [00:06:42.329]influenced marriage reform as a whole.
- [00:06:44.470]Focusing on this topic in other cases,
- [00:06:46.949]while doing encoding for the database,
- [00:06:48.569]opened my eyes to the various ways in which
- [00:06:50.890]people used habeas to challenge different types of detention.
- [00:06:54.029]Working in the Digital Legal Research Lab has given
- [00:06:56.610]me tremendous appreciation for the immense mental,
- [00:06:59.030]emotional, and physical labor
- [00:07:00.289]that historians conduct. Mentally,
- [00:07:02.529]the work is very complex and extensive.
- [00:07:04.749]The amount of research that it takes just to study
- [00:07:07.469]one aspect of these petitions
- [00:07:09.069]is not to be underestimated.
- [00:07:11.010]This is true of all historical research.
- [00:07:13.730]Emotionally, reading the content
- [00:07:15.489]in a lot of these petitions and
- [00:07:16.690]other documents can be very
- [00:07:17.929]heartbreaking and difficult to read.
- [00:07:19.749]And then physically, I
- [00:07:21.290]learned that the archival fieldwork side of
- [00:07:23.430]this research requires constant traveling
- [00:07:25.509]and the ability to haul around very large books.
- [00:07:29.810]I'm part of a team that's extremely understanding,
- [00:07:33.050]accommodating, and encouraging. The amount
- [00:07:35.269]of time they've invested in our work,
- [00:07:36.690]and understanding us as individuals has made
- [00:07:38.650]the labor manageable and
- [00:07:39.750]made this experience more enlightening.
- [00:07:41.710]Additionally, the labor required for this work is
- [00:07:44.030]worth the tremendous fulfillment it's brought.
- [00:07:46.389]It's amazing to be part of a project that makes
- [00:07:48.749]these individual and family
- [00:07:50.209]histories accessible to the public.
- [00:07:51.749]Since these petitions have been
- [00:07:52.949]kept in the archives for decades.
- [00:07:54.590]Being able to unearth these documents
- [00:07:56.369]has given me a great sense of purpose,
- [00:07:57.749]and I'm lucky to be able to work so directly with them.
- [00:08:00.130]And Dr. Jagodinsky and Dr. Thomas have been very
- [00:08:02.570]helpful and given me the confidence
- [00:08:03.909]to be able to carry out these tasks,
- [00:08:05.569]which are a large responsibility.
- [00:08:08.549]A beautiful thing about Digital Humanities
- [00:08:11.210]and our lab is that it helps connect
- [00:08:13.149]individuals to larger family networks
- [00:08:15.190]and bridges the gap between disciplines.
- [00:08:17.450]In these ways, labs like this one not only
- [00:08:20.050]inspire groundbreaking research in
- [00:08:21.910]family and legal history,
- [00:08:23.089]but also political, social,
- [00:08:24.669]economic, ethnic, and other histories.
- [00:08:26.689]For example, prior knowledge I had of
- [00:08:28.730]psychiatric institutions as a psych major has been
- [00:08:31.530]greatly expanded by analyzing and digitizing
- [00:08:33.889]the petitions of people who
- [00:08:35.209]challenged detention at these institutions.
- [00:08:37.369]And I can carry this understanding into
- [00:08:39.049]future academic and professional work that I
- [00:08:41.590]hope to conduct in connecting
- [00:08:42.889]law and psychology disciplines.
- [00:08:44.909]And as everybody has highlighted,
- [00:08:46.910]these habeas petitions are crucial pieces of broader stories
- [00:08:49.930]of freedom making, these
- [00:08:51.330]individuals, and history as a whole.
- [00:08:55.290]I'm Sophia Hayes.
- [00:08:57.510]I am from St. Olaf College in Minnesota.
- [00:08:59.789]I'll be a junior this year.
- [00:09:02.250]The petition that got me into my research for the summer,
- [00:09:06.329]was from a woman named Agnes Smith.
- [00:09:08.269]I was immediately really
- [00:09:09.630]intrigued by her, because she was petitioning to
- [00:09:11.769]be released from an institution known as
- [00:09:14.210]the Nebraska Institute for Feeble Minded Youth
- [00:09:17.550]in Beatrice, Nebraska.
- [00:09:19.589]And she actually had two petitions where she was
- [00:09:22.149]trying to be released from this place.
- [00:09:25.089]But there were a lot of holes left in her story.
- [00:09:28.369]And there were also other people who were
- [00:09:30.390]petitioning to be released from that same institution,
- [00:09:33.049]as well as similar ones in Nebraska.
- [00:09:35.369]That got me really interested to look at
- [00:09:37.870]institutionalization in the Progressive Era in Nebraska.
- [00:09:41.690]But in order to understand that fully,
- [00:09:44.449]I had to go at a much larger macro level, if you will.
- [00:09:48.724]I started looking at
- [00:09:50.160]nationwide ideas and trends and progressive ideology,
- [00:09:53.959]and the intersection of that with
- [00:09:55.859]eugenics and eugenic practices,
- [00:09:58.180]and the impact that that had
- [00:09:59.940]on nationwide trends and institutionalization.
- [00:10:03.619]I then took that information to conduct an in-depth
- [00:10:06.720]survey of the landscape
- [00:10:08.600]of institutionalization in Nebraska,
- [00:10:10.479]specifically focusing on sterilization practices
- [00:10:15.060]and practices of custodialism,
- [00:10:17.479]which is basically just long-term confinement
- [00:10:19.819]almost indefinitely.
- [00:10:21.960]Using this context, I really did my best
- [00:10:26.620]to understand the purpose and life of Agnes Smith.
- [00:10:32.650]She was institutionalized in
- [00:10:35.590]Nebraska between 16-24 years of her life.
- [00:10:39.229]She lived during a really pivotal part
- [00:10:42.990]of Nebraska history as it comes to institutionalization,
- [00:10:45.590]where Nebraska passed its sterilization law,
- [00:10:48.770]its civil commitment law,
- [00:10:50.069]it was restricting marriages for
- [00:10:51.929]people who were deemed feeble-minded or insane.
- [00:10:55.610]What I found out, what became
- [00:10:58.190]a guiding idea for my writing, was that there was
- [00:11:01.130]a really direct interaction between
- [00:11:03.949]the legislative bodies that were passing
- [00:11:06.110]the laws that I mentioned:
- [00:11:07.330]sterilization, civil commitment,
- [00:11:09.589]restrictive marriage laws;
- [00:11:10.990]and then the bureaucratic leaders who ran
- [00:11:13.869]the institutions that Agnes
- [00:11:15.790]and others like her were trying to be released from.
- [00:11:19.349]And that these bureaucratic leaders were
- [00:11:22.449]incredibly vocal about their, I'll just say,
- [00:11:26.690]violent opinions about these people that were
- [00:11:29.389]incredibly entrenched with the eugenic mindset
- [00:11:31.990]of the Progressive Era.
- [00:11:34.110]They were directly impacting legislation.
- [00:11:37.110]They asked for the sterilization law to be passed.
- [00:11:39.470]The next cycle, it was passed,
- [00:11:42.730]which was really, really alarming to me.
- [00:11:46.029]And then what was, almost brought me hope, I guess,
- [00:11:50.850]was that Agnes and others were petitioning to be
- [00:11:53.610]released from these institutions.
- [00:11:56.649]I found that it was really
- [00:11:57.970]compelling to consider the use of
- [00:11:59.529]habeas as a distinct legal strategy to
- [00:12:02.910]pursue freedom making and bodily autonomy
- [00:12:07.030]decades before there would be
- [00:12:08.869]a nationwide move for deinstitutionalization
- [00:12:12.189]in the United States, and sterilization practices
- [00:12:15.010]are still very much
- [00:12:16.110]a relevant issue today among a lot of
- [00:12:18.770]the same populations that were
- [00:12:20.229]targeted in the Progressive Era.
- [00:12:22.310]As far as digital legal research,
- [00:12:25.770]I, perhaps it sounds a little naive,
- [00:12:28.030]I found that there's just so much.
- [00:12:32.030]I wrote 12 pages on Agnes and Nebraska.
- [00:12:35.569]I easily could've written 50 more.
- [00:12:38.630]That's just one person.
- [00:12:40.650]There are thousands of cases in this database.
- [00:12:44.189]And I also found that the research or the work that we're
- [00:12:48.049]doing makes it so much easier for students like us,
- [00:12:51.669]anyone watching, anyone out here,
- [00:12:53.549]to do the same kind of work and learn about
- [00:12:55.990]incredibly important history that,
- [00:12:58.329]like Ellis and Isabel were kind of mentioning,
- [00:13:01.369]is maybe hidden, maybe just sitting in a box somewhere in
- [00:13:05.049]great condition or it's molding and rotting in the field,
- [00:13:08.730]and this is maybe the last chance
- [00:13:10.570]for people to learn about this.
- [00:13:11.909]That was something really powerful and that I
- [00:13:13.750]really got out of this experience this summer.
- [00:13:16.840]Good afternoon.
- [00:13:18.640]My name is Gabrielle Hope.
- [00:13:20.199]I am a rising junior.
- [00:13:21.600]I come from the State University of New York at Albany.
- [00:13:25.299]Obviously, my project is stemming from
- [00:13:27.699]Dr. Jagodinsky's Petitioning for Freedom.
- [00:13:30.180]Whilst my colleagues have spent a majority of
- [00:13:32.620]their time looking through
- [00:13:33.959]individual petitions and gathering information there,
- [00:13:36.360]I've spent a majority of my last couple of
- [00:13:38.979]weeks reading through state codes in Nebraska,
- [00:13:43.099]looking for the written habeas law,
- [00:13:46.759]and doing a statutory review that has ranged from
- [00:13:49.540]1866-1900. What I want to highlight for
- [00:13:54.800]you today is the universality of habeas and habeas corpus.
- [00:14:00.600]And this law, it comes from British Common Law,
- [00:14:03.660]but it was seen in the first drafts,
- [00:14:05.380]both in federal constitutions
- [00:14:07.119]as well as state constitutions.
- [00:14:08.939]Obviously, it was found in that first accessible Nebraska 1866.
- [00:14:13.440]And part of the universality is how it's mentioned.
- [00:14:19.619]The language of habeas law
- [00:14:21.580]is very explicit in saying that it
- [00:14:23.580]applies to all persons. I think that speaks to...
- [00:14:29.079]I think people's assumptions
- [00:14:30.780]of the time period that's being discussed,
- [00:14:33.119]I think the assumption is still very
- [00:14:35.479]much that it's conducted to one race or one gender.
- [00:14:41.140]But looking at that explicit language really
- [00:14:43.880]shows, and is an example of
- [00:14:46.660]why Dr. Jagodinsky's project gets to examine groups of minors,
- [00:14:52.720]groups of women, groups of different races.
- [00:14:56.800]It was also that this privilege was so important
- [00:15:03.579]to individual freedom and individual liberty, and it was
- [00:15:07.299]clearly a privilege that needed to be a law.
- [00:15:11.479]It was so important to the rights of the people.
- [00:15:15.300]And I think that is shown so
- [00:15:17.779]much in digital legal history as a whole.
- [00:15:20.500]The work that is able to be done in
- [00:15:22.700]such a wide scope of law.
- [00:15:26.139]I'm going to be honest, before this summer,
- [00:15:28.660]I didn't know digital legal history was a thing.
- [00:15:31.119]This was something totally new to me,
- [00:15:33.280]but something I totally wanted to take a stab at.
- [00:15:36.059]And I'm so, so glad that I did.
- [00:15:38.340]I'm not only shown a wide range
- [00:15:40.040]of opportunities for legal research,
- [00:15:42.220]but I'm shown a wide range of
- [00:15:44.020]opportunities in historical research itself.
- [00:15:47.000]And the other thing, and it's been
- [00:15:48.339]mentioned, that I've been shown,
- [00:15:50.459]is that this is a community
- [00:15:52.819]of people who are working to do good.
- [00:15:55.680]And I think sometimes in reading history or reading law,
- [00:16:01.639]we forget that there are people who are working to
- [00:16:04.360]do so much good, and, in my life,
- [00:16:07.820]and what I wish was the focus
- [00:16:09.840]of the world is that work of
- [00:16:12.619]good. So that has been
- [00:16:14.759]one of the greatest and most
- [00:16:16.600]admirable things I've gotten from this summer.
- [00:16:19.119]Hi, everyone.
- [00:16:20.819]My name is Grace. I'm a senior at Vanderbilt University.
- [00:16:24.300]And my research this summer
- [00:16:25.979]primarily focused around
- [00:16:27.439]the Salvation Army Rescue Home in Omaha, Nebraska.
- [00:16:30.759]It opened in 1896,
- [00:16:32.980]and it was a private organization
- [00:16:35.259]that was supported by other charitable organizations.
- [00:16:38.019]It was regarded as a home for fallen women,
- [00:16:41.119]where they received housing,
- [00:16:42.780]medical assistance, as well as care for their children.
- [00:16:45.940]In doing the research
- [00:16:47.799]with the Petitioning for Freedom Project,
- [00:16:49.760]this site of significance stood, out to me, because unlike others,
- [00:16:54.000]all these women entered the home voluntarily.
- [00:16:56.319]And these habeas petitions were actually
- [00:16:58.160]used to try to take them
- [00:16:59.659]out of the home against their will.
- [00:17:01.700]This was mind-blowing, because we saw an avenue of law that's
- [00:17:05.480]typically associated with freedom
- [00:17:07.279]being used to control women.
- [00:17:09.759]I focused on telling the stories of three specific women.
- [00:17:13.980]I'll share one of them with you.
- [00:17:15.479]Her name was Della Duhigg. When she was between 17 and 20, she got married.
- [00:17:21.219]But three weeks later, she found out that
- [00:17:22.999]her husband was 24 years older than her.
- [00:17:25.199]This wasn't okay with her,
- [00:17:26.739]so she left her home and
- [00:17:28.139]moved into the Salvation Army Rescue Home.
- [00:17:30.420]And a couple of months later,
- [00:17:31.820]her husband filed a habeas petition on her behalf,
- [00:17:34.779]alleging that she was unlawfully detained in this home,
- [00:17:37.760]and he wanted her to be returned to him.
- [00:17:41.200]And this was reported on in the paper at the time,
- [00:17:44.260]and Della herself, said that
- [00:17:45.799]she had no desire to return to her husband.
- [00:17:48.159]She claimed that she only wanted her school books,
- [00:17:50.579]her winter jacket, and to be left alone.
- [00:17:52.779]And Della ended up winning her habeas petition.
- [00:17:55.800]But through these habeas petitions,
- [00:17:58.320]and I think through digital legal history as a whole,
- [00:18:02.560]I've really grown to appreciate and
- [00:18:05.499]love the storytelling aspect and the way that
- [00:18:08.439]this field is really able to
- [00:18:09.759]humanize the people that show up in
- [00:18:11.919]these petitions and the people that show up in
- [00:18:13.739]law and tell their stories.
- [00:18:16.079]I've just been so honored
- [00:18:17.559]to be a part of a project like this.
- [00:18:20.440]Hi, my name is Esme Krohn.
- [00:18:22.939]I'm a history major at Carleton College, rising senior.
- [00:18:27.239]My project was about child custody disputes.
- [00:18:31.859]I analyzed 121 Lancaster and
- [00:18:34.699]Douglas County custody dispute cases,
- [00:18:37.559]both qualitatively and quantitatively.
- [00:18:40.779]And I found that fathers petitioned for daughters more often,
- [00:18:44.560]but mothers were more successful.
- [00:18:46.499]But also that kidnapping occurred in 20% of cases.
- [00:18:49.799]And I don't have time to summarize all of
- [00:18:51.739]the different quantitative things
- [00:18:53.220]that I've found in this investigation.
- [00:18:54.779]So I'm going to focus on this one case of
- [00:18:56.999]Francis Lane. France Lane
- [00:18:59.799]at the age of seven, at the age five, sorry,
- [00:19:02.479]her mother died, and she was turned
- [00:19:03.980]over by her father to her aunt and uncle.
- [00:19:06.359]They were called the Brothers.
- [00:19:08.960]But after her father remarried,
- [00:19:11.679]he decided that he wanted her
- [00:19:13.079]back, so like any good father would do,
- [00:19:14.939]he kidnapped her from her aunt and uncle's house in Platte,
- [00:19:17.599]and took her back to Omaha with him.
- [00:19:19.800]And the Brothers, after they
- [00:19:21.899]tried to file for adoption, because they
- [00:19:23.679]realized they hadn't formally adopted her
- [00:19:25.819]even though they thought they had,
- [00:19:27.200]because
- [00:19:28.959]there had apparently been some sort of, like, signature thing,
- [00:19:31.420]but it wasn't a legally binding contract.
- [00:19:34.000]But because this adoption was contested,
- [00:19:36.180]Frances was allowed to stay at
- [00:19:38.799]her father's house. So when she was
- [00:19:41.219]walking to school on January 9, 1917,
- [00:19:44.539]Andrew Brothers, her uncle,
- [00:19:46.280]came up in a taxi and took her off the street.
- [00:19:48.720]He took her back to La Platte,
- [00:19:50.399]after which Fred Lane filed a habeas corpus,
- [00:19:53.719]and it was a really long, emotionally involved trial.
- [00:19:56.939]Like the newspapers describe people crying,
- [00:20:00.279]they describe Francis' grandmother
- [00:20:03.040]crying during the trial. Frances did get to testify,
- [00:20:07.859]but it was later struck from the record, because I think, apparently,
- [00:20:10.580]it was really controversial among the parties,
- [00:20:14.059]because they were fighting so terribly.
- [00:20:16.360]But the judge did confer with
- [00:20:18.159]her before making a final decision,
- [00:20:19.800]and he decided that she should stay with her father.
- [00:20:22.639]And I think this goes to show not only
- [00:20:24.960]how important kidnapping, and how prominent,
- [00:20:27.020]surprisingly prominent, kidnapping was in these cases,
- [00:20:30.039]but like Grace said,
- [00:20:32.480]the humanizing element of this.
- [00:20:34.079]Not only are we
- [00:20:35.719]the first people who've seen these cases,
- [00:20:38.559]sometimes in 100 years,
- [00:20:39.860]sometimes they'll be in detail in it
- [00:20:41.879]like the grandmother crying in court
- [00:20:44.020]that is so shockingly
- [00:20:46.559]human and like so shockingly present that
- [00:20:48.639]it's not like... we're
- [00:20:51.490]spending time with these people
- [00:20:52.870]and learning their stories.
- [00:20:53.989]It's not just us putting them out in the world for that.
- [00:20:57.229]It's a collaborative effort in a way.
- [00:21:01.770]Hi, my name is Somi.
- [00:21:04.469]I'm a senior at NYU.
- [00:21:07.009]For the last, I think, four or five weeks,
- [00:21:10.929]I focused my research on this one detention home,
- [00:21:14.889]which is the Omaha Women's Detention Home.
- [00:21:17.130]From analyzing the larger habeas petitions in Douglas County,
- [00:21:21.509]I discovered that one of
- [00:21:22.889]the main locations that women were often
- [00:21:24.989]confined at in Douglas County
- [00:21:26.589]was the Omaha Women's Detention Home.
- [00:21:28.650]So I decided to center my research around that,
- [00:21:31.654]to focus on how women used
- [00:21:33.859]habeas to challenge the confinement at the home,
- [00:21:36.099]and also to provide
- [00:21:38.299]insight into the conditions in the home,
- [00:21:40.340]which the petitions really helped
- [00:21:41.799]me kind of understand what was going on
- [00:21:44.419]for background. Near the end of World War II,
- [00:21:50.400]the federal government enacted
- [00:21:52.940]a collection of laws and practices known
- [00:21:55.900]as the American Plan to
- [00:21:58.399]help combat the spread of venereal disease,
- [00:22:01.839]because it was going rampant in the military bases.
- [00:22:05.099]But after physicians discovered that, actually,
- [00:22:08.159]a lot of the soldiers were getting it
- [00:22:09.999]before they enlisted in the military,
- [00:22:11.924]that kind of gave the federal government justification
- [00:22:15.229]to kind of expand the American Plan
- [00:22:17.570]beyond the military bases and into society.
- [00:22:21.470]And they convinced a bunch of states
- [00:22:23.489]to enact a venereal disease law
- [00:22:25.509]that allowed physicians to test to
- [00:22:27.569]anybody that they suspected of having venereal disease.
- [00:22:30.730]And also if a person is infected with venereal disease,
- [00:22:34.409]they were allowed to detain them
- [00:22:36.030]for however long they decided to.
- [00:22:37.969]And one place decided to enact a venereal disease law was Omaha.
- [00:22:43.110]They had an ordinance. It was, I think it was
- [00:22:45.769]No. 10222. Yeah.
- [00:22:48.970]So basically what I said, their law basically did that.
- [00:22:53.569]And from there, how I kind of
- [00:22:57.049]approached my research was,
- [00:22:58.949]first, from the larger dataset,
- [00:23:00.830]I first identified the cases that involved
- [00:23:03.149]women opposing their confinement at the detention home.
- [00:23:06.010]And then, after finding all the cases involving that,
- [00:23:09.109]I then did newspaper archival research to
- [00:23:12.309]understand what was happening in
- [00:23:14.009]the detention home around that time period.
- [00:23:16.349]And from that research,
- [00:23:17.929]I found two main things.
- [00:23:19.709]First, I discovered the corruption
- [00:23:21.689]inside of the home. So, at the time,
- [00:23:24.510]a lot of police officers and
- [00:23:27.009]police surgeons would extort
- [00:23:29.369]money from the women for their freedom.
- [00:23:31.449]And if a woman didn't have money,
- [00:23:33.250]they would automatically send her to the detention home.
- [00:23:35.589]So there was one instance where there was one doctor, for, I think,
- [00:23:38.670]$10 or $12, women who were infected with venereal disease,
- [00:23:42.669]he would kind of sign– he would sign them off and let them go.
- [00:23:46.389]But then in instances where women,
- [00:23:49.190]even though they did test positive,
- [00:23:51.010]he would send them to the detention home.
- [00:23:53.430]And then another thing that I discovered
- [00:23:55.410]was the drug use.
- [00:23:58.349]There was a drug abuse problem in the detention home.
- [00:24:01.130]So every day the physicians would administer
- [00:24:03.709]four to six doses of morphine to these women.
- [00:24:07.249]And it was so bad, that they
- [00:24:09.029]half the time could barely think or barely walk straight.
- [00:24:12.370]And if women resisted, they
- [00:24:14.289]would forcibly give them morphine.
- [00:24:16.450]And it was– the conditions were really, really bad there.
- [00:24:18.770]And the case that kind of made me
- [00:24:21.849]decide to approach this project was actually one case
- [00:24:25.070]specifically. Her name was Gussie Burns.
- [00:24:27.589]And I, for my paper and my project,
- [00:24:30.109]I centered it around her story and
- [00:24:31.949]telling her experience at the detention home.
- [00:24:34.210]So she was charged with vagrancy.
- [00:24:37.689]The police charged her with vagrancy.
- [00:24:39.369]And she was then, the next day, she was sentenced and
- [00:24:42.129]found guilty for vagrancy.
- [00:24:45.289]And then after that,
- [00:24:46.989]she was, because of the law at the time,
- [00:24:49.730]they– it was an automatic thing that
- [00:24:52.729]she had to get tested for venereal disease, which she did.
- [00:24:55.730]And then the doctors claimed
- [00:24:57.209]that she had a venereal disease,
- [00:24:58.809]so they sent her to the Omaha Women's Detention Home.
- [00:25:01.030]She was only supposed to be there for 30 days,
- [00:25:03.990]but she was there for four months.
- [00:25:05.970]After four months, she then
- [00:25:07.469]petitioned for a writ of habeas corpus,
- [00:25:09.690]claiming that the detention home,
- [00:25:11.470]the physician there, they already cured her,
- [00:25:13.669]but they were refusing to release her until
- [00:25:16.029]she got sterilized, and she didn't want to.
- [00:25:19.309]So that was her whole situation.
- [00:25:21.889]And through this project,
- [00:25:23.949]it really showed me, from looking at
- [00:25:25.989]the newspaper archival research and
- [00:25:27.649]then also looking at the petition,
- [00:25:29.570]it really showed me women's efforts at the time
- [00:25:31.790]to kind of reclaim their power and autonomy.
- [00:25:34.969]Especially with women through habeas,
- [00:25:37.770]they really showcased their legal sophistication.
- [00:25:39.770]I think that when we look at women at the time,
- [00:25:41.910]we don't really recognize that, and being a part of
- [00:25:45.369]this project really allowed me to look
- [00:25:47.150]at marginalized groups in a different way,
- [00:25:49.490]and really hear their stories from their perspective,
- [00:25:52.409]rather than from a different perspective,
- [00:25:54.390]and a perspective that doesn't really
- [00:25:56.469]truly get at the heart of their experiences.
- [00:25:59.529]And that was something that I'm very grateful for.
- [00:26:03.150]Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Santiago Zuniga,
- [00:26:06.989]and my research was centered on,
- [00:26:08.889]or is centered on financial crimes in
- [00:26:11.169]Nebraska around this time period between
- [00:26:13.709]1885 and 1924.
- [00:26:15.230]As, as I was doing
- [00:26:18.010]the research in the habeas corpus petitions
- [00:26:20.510]for the Petitioning for Freedom Project,
- [00:26:22.129]the cases that stood out to me the most
- [00:26:25.289]were cases that were centered
- [00:26:26.869]around these fraud, embezzlement,
- [00:26:30.070]just different categories of financial crimes that
- [00:26:34.049]seemed to present difficulties
- [00:26:36.070]when prosecutors tried to prosecute the criminals,
- [00:26:38.950]or people that were just
- [00:26:40.390]conducting business and seemed to be falsely
- [00:26:42.169]accused for committing a crime that they didn't actually
- [00:26:44.729]do. At the time,
- [00:26:48.070]this was an era of significant
- [00:26:50.529]economic and financial change.
- [00:26:52.249]The traveler's check had been invented
- [00:26:54.010]in 1891. The number of banks
- [00:26:56.149]between 1896 and 1907 in the United States more than doubled.
- [00:27:00.249]And there were largely still
- [00:27:02.560]no federal oversight and
- [00:27:06.119]strong regulation over these types of things.
- [00:27:08.380]So that opened the way for many criminals to begin to
- [00:27:11.679]take advantage of these gaps in the law to commit crimes.
- [00:27:15.139]One of the most significant types
- [00:27:16.720]of crimes that I saw was forgery,
- [00:27:18.200]so people forging checks, because like I mentioned,
- [00:27:21.100]this was a relatively recent invention.
- [00:27:23.040]And as opposed to the way of stealing money in the past,
- [00:27:26.220]which was through violence, you know, you walk into
- [00:27:28.000]a bank, hold a gun up to the teller to steal the money,
- [00:27:30.640]now someone could forge a check,
- [00:27:32.140]walk in, and walk out with no resistance, and so the bank
- [00:27:34.240]didn't even realize they were being robbed.
- [00:27:35.799]Similarly, with embezzlement, in the past,
- [00:27:38.520]corporations and companies were all relatively
- [00:27:41.179]small and under one roof and everyone worked
- [00:27:43.950]closely together.
- [00:27:45.200]So stealing money was a physical action.
- [00:27:47.799]You walk into wherever the money
- [00:27:49.100]is, and you walk out with it.
- [00:27:50.659]But now, with embezzlement, we had
- [00:27:52.579]these large corporate organizations that had
- [00:27:55.319]multi-tiered management structures, where you could easily
- [00:27:58.639]just fudge the accounting books and steal some money.
- [00:28:02.120]These presented challenges in
- [00:28:03.619]the way that the law prosecutes these types of crimes.
- [00:28:05.599]And I wanted to explore what the laws response
- [00:28:08.659]to these economic changes were in this time period.
- [00:28:11.499]So there are three specific cases that I looked at.
- [00:28:14.419]One involving embezzlement, one
- [00:28:16.479]involving crime of false pretenses,
- [00:28:18.479]and one involving forgery.
- [00:28:19.820]The one involving embezzlement is
- [00:28:21.599]the one you see right here on the newspaper clipping,
- [00:28:23.880]where the president of
- [00:28:25.219]a bank was– allegedly embezzled $200,000 from the bank,
- [00:28:29.440]causing the bank to go under and
- [00:28:31.159]many stockholders to lose a lot of
- [00:28:33.059]their assets, as they had bought bonds from the bank
- [00:28:35.220]or owned shares in a company that was owned by the bank.
- [00:28:38.660]Reading the evidence, it's actually unclear whether
- [00:28:41.700]or not he was actually guilty of embezzling that money,
- [00:28:43.980]or if it was simply some kind of accounting error or
- [00:28:46.939]just the fluctuations of the market
- [00:28:48.639]that caused the share value to go down.
- [00:28:50.700]But what this really showed is that the lack of
- [00:28:53.559]federal oversight on banking policies
- [00:28:55.759]and the lack of commissions,
- [00:28:57.179]and, for example, the FDIC,
- [00:28:58.660]which insures banks for this kind of thing happening,
- [00:29:01.819]wasn't even invented at the time.
- [00:29:03.480]The Federal Reserve was very new at the time.
- [00:29:06.980]So there was still kind of gray area in terms of the law of
- [00:29:10.279]how to treat these types of white collar crimes.
- [00:29:12.879]Additionally, like I mentioned, there's
- [00:29:14.580]a crime of false pretenses.
- [00:29:16.140]Where a man named Fred V. Larson was accused of
- [00:29:19.359]trading a mortgage to his neighbor under false pretenses.
- [00:29:24.039]His neighbor accused him of lying,
- [00:29:26.080]and there were no receipts or ways to prove the actual
- [00:29:29.979]conditions of the transaction.
- [00:29:32.139]And because of that, it was difficult
- [00:29:34.500]for Fred V. Larson to prove that he was innocent.
- [00:29:37.480]He eventually did. He was eventually
- [00:29:40.300]released from prison when
- [00:29:41.879]he did show the Court that he was innocent,
- [00:29:43.424]but the fact that he was arrested in the first place,
- [00:29:45.430]just off of testimony from one man with no evidence,
- [00:29:47.930]shows that there are clearly some
- [00:29:49.149]issues that need to be addressed
- [00:29:50.390]here in the way that we handle these types of transactions.
- [00:29:53.709]Lastly, there was Louis Seiffer,
- [00:29:56.090]who was a very infamous conman across the United States
- [00:29:59.310]at the time of his arrest.
- [00:30:00.509]He had defrauded many banks
- [00:30:03.309]all over, from the South to the Midwest,
- [00:30:05.730]ending up in Nebraska,
- [00:30:07.309]where he would come in with a forged check of $85
- [00:30:10.489]and just walk out with $85, and
- [00:30:12.469]the bank just end up with a worthless piece of paper.
- [00:30:14.569]He was hunted down by the Pinkerton Detective Agency,
- [00:30:17.529]which at the time, was a very famous detective agency
- [00:30:20.550]that worked on protecting
- [00:30:22.390]Abraham Lincoln during assassination plots against
- [00:30:25.029]him and striking down a lot of union strikes.
- [00:30:28.249]And so this kind of showed like the importance
- [00:30:30.650]that banks really saw in capturing Seiffer,
- [00:30:33.069]because he was just posing a
- [00:30:35.290]very significant threat, as he would always be
- [00:30:37.669]changing his name, and it was
- [00:30:38.789]very difficult to track him down.
- [00:30:40.269]But eventually when they did arrest him, because of
- [00:30:42.609]the vagueness of laws regarding checks, and him–
- [00:30:47.190]and there's no clear law against forgery,
- [00:30:50.430]so getting him to admit
- [00:30:52.090]that he was guilty was very difficult.
- [00:30:53.790]And there– he only
- [00:30:55.570]admitted he was guilty because
- [00:30:56.890]of the fact that he was Jewish,
- [00:30:58.010]and the people prosecuting him threatened to have
- [00:31:00.149]him lynched if he did not admit that he was guilty.
- [00:31:02.669]So there's a lot of challenges around that.
- [00:31:04.709]He was ultimately convicted and arrested,
- [00:31:06.669]but then he escaped prison,
- [00:31:08.109]which is just a different set of challenges
- [00:31:10.269]that my study did not address.
- [00:31:12.749]But I think what it most– what it revealed is that
- [00:31:15.469]in eras of significant economic change
- [00:31:17.969]in financial innovation,
- [00:31:19.369]the law oftentimes fails to keep up with
- [00:31:21.589]those changes and fails to keep up
- [00:31:22.789]with those innovations. And, I think, tying it
- [00:31:24.590]to today, we have this new emergence of
- [00:31:26.849]crypto, and the fact that anyone
- [00:31:29.189]can just go online and trade stocks and do
- [00:31:31.229]all these things that previously
- [00:31:32.630]that hasn't been possible.
- [00:31:33.950]And because of that,
- [00:31:34.629]we're seeing a lot of these challenges in
- [00:31:36.009]prosecuting people that are committing crimes,
- [00:31:38.549]but you can't really call them a crime, because there's
- [00:31:41.190]no legislation that really
- [00:31:42.950]orchestrates how to treat that.
- [00:31:44.789]I think that if you look at how the law
- [00:31:47.030]addressed these types of innovations in the past,
- [00:31:49.580]we can maybe come up with strategies for
- [00:31:51.119]addressing the issues that we face today.
- [00:31:53.259]In terms of the digital legal research,
- [00:31:55.679]I come from a background
- [00:31:57.240]of studying economics and accounting, so
- [00:31:59.020]nothing to do with history.
- [00:32:00.639]What I got out of this program was definitely
- [00:32:03.580]just a large amount of exposure to
- [00:32:05.819]this cross-disciplinary field
- [00:32:08.339]for me. And I learned a lot of skills that I don't
- [00:32:10.940]think I would have had the opportunity
- [00:32:12.139]to learn the fields that I'm studying, so
- [00:32:13.639]I'm definitely excited to take
- [00:32:14.980]these research and critical
- [00:32:17.360]reading and comprehension skills
- [00:32:19.339]back to my studies in
- [00:32:20.939]my home institution and
- [00:32:22.859]just apply them for research in other areas.
- [00:32:36.300]Thank you all. I'm Will Thomas.
- [00:32:39.080]I'm a Professor of History and
- [00:32:40.319]Associate Dean for Research and
- [00:32:41.919]Graduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences.
- [00:32:45.459]And I'm the co-director with
- [00:32:47.799]Professor Jagodinsky of this Summer Research Program
- [00:32:52.259]and the Digital Legal Research Lab.
- [00:32:54.700]It's been a great pleasure,
- [00:32:56.959]as I think you can tell,
- [00:32:58.680]to work with this fabulous group
- [00:33:00.920]of students for ten weeks this summer.
- [00:33:03.940]I have thoroughly enjoyed
- [00:33:06.839]this group– this team of scholars, and I think you can tell why.
- [00:33:12.940]What we'd like to do is open it up
- [00:33:14.980]for questions from the audience.
- [00:33:16.680]Those of you online, if you have questions,
- [00:33:18.900]please put them in the chat in
- [00:33:20.919]the question box, and in the room, be thinking of your question,
- [00:33:25.439]'cause I'll start with a question,
- [00:33:27.219]maybe, just to get it going here.
- [00:33:28.960]Several of you commented on the challenges,
- [00:33:35.499]the emotional response that you
- [00:33:38.379]were having over the summer to this history.
- [00:33:41.960]I guess I'd like to hear some of you reflect for
- [00:33:46.259]us on the advice
- [00:33:48.299]you might have to others who are watching,
- [00:33:50.619]who are listening about how you navigated
- [00:33:53.760]that experience of delving
- [00:33:56.900]into what can be a painful and difficult history.
- [00:34:07.220]I think one really practical thing is,
- [00:34:11.359]and this was an advice from Dr. Jagodinsky,
- [00:34:13.439]and Dr. Thomas too, is get up and take a break.
- [00:34:16.679]You know, you're reading oftentimes really sad,
- [00:34:21.140]you know, just things that were done to people that
- [00:34:23.379]were not right, and it's really hard to read.
- [00:34:26.139]But personally, one thing that I
- [00:34:27.939]guess help me through it is knowing that–
- [00:34:30.219]or knowing that I was doing my very best
- [00:34:32.999]to do justice to Agnes' story.
- [00:34:36.440]And to show how her–
- [00:34:39.599]how her actions as an individual person fit into
- [00:34:44.999]a much larger idea and work.
- [00:34:52.539]So that gave me a lot of comfort, knowing that I was–
- [00:34:56.679]I was doing everything I could
- [00:34:58.939]to do right by her.
- [00:35:09.659]Kind of going off of that too,
- [00:35:11.939]I feel like, for me, it was being able–
- [00:35:14.179]I felt like I needed to tell her story right,
- [00:35:16.279]especially telling Gussie Burns' story.
- [00:35:18.539]I wanted to make sure that I was telling–
- [00:35:22.400]explaining the time period well enough that people who
- [00:35:25.959]are reading my paper could understand that at this point,
- [00:35:29.079]women were forced to endure so much pain and
- [00:35:33.729]so much violence that, it
- [00:35:36.429]was– she had to do what she needed to do to survive.
- [00:35:39.490]And it was for her–
- [00:35:40.969]telling her story was so important to me.
- [00:35:43.249]And even while doing
- [00:35:44.789]my research, I originally thought,
- [00:35:46.330]okay, I'm going to just focus on her and
- [00:35:48.009]then like add background, and that's it.
- [00:35:49.969]But then I was doing,
- [00:35:51.810]like, when I was looking
- [00:35:53.450]at other newspapers and stuff like that,
- [00:35:54.949]there's other women's stories that were so interesting.
- [00:35:57.670]I was like, okay, this would add
- [00:35:59.069]so much more complexity to the story.
- [00:36:01.109]And at the end of the day,
- [00:36:02.309]I think I added like five other
- [00:36:03.609]people's stories into my paper.
- [00:36:05.270]And at the end, I felt like when I was reading it,
- [00:36:08.509]I like, this makes sense.
- [00:36:09.709]And I was happy with what I wrote, and I
- [00:36:11.949]felt like I was telling her story the right way.
- [00:36:14.969]So it kind of helps me deal with so much of like what I was reading.
- [00:36:19.690]There were moments that were emotionally challenging,
- [00:36:22.830]but there were also moments where
- [00:36:24.149]you were really happy that someone
- [00:36:25.730]succeeded, or that were just really fun to write about.
- [00:36:29.589]Like I had a case
- [00:36:31.049]where it was a man
- [00:36:33.309]that was brought up on the crime of seduction,
- [00:36:35.290]which was a crime back then,
- [00:36:36.549]for abandoning his fiancée,
- [00:36:38.590]and then he marries her in
- [00:36:40.109]the court room, the judge marries the two of them,
- [00:36:42.369]and then he leaves her a day later
- [00:36:43.950]again. So, just total soap
- [00:36:46.429]opera stuff where it was not fun to live through,
- [00:36:49.069]especially for her, I'm sure.
- [00:36:50.409]But it's really interesting to write about,
- [00:36:52.269]just like digging through the drama of people that are long-dead.
- [00:37:02.490]Also being part of a team is important,
- [00:37:06.610]that is accommodating, encouraging about these things.
- [00:37:10.830]The first case I encoded
- [00:37:13.489]for the Petitioning For Freedom
- [00:37:14.990]was a case from the detention home.
- [00:37:17.009]So it was a lot, at first, to be reading
- [00:37:19.370]the language and what happened to these women.
- [00:37:21.590]But one of the people in our team,
- [00:37:23.809]I was just talking to them
- [00:37:25.109]about it, and they were comforting, and they told me
- [00:37:27.229]about their first experience
- [00:37:28.690]with their own case and their research.
- [00:37:31.050]I think we feel comfortable being able to
- [00:37:33.529]reach out to somebody else
- [00:37:34.669]like, you're not doing it alone,
- [00:37:36.090]also really helps.
- [00:37:46.940]Questions? Yes, one from the chat.
- [00:37:50.009]Please, Kaci. I'll repeat it.
- [00:37:52.509]Okay. Did the digital encoding component of
- [00:37:55.429]the summer program inform
- [00:37:57.110]how you read these habeas petitions?
- [00:37:59.369]If so, how?
- [00:38:00.640]Okay, so did the digital encoding inform
- [00:38:04.370]how you read these petitions, and if so, how?
- [00:38:08.730]I think it really helped, because it
- [00:38:11.069]allowed me to see patterns in a way that I
- [00:38:13.049]wouldn't have otherwise if I hadn't had
- [00:38:15.249]the terminology and been forced to think
- [00:38:18.129]about it that way in order to create
- [00:38:20.770]this database. I ended up noticing things that I
- [00:38:24.049]wouldn't have otherwise.
- [00:38:30.749]Other comments on that?
- [00:38:34.700]And it's not like it's– the kind of encoding we're doing,
- [00:38:37.689]it's not like a binary, like, 1 or 0 thing.
- [00:38:40.129]We have tons of different options, and
- [00:38:42.289]it's very– as quantitative as it is,
- [00:38:45.009]there's also very qualitative attributes.
- [00:38:50.960]Yeah, I'll just add to that. It also really helps you
- [00:38:53.269]with just focusing on
- [00:38:54.749]the details, because the encoding itself is
- [00:38:57.469]a very detail-oriented process, and I
- [00:38:59.569]feel like if you're just
- [00:39:00.889]reading and summarizing the cases,
- [00:39:02.430]you could lose a lot of the
- [00:39:04.609]little intricacies that make this case so unique.
- [00:39:06.550]But when you have to specifically focus on
- [00:39:08.069]finding certain attributes of these cases,
- [00:39:10.210]it really helps with being able to find
- [00:39:12.589]the details of these petitioner's stories
- [00:39:14.450]and the struggles that they were facing.
- [00:39:20.390]More questions?
- [00:39:22.209]Uh, yes?
- [00:39:23.563]Yeah, I'll ask a question.
- [00:39:25.123]I was just curious how many of
- [00:39:26.709]you found your research topic
- [00:39:29.130]by accident kind of, or found it
- [00:39:31.569]because it's like what you're already interested in?
- [00:39:34.169]It sounds like, for example,
- [00:39:35.810]the last one, you're already in accounting,
- [00:39:38.070]so maybe you were drawn to financial crimes
- [00:39:40.770]and those types of cases.
- [00:39:41.830]Or if it's more– if that is true or not?
- [00:39:44.489]And yeah, how much of it
- [00:39:46.389]just, you stumbled upon something and it picked you,
- [00:39:48.969]I guess, if anyone wants to comment on that?
- [00:39:54.090]Yeah, I'll bite. So I think for me,
- [00:39:58.469]drug policy is something that I
- [00:40:00.549]was interested in before I came here.
- [00:40:02.429]I have some professional experience
- [00:40:03.790]that's related to that.
- [00:40:05.449]But I think, you know,
- [00:40:08.649]one of the first things I did when
- [00:40:10.569]I got to the database was I
- [00:40:12.029]was curious about what sort of drug cases were going on.
- [00:40:15.489]Because there's a really, really, just, long and rich
- [00:40:18.429]history, that's also extremely
- [00:40:20.630]complicated and difficult to understand, for me.
- [00:40:23.169]But yeah, I would say that having
- [00:40:25.890]that past experience definitely
- [00:40:27.050]informed what I was interested in.
- [00:40:33.834]Yeah.
- [00:40:34.997]Yeah, I went into mine pretty open-minded, and I actually wanted to
- [00:40:39.059]just focus on one specific story of one young woman,
- [00:40:42.839]but she never appeared in any records again,
- [00:40:45.959]and she doesn't appear in any census records,
- [00:40:47.900]so I didn't have the facilities to kind
- [00:40:50.459]of do a whole paper and project about her.
- [00:40:53.419]So I sat down and talked to Dr. J., and she was like, wait,
- [00:40:56.439]this woman was at this institution.
- [00:40:59.099]Was anybody else here?
- [00:41:00.719]And then that's when going back into the system,
- [00:41:03.820]I realized there were other women who were also
- [00:41:06.819]here who didn't want to leave
- [00:41:08.919]this institution. Habeas was trying to take them out.
- [00:41:14.919]Yeah, Isabelle.
- [00:41:16.329]For me, I was interested in
- [00:41:18.139]specifically investigating psychiatric hospitals,
- [00:41:21.339]but when I was looking at the habeas
- [00:41:22.960]petitions from those institutions,
- [00:41:24.839]the divorce petitions were
- [00:41:26.499]just happened to be included in the case files.
- [00:41:28.460]And so I was interested in further exploring that.
- [00:41:30.619]And so my topic specifically focusing on marriage,
- [00:41:33.340]divorce, and annulment was kind of by accident just,
- [00:41:36.459]but that was because how the case files were constructed.
- [00:41:39.479]And so in that way, just how these are put together,
- [00:41:42.680]that takes investigating
- [00:41:44.859]to, like, why are these included in this case file?
- [00:41:49.790]I think for me to
- [00:41:51.419]connect back a little to the last question as well,
- [00:41:53.679]it was some of the intricacies in encoding that made
- [00:41:57.260]me kind of latch on to Agnes Smith and her two petitions.
- [00:42:01.759]She was institutionalized at
- [00:42:04.479]somewhere called the Institute Feeble Minded Youth,
- [00:42:06.559]but her petition never mentioned that
- [00:42:08.459]she was a minor, which was weird to me.
- [00:42:11.379]But I also could tell that she was
- [00:42:13.639]institutionalized for a long period of her life.
- [00:42:16.299]And I remember having– trying to
- [00:42:18.459]figure out how to encode her age and things like that.
- [00:42:21.399]I had a conversation with our post-doc Dr.
- [00:42:24.120]Cory Young, where I was just like, what do you think about this?
- [00:42:28.099]Like, what age might she be?
- [00:42:30.059]Where did she fall into– what category
- [00:42:32.220]might this petition fall into?
- [00:42:34.240]And that was just one of the many holes in her story,
- [00:42:37.600]where I was like, you know, there's more to this.
- [00:42:40.679]If I hadn't had to specifically
- [00:42:42.979]say what age category might she fit into,
- [00:42:47.019]I might not have latched onto that,
- [00:42:50.539]and latched onto her and this
- [00:42:51.999]larger history that I discovered.
- [00:42:54.360]So ,it was very much an open-minded thing for me.
- [00:43:03.600]Okay, Professor Andy Jewell.
- [00:43:06.600]I have a question.
- [00:43:08.964]And then online, okay. Go ahead, Andy.
- [00:43:10.940]A lot of your stories feature stories of people
- [00:43:15.060]who petition for their freedom from
- [00:43:16.779]a place of real powerlessness,
- [00:43:18.960]seemingly, in the resourcelessness in the system.
- [00:43:22.680]I'm curious if you found evidence in
- [00:43:24.679]their stories of people who are their advocates,
- [00:43:26.799]who are helping them get access to that system,
- [00:43:29.380]whether they are lawyers or family members,
- [00:43:31.180]or anybody who are doing
- [00:43:32.620]the good work during
- [00:43:34.659]their time and helped them bring these cases forward?
- [00:43:42.600]I had a few cases. Like
- [00:43:45.819]I described previously, in the 1880s,
- [00:43:48.559]there was one example of
- [00:43:50.839]basically, of the Chinese merchant, Gee Lee, who was like very
- [00:43:54.119]prominent and powerful in Seattle at the time,
- [00:43:57.039]who was basically paying to
- [00:43:58.999]bail five Chinese people who had
- [00:44:01.039]been busted for opium, so he bailed them out, and then,
- [00:44:06.039]was, as I understand it, basically funding the legal efforts.
- [00:44:09.580]I thought that was an interesting example, right,
- [00:44:11.659]of how sort of having that economic power then
- [00:44:13.879]translates into an ability to use the legal system.
- [00:44:17.520]And I think in 1916, in which there are some other cases,
- [00:44:22.759]there are examples in which
- [00:44:24.939]there were some lawyers who are essentially
- [00:44:27.200]volunteering to help people with– basically
- [00:44:30.840]using a recent court case to get people out,
- [00:44:35.779]because the charge that was basically charged–
- [00:44:39.600]they were charged with a crime
- [00:44:40.779]that wasn't a crime anymore,
- [00:44:42.340]so he essentially volunteered to help get them out,
- [00:44:45.419]so that was interesting.
- [00:44:54.051]Yes, Professor Jagodinsky.
- [00:44:56.069]Those of you who are online, I'm just
- [00:44:57.740]sort of appearing from off camera,
- [00:44:59.300]but we have an additional scholar
- [00:45:02.140]who couldn't join us this afternoon.
- [00:45:04.600]But I think her project really speaks to this question.
- [00:45:08.720]So, there was a series of cases out of Omaha
- [00:45:13.259]where there were a lot of
- [00:45:15.819]habeas petitions challenging vagrancy charges.
- [00:45:19.460]And through those petitions,
- [00:45:21.379]it became clear that there was
- [00:45:24.139]a Black attorney in the 19 teens named Claus Hubbard.
- [00:45:28.360]And he had been doing pro bono work on behalf
- [00:45:31.500]of the predominantly Black men
- [00:45:34.499]who were being arrested on those charges,
- [00:45:36.260]at least in that subset.
- [00:45:37.860]And then was himself arrested on vagrancy charges,
- [00:45:42.040]clearly an action of the police
- [00:45:44.360]trying to exercise punitive authority.
- [00:45:47.335]And all of this generated
- [00:45:49.689]so much debate and community tension that
- [00:45:53.449]the Omaha mayor at the time even condemned
- [00:45:56.509]the police actions and pardoned quite a few,
- [00:46:00.809]like, over 100 of these vagrancy charges.
- [00:46:04.010]And so in these cluster of petitions,
- [00:46:05.889]you can see that there are Black attorneys,
- [00:46:08.869]community organizers, working with
- [00:46:10.989]politicians to challenge police overreach.
- [00:46:15.689]And then a lot of these scholars talked
- [00:46:19.610]about women and detention and institutionalization,
- [00:46:23.989]and these are overlapping
- [00:46:25.689]in the same time period and in
- [00:46:27.069]the same time place– they're the same place.
- [00:46:29.309]So, you kind of understand them as being really
- [00:46:33.709]in the same hearts and minds of
- [00:46:35.769]the readers of these newspapers
- [00:46:37.269]that are talking about this,
- [00:46:38.249]the people who live in these communities and are
- [00:46:39.929]seeing this kind of policing happen around them.
- [00:46:41.849]So I think that's a really great question.
- [00:46:43.490]And depending on how you look at the data
- [00:46:46.349]coming out of these petitions, it becomes more visible.
- [00:46:53.980]Yes. From the chat.
- [00:46:57.379]I realized I didn't say where
- [00:46:58.729]the first question came from. That was from Cory.
- [00:47:02.670]Great! Thank you for being online.
- [00:47:05.349]The next question comes from Averill Earls.
- [00:47:09.170]Thank you for your thoughtful presentations and
- [00:47:11.949]excellent work on these projects.
- [00:47:13.950]I wonder what, if any,
- [00:47:15.469]might be the next steps for these stories and projects?
- [00:47:18.610]Great question. What are the next steps for these stories and projects?
- [00:47:25.910]Sophia.
- [00:47:27.990]I would love to do more on Agnes,
- [00:47:31.030]but obviously– I'm from Minnesota.
- [00:47:32.849]There's a geographical component as well.
- [00:47:35.049]There's a lot online, but there's also a lot that's
- [00:47:37.209]just in the Nebraska State Archives.
- [00:47:39.770]But now that I have this wealth of information,
- [00:47:42.090]one thing that I'm interested in
- [00:47:43.229]doing is maybe looking at
- [00:47:44.469]a comparative study. Just 20 minutes away in
- [00:47:47.769]the next town over from where I go to college was
- [00:47:50.569]Minnesota's version of
- [00:47:52.089]the Institute for Feeble Minded Youth in Faribault.
- [00:47:55.310]And so I think that would be really
- [00:47:56.929]interesting to look into what
- [00:47:59.809]people experienced in Minnesota
- [00:48:03.030]in terms of institutionalization,
- [00:48:05.570]sterilization, and things like that would be really
- [00:48:07.589]interesting to pursue.
- [00:48:09.990]Santi.
- [00:48:10.999]Yeah. So, for mine, I think that–
- [00:48:13.009]I'm very content with how my project came out.
- [00:48:15.189]However, if I were to go back,
- [00:48:16.669]I think I would tell myself that by
- [00:48:18.569]addressing financial crimes broadly,
- [00:48:20.830]I'm opening Pandora's box.
- [00:48:22.369]And it is a very broad, very large
- [00:48:24.529]category that has so many subsets, and I found
- [00:48:26.829]so many just small little details
- [00:48:30.530]or small threads that can pull on and
- [00:48:32.369]do their own individual projects on.
- [00:48:35.029]I think that if I were to continue my research,
- [00:48:37.230]and I've talked to Dr. Jagodinsky about this,
- [00:48:39.509]there are specific petitioners
- [00:48:42.249]and specific categories of
- [00:48:43.849]crime that I really want to explore.
- [00:48:45.610]For example, one of the petitioners
- [00:48:47.250]I mentioned, Willard V. Matthews.
- [00:48:49.569]He was like this big white collar crime,
- [00:48:51.649]embezzled $200,000. And at the end,
- [00:48:54.869]like, reading the newspaper articles surrounding his case,
- [00:48:57.369]one of the big controversies
- [00:48:59.229]was that, while he was in prison he
- [00:49:00.829]received this insanely special treatment,
- [00:49:03.030]and he was friends with the warden.
- [00:49:04.750]And that's something that we hear about a lot nowadays,
- [00:49:07.549]with white collar criminals, along the same lines,
- [00:49:09.709]and I feel like tracing kind of like that history of
- [00:49:11.869]these large embezzling crimes
- [00:49:13.149]would be something that's very interesting,
- [00:49:14.510]just narrowing it down and focusing on that category.
- [00:49:23.150]Other thoughts on next steps?
- [00:49:27.060]I thought that some of these cases
- [00:49:28.810]would lend themselves to historical fiction interpretation.
- [00:49:33.870]Well, I'll follow up
- [00:49:36.369]with another question headed in that direction,
- [00:49:40.410]which is that several of
- [00:49:42.229]you spoke about how important this was,
- [00:49:44.909]this research was for you in humanizing the past.
- [00:49:48.710]And Esme, I think you
- [00:49:50.949]said that these stories were strikingly
- [00:49:53.789]human and shockingly human
- [00:49:57.170]and shockingly present as you
- [00:50:00.669]got into them.
- [00:50:03.390]I'm wondering– what ideas you have for translating
- [00:50:10.729]that or making that possible for other students
- [00:50:13.630]or Americans at large.
- [00:50:18.090]How do we make history accessible,
- [00:50:21.289]more accessible in the way that you've
- [00:50:23.549]described it as this human experience?
- [00:50:26.570]How do we do that? What advice do you
- [00:50:28.639]have for how we teach this
- [00:50:30.889]and how we translate this?
- [00:50:34.340]Historical fiction it sounds like, Esme.
- [00:50:37.209]One suggestion, because it gets to the emotion, I guess.
- [00:50:42.350]I'd love to hear more ideas about that. How do you do this?
- [00:50:48.827]Ellis.
- [00:50:49.827]I think one interesting thing
- [00:50:51.249]that we've talked a lot about for the Petitioning for Freedom Project
- [00:50:54.030]is that it's going to be a publicly accessible database.
- [00:50:56.490]I think that's a really great opportunity
- [00:50:58.269]for students to learn.
- [00:50:59.409]I think something that I would have been
- [00:51:01.049]interested in in high school would be just looking
- [00:51:03.790]at this repository where there's all of these cases
- [00:51:06.270]where you can find out about
- [00:51:07.710]the relationship between people.
- [00:51:09.049]You can see somebody's story,
- [00:51:10.409]and then you can look at the document itself.
- [00:51:12.190]And I think that sort of lends itself to
- [00:51:13.889]a really enriching way to teaching history at
- [00:51:17.389]a very granular level that I
- [00:51:19.789]think goes beyond what you
- [00:51:21.309]can just capture in a textbook.
- [00:51:31.690]Yeah, Sophia.
- [00:51:33.080]I think, just be curious.
- [00:51:36.550]There's like, what Ellis was saying,
- [00:51:38.789]there are a lot of up and coming public databases
- [00:51:42.889]that will be out there that have
- [00:51:44.249]really good quality historical work in them,
- [00:51:46.869]but also in your state,
- [00:51:49.689]maybe even your town.
- [00:51:51.409]If you want to look at the college,
- [00:51:53.750]there's archives that are open to the public.
- [00:51:56.370]Make an appointment, talk to
- [00:51:58.229]an archivist. There's a lot of
- [00:52:03.130]really amazing historical work that's out there,
- [00:52:05.709]you just have to kind of go look for it,
- [00:52:08.310]which I think is a good step in
- [00:52:10.929]the right direction.
- [00:52:16.870]We have time for a couple more questions.
- [00:52:18.954]Yeah.
- [00:52:20.459]I think one thread that I maybe picked up on
- [00:52:24.549]through a lot of this is that a lot of
- [00:52:27.249]these injustices have happened because
- [00:52:30.229]law had not caught up to the reality of the situations.
- [00:52:34.389]So maybe I'm kind of curious about
- [00:52:36.909]the history– you talked about
- [00:52:38.749]trying to translate it and tell the stories.
- [00:52:42.450]Do y'all plan to look at where
- [00:52:47.689]the law did kind of catch up and
- [00:52:49.804]work to prevent more of these things from happening?
- [00:52:56.740]Great question. Who wants to talk about law and its relationship to society?
- [00:53:04.300]Because it's not always catching up,
- [00:53:07.019]it is also constituting consciousness, right?
- [00:53:11.379]So we talked a lot about that in
- [00:53:13.619]the seminar over many weeks.
- [00:53:16.100]Maybe reflecting on your specific example,
- [00:53:20.940]one of you could offer some thoughts about that.
- [00:53:26.459]Ellis, do you want to lead us off?
- [00:53:28.600]Sure, well I think drug prohibition
- [00:53:34.300]might not be the best one necessarily to think
- [00:53:36.859]about, like, the very successful policy reform.
- [00:53:40.160]But I do think that there are
- [00:53:41.979]examples within the legal record of where
- [00:53:44.719]as the sort of negotiation
- [00:53:47.379]of what is legal has been resolved,
- [00:53:49.880]there have been times where
- [00:53:51.039]the policy sort of
- [00:53:52.359]shifted in the way that litigants did want.
- [00:53:54.459]So, for example, again like I mentioned in Washington,
- [00:53:58.240]this is a very volatile time period.
- [00:54:01.020]A judge on the Washington Supreme Court decided
- [00:54:05.060]that it's not acceptable
- [00:54:07.479]to prohibit the smoking of opium itself.
- [00:54:10.100]Then that gets reversed a year later.
- [00:54:11.999]Then that gets affirmed in
- [00:54:13.339]the Washington Supreme Court a few years later.
- [00:54:16.860]But for a brief period of time,
- [00:54:19.339]what the litigants were asking for did actually end up being affirmed.
- [00:54:22.779]Similarly for the Harrison Act in 1916,
- [00:54:28.900]which is one of the first federal prohibition acts,
- [00:54:32.259]there was again– possession
- [00:54:35.260]of narcotics was heavily criminalized,
- [00:54:38.279]and the Supreme Court ended up deciding that that was not
- [00:54:40.959]a permissible way for
- [00:54:42.739]the Federal Government to use its authority.
- [00:54:44.800]And that basically meant that people
- [00:54:46.940]who were– at least some of them who
- [00:54:49.899]were essentially addicts were able
- [00:54:52.620]to be released from prison.
- [00:54:55.700]Now, thinking about where these laws translate to
- [00:55:00.059]now, again, we're in a similar period
- [00:55:01.900]where there's a sort of catching up,
- [00:55:03.899]where there's maybe some destigmatization
- [00:55:07.219]of addiction, or you know, view it as something they should treat
- [00:55:11.220]as a medical issue, and that's being represented
- [00:55:13.239]in some state legislatures.
- [00:55:15.720]But again, it's sort of uneven terrain.
- [00:55:23.960]Yeah. Somi?
- [00:55:25.120]I think there's another question.
- [00:55:27.060]Go ahead, you make your comment,
- [00:55:28.659]and we'll take the last question.
- [00:55:30.540]With the law that I looked at for my research,
- [00:55:35.120]the first law that Omaha had
- [00:55:39.104]was that it allowed the physicians at
- [00:55:41.969]the Health Departments kind of
- [00:55:43.889]examine any woman that they wanted,
- [00:55:46.270]who they suspected of being promiscuous.
- [00:55:49.270]So, which kind of
- [00:55:51.169]translated to prostitutes in their mind.
- [00:55:53.789]But after, I forgot,
- [00:55:56.490]I think in 1919, the mayor,
- [00:55:59.430]Mayor Smith, he was against
- [00:56:02.830]the idea of women who were not convicted of a crime,
- [00:56:05.970]being forced to take, take the examination.
- [00:56:08.989]So, he changed the Omaha law
- [00:56:11.349]to kind of say that the only people that could
- [00:56:13.949]obviously be examined were
- [00:56:17.109]women who were convicted of vagrancy, of prostitution,
- [00:56:19.829]of anything connected to prostitution.
- [00:56:22.389]And while it did help, and it did
- [00:56:25.169]limit the power of the health department,
- [00:56:28.210]it didn't really, at its core,
- [00:56:29.909]address the bigger issue,
- [00:56:31.509]which was like what the detention home was doing.
- [00:56:34.350]And I think a huge reason for
- [00:56:36.469]that was because of how society
- [00:56:38.770]perceived prostitution and women
- [00:56:41.270]who were promiscuous at the time.
- [00:56:43.549]And we still see that happen again in World War Two.
- [00:56:47.349]And even today, there are
- [00:56:49.009]certain things, like, because of how
- [00:56:50.949]society perceives certain things that other people do,
- [00:56:55.309]the law never, in my opinion,
- [00:56:58.350]I feel like the law never really catches up
- [00:57:00.469]to address the abuse
- [00:57:02.770]that they experienced.
- [00:57:08.810]Okay, one more question off the chat.
- [00:57:10.879]Alright. This comes from Hardeep Dhillon.
- [00:57:14.490]In the histories that you presented,
- [00:57:16.930]the lives and agencies of
- [00:57:18.409]historical subjects shine through.
- [00:57:20.529]I'm curious to ask you to
- [00:57:22.229]reflect on the legal consequences or
- [00:57:24.649]knowledge of historical subjects who
- [00:57:26.869]come from some of the most marginalized backgrounds.
- [00:57:29.489]How do the materials you worked with
- [00:57:31.649]underline everyday people's knowledge of the law?
- [00:57:34.489]Great question.
- [00:57:36.130]So how do these cases,
- [00:57:37.850]the materials you worked with, underline everyday
- [00:57:41.669]people's use of the law?
- [00:57:45.960]I guess I was surprised by how many there were.
- [00:57:48.569]Like, I guess I was thinking,
- [00:57:49.690]especially for Nebraska,
- [00:57:51.149]that there wouldn't be that many.
- [00:57:53.049]But there are hundreds and hundreds.
- [00:57:55.330]So I think that really goes to show,
- [00:57:57.549]like, I know I don't use– before a part of
- [00:58:00.580]this program, I didn't use
- [00:58:01.739]the words habeas corpus in my daily life.
- [00:58:04.059]But it seems like a lot of
- [00:58:06.779]people in late 19th century
- [00:58:09.120]or early 20th century Nebraska did,
- [00:58:11.119]and they were very willing to, and they were
- [00:58:13.979]very legally literate and
- [00:58:15.459]able to advocate for themselves,
- [00:58:17.520]even if not always successfully,
- [00:58:19.959]when things got hairy.
- [00:58:24.654]Somi.
- [00:58:25.654]I think that when we think about
- [00:58:27.249]legal sophistication,
- [00:58:28.660]we always like– the way that we imagine it is like,
- [00:58:31.799]oh, you need to know every single law,
- [00:58:33.599]you need to know how to use each law.
- [00:58:35.599]But one thing that I've learned from
- [00:58:37.559]this experience is that that can also
- [00:58:39.880]be seen in their ability
- [00:58:41.679]hire the right people to advocate for them,
- [00:58:44.419]who know how to use the law in
- [00:58:46.319]a specific way. And with a lot of these women,
- [00:58:48.739]what I discovered is
- [00:58:51.219]that that was a way that
- [00:58:52.579]they were able to advocate themselves,
- [00:58:54.340]that they were aware of what they
- [00:58:55.959]were going to lose and the risks that they were taking,
- [00:58:58.340]and they still did so.
- [00:58:59.559]So even those who didn't use the law,
- [00:59:02.039]they used the Omaha Daily Bee to tell their stories.
- [00:59:05.440]And by doing that, they were exposing the abuse,
- [00:59:08.340]and all of their treatment.
- [00:59:10.620]And that in itself was advocating.
- [00:59:17.864]Isabelle. Would you like to make a comment?
- [00:59:20.469]I think also people's personal experiences
- [00:59:24.080]with these institutions or
- [00:59:26.599]carceral facilities lends itself to legal sophistication.
- [00:59:30.259]Just having to interact
- [00:59:32.599]with these places in their everyday lives
- [00:59:34.780]already gives them an innate understanding
- [00:59:37.399]of how these laws work and how they affect them.
- [00:59:39.959]And so I think that is
- [00:59:41.899]reflected in many people's everyday lives.
- [00:59:48.050]I think for me, it made me kind of want to
- [00:59:53.339]sit and think about how much of
- [00:59:55.379]this is still going on now?
- [00:59:58.579]How many kind of ordinary people
- [01:00:01.520]are using the law on a daily basis
- [01:00:05.640]and that's more than you see in
- [01:00:07.459]just the celebrity cases that
- [01:00:10.039]are on the news all the time or something like that.
- [01:00:13.139]But especially because a lot
- [01:00:16.119]of the issues that we're seeing
- [01:00:17.720]people talk about in
- [01:00:20.319]the Progressive Era are still issues
- [01:00:22.480]that people are unfortunately talking about today.
- [01:00:25.720]I'm at a very privileged standpoint
- [01:00:28.200]to not have to use the law in that way,
- [01:00:30.039]but doing this and thinking
- [01:00:32.440]about the present repercussions, is kind of like,
- [01:00:35.980]there's probably a lot of people who are still going
- [01:00:40.099]through these motions and
- [01:00:42.339]using the law to do a lot of the same things.
- [01:00:44.999]That's something that we should stay cognizant of.
- [01:00:49.119]So, all right, well,
- [01:00:51.939]this webinar is part of a series of webinars that we'll be
- [01:00:55.999]hosting for the U.S. Law and
- [01:00:58.139]Race Initiative here at the University of Nebraska.
- [01:01:01.259]It's a partnership with the College of Law faculty and
- [01:01:05.359]the College of Arts and Sciences and
- [01:01:07.919]the Center for Digital Research in the
- [01:01:09.439]Humanities and Vision Maker Media,
- [01:01:11.800]and the Institute for Policy,
- [01:01:14.280]Politics and History at
- [01:01:15.719]the University of the District of Columbia.
- [01:01:17.480]And it's funded by the Mellon Foundation.
- [01:01:20.559]The next webinar is scheduled for September 28,
- [01:01:25.379]and it is on U.S. Constitutionalism
- [01:01:28.319]and Native American Sovereignty.
- [01:01:30.959]Our guests on that webinar will be Ned Blackhawk,
- [01:01:35.019]Professor of History at Yale University,
- [01:01:37.779]And Maggie Blackhawk, Professor of
- [01:01:40.279]Law at New York University.
- [01:01:43.899]So tune in for that webinar. We'll circulate it.
- [01:01:46.939]It will be on the same evite address,
- [01:01:51.539]and we'll certainly push that out to all
- [01:01:53.619]of our friends and colleagues.
- [01:01:56.560]What you've heard here today is the work of
- [01:01:59.679]the Digital Legal Research Lab.
- [01:02:04.580]Students in this group
- [01:02:07.140]are part of a cohort that were here this summer.
- [01:02:09.560]We'll have another group of students coming next summer.
- [01:02:14.850]If you're at all interested in applying,
- [01:02:18.569]the link will be in the chat.
- [01:02:21.290]It is srp.unl.edu/application and that will open in November.
- [01:02:27.881]Applications will open in
- [01:02:30.269]November for students from across the country,
- [01:02:32.430]just like these fabulous students to apply
- [01:02:35.130]and come here next summer and be
- [01:02:37.509]part of the Digital Legal Research Lab.
- [01:02:40.749]And last, we will be
- [01:02:43.309]initiating, as part of our U.S. Law and Race project,
- [01:02:46.850]a graduate fellows program.
- [01:02:50.590]So next year, simultaneously with the Digital Legal Research Lab,
- [01:02:55.489]we will have four graduate fellows
- [01:02:59.370]to be selected nationally as
- [01:03:01.749]Mellon Fellows in U.S. Law and Race to join
- [01:03:04.829]us here in June next summer of 2024.
- [01:03:08.690]The applications for that will open in
- [01:03:11.389]November as well on the U.S. Law and Race site.
- [01:03:15.310]That's uslawandrace.unl.edu.
- [01:03:19.599]Please join me in thanking
- [01:03:22.799]and congratulating our group of students.
- [01:03:34.504]Thank you.
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