Weekend Roundup

• In the New Republic: Gabriel Rosenberg and Jan Dutkiewicz on the place where the meat industry meets anti-bestiality laws, past and present.

• Catch this virtual event with Ashley Rubin on her forthcoming book, The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of America's Modern Penal System, 1829-1913: Jan.5 at 6-7pm EST. 

• The Wiener Library for the Study of the Nazi Era and the Holocaust, at the Sourasky Central Library, Tel Aviv University, has put some of its collections online, including prosecutions for distributing the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the Nazi Justice Collection, which "contains information on the judiciary in Nazi Germany and hundreds of trial transcripts."  N/t: JQB
  

• “The new feature documentary, My Native Air: Charles Evans Hughes and the Adirondacks, co-produced by MDT Publishing and Snarky Aardvark Films, is premiering on-demand in a limited run from January 15th to February 15th, 2021.”  H/t: JQB
  

• Brittany Nichole Adams, Special Collections, Digitization, and Archival Services Librarian, Northwestern University is profiled in the Bright Young Librarians series at FineBooks and Collections.
  

• From the Washington Post's "Made by History" section: Anya Jabour (University of Montana) on why "Referring to female PhDs as ‘Dr.’ promotes equal treatment and values women’s work," including a discussion of trailblazing law reformers (and PhD holders) Sophonisba Breckenridge and Edith Abbott.

• ICYMI:  University of Mississippi fires Garrett Felber, a tenure-track assistant professor in the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History, who has studied the American carceral state. (Mississippi Free Press).  Greg Melleuish on Constitutional History in Australia (Telos Press Podcast).

Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

ANZLS Program Now Available

Courtoom Scene, Sydney, 1817 (wiki)

The program for the 39th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society, “an intensive 1 day world-wide gathering devoted to law in history” on December 9, is now available here.  The keynote plenary sessions are Joshua Getzler, Oxford University, on “Six Nations of the Grand River, military feudalism, and the roots of ‘honour of the Crown’”; Miranda Johnson, Otago University, on “Reckoning with a Pacific empire state: Race, nation, citizenship and the idea of New Zealand”; and a closing address by Dame Sian Elias, former Chief Justice of New Zealand.

--Dan Ernst

ANZLHS 2020

 [We have the following announcement.  DRE]

39th Annual Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Law and History Society

Join us for an intensive 1 day world-wide gathering devoted to law in history on 9 December 2020, hosted by Event Services at the University of Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand

Keynote plenary sessions will feature:

Joshua Getzler, Oxford University, on "Six Nations of the Grand River, military feudalism, and the roots of 'honour of the Crown'"

Miranda Johnson, Otago University, on "Reckoning with a Pacific empire state: Race, nation, citizenship and the idea of New Zealand"

A Closing Address by Dame Sian Elias, former Chief Justice of New Zealand

The organisers have accepted 39 individual papers and 7 panel presentations. They will be run in four concurrent parallel sessions throughout the day. The programme will be uploaded to the ANZLHS website page shortly.

The timings will be specified according to the NZDT time zone - which is UTC+13. We have attempted to time presentations so that are as reasonable as possible for the presenters (but will be difficult for some). The conference will begin at 9.00am and conclude at 7.00pm NZDT.

To cover Event Services charges, and to ensure a high quality of digital platform delivery utilising Zoom, Vimeo and Twilio, we are asking all attendees to pay a modest registration fee. In addition, the rules of the ANZLHS require all presenters to pay the Society's 2020 annual subscription. So 'full member registration' applies to presenters who have paid the 2020 Society subscription in advance; 'full non-member registration' applies to presenters (some of whom will have been members in the past) who have not yet paid the 2020 Society subscription. We are waiving registration fees for postgraduate student presenters. The portal for registrations will be launched shortly through the website page. The cost for registration is as follows in $NZ:

Full member registration: $130; Full non-member registration: $ 215; Full-time post graduate presenters: Fee waiver; Attendance only registration: $130

Graduate students are invited to apply for Kercher Scholarships. Five scholarship awards will be made that may adorn your cv even though there is no monetary element to the scholarship this year. Please apply to Katherine Sanders: k.sanders@auckland.ac.nz by 20 November if you have not already applied. Graduate attendees may also wish to enter their paper for the Forbes Society Prize. The Society's peer-reviewed journal law&history will consider submissions from those who present papers at the conference. In the meantime further information about the conference may be gleaned from David Williams: dv.williams@auckland.ac.nz

Gerangelos on Dixon, J., and Australian Nationhood

Peter Gerangelos, University of Sydney Law School, has posted Sir Owen Dixon and the Concept of 'Nationhood' as a Source of Commonwealth Power, which appears in Sir Owen Dixon's Legacy (Federation Press, 2019): 56-79:

Owen Dixon (wiki)

The principal focus of this chapter is to trace from the reasoning of Dixon J, and those whom he influenced, the High Court’s evolving jurisprudence with respect to the concept of “nationhood” as a source of power. A central thesis of this chapter is that it is questionable whether the reasoning of Dixon J in the Cold War Era cases (Sharkey, Burns v Ransley, Communisty Party Case, and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Case) as well as the reasoning in subsequent pivotal executive power cases in the High Court such as AAP and Davis, support the development of an inherent executive “nationhood” power in s 61 of the Constitution. The chapter examines the extent to which the influence of Dixon J, together with the nature of the very issues considered in these cases, come together to influence the outcome of what is often regarded as the most seminal case on executive power in recent years: Pape v Commissioner of Taxation. 

--Dan Ernst

McIntyre and Milne on "Alien" Power in Australia

 Joe McIntyre and Sue Milne, University of South Australia School of Law, have posted The Alien and the Constitution: The Legal History of the ‘Alien’ Power of the Australian Commonwealth:

The identity of a body politic is inevitably intertwined with that of the excluded other. The quintessential political ‘other’ is the ‘alien’. The express constitutional power to regulate ‘naturalisation and aliens’ in s51(xix) has come to be seen as the hook upon which to hang the Commonwealth’s power to regulate Australian nationality and citizenship. Given the Australian colonies were obsessed with exclusions, and the Commonwealth’s roll-out of the White Australia policy as one of its first legislative priorities on immigration, this connexion between alienage and immigration (and thus eventually citizenship) appears inevitable. It is, however, historically wrong. This article argues that the scope and purpose of the ‘aliens power’ has been miscast, and that as a matter of history its true analogue was the races power, not immigration. The power was designed to regulate the domestic disabilities of aliens (and the removal of those disabilities through naturalisation), just as the races power regulates the disabilities of particular classes of persons. Moreover, and contrary to subsequent jurisprudence, the meaning of ‘alien’ at Federation was clear and unambiguous. This article unpicks the history records to understand this purpose and meaning at Federation in a way that challenges our contemporary understanding of Australian identity.

--Dan Ernst

Josev on Australian Histories in Court

An advance copy of Australian Histories and Historiography in the Courtroom, Melbourne University Law Review 43 (2020), by Tanya Josev, a Senior Lecturer and the Co-Director of the Australian Legal Histories Programme, Melbourne Law School, is now available.

This article examines the fascinating, yet often controversial, use of historians’ work and research in the courtroom. In recent times, there has been what might be described as a healthy scepticism from some Australian lawyers and historians as to the respective efficacy and value of their counterparts’ disciplinary practices in fact-finding. This article examines some of the similarities and differences in those disciplinary practices in the context of the courts’ engagement with both historians (as expert witnesses) and historiography (as works capable of citation in support of historical facts). The article begins by examining, on a statistical basis, the recent judicial treatment of historians as expert witnesses in the federal courts. It then moves to an examination of the High Court’s treatment of general works of Australian history in aid of the Court making observations about the past. The article argues that the judicial citation of historical works has taken on heightened significance in the post-Mabo and ‘history wars’ eras. It concludes that lasting changes to public and political discourse in Australia in the last 30 years — namely, the effect of the political stratagems that form the ‘culture wars’ — have arguably led to the citation of generalist Australian historiography being stymied in the apex court.

--Dan Ernst

Melvin Vaniman

Melvin Vaniman (1866-1912), an American adventurer, singer, aeronaut and photographer, had a passion for taking photographs from unusual vantage points such as ship's masts and balloons. Vaniman arrived in Sydney in February 1903 and left Australia in August 1904. During that time he travelled extensively throughout the country.

 Bennelong Point, Circular Quay and Dawes Point, 1904

 

Circular Quay from a ship's mast, 1903

  

Blue Mountains scenery at Leura, 1903

 

Harvesting wheat on Brundah Station, Grenfell, 1903

 

Harvesting wheat, Narramine Station, Narromine, 1903

Source: State Library of New South Wales