Saturday, February 8, 2014

Weekend Roundup

  • The El Paso Newspaper Tree is carrying a report of a recent address at the University of Texas-El Paso by Allison Brownell Tirres (DePaul Law).  One of her points, as reported in the story, was that "comprehensive immigration reform must be based on a clear understanding of the legal history underlying today’s immigration policies."
  • Pen and Sword Books has published Breach of Promise to Marry: A History of How Jilted Brides Settled Scores, by Denies Bates, who is “a Chartered Accountant by profession, her interests now relate to the voluntary and community sector, research and writing.”  According to the press, the book is based on her review of “over 1,000 forgotten cases of women who found very different endings” to that of such fictional counterparts as Dickens’s Miss Havisham.  “This social history of breach of promise shows that when men behaved badly hell had no fury like a woman scorned!”
  • Via the American Historical Association's blog (AHA Today): The American Council of Learned Societies has announced 20 public fellowship opportunities for recent doctorates. The AHA encourages historians to apply (deadline: March 29, 2014). 
  • According to the Springfield State Journal-Register, Illinois lawyers have staged a series of mock trials to raise funds to preserve five rare maps and preserve portraits of state supreme court justices.  “The programs, held in theaters in both Chicago and Springfield, depicted the retrial of Mary Surratt, the first U.S. woman sentenced to death as an alleged conspirator in the assassination of Lincoln; the insanity retrial of Mary Todd Lincoln; and the habeas corpus hearings of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of the Latter Day Saints.”
  • The Junto has introduced a new podcast: “'The History Carousel' will connect the past with the present, and will feature a rotating cast of Junto members and guests."
Weekend Roundup is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.