Missouri Law and the American Conscience: Historical Rights and Wrongs
edited by Kenneth H. Winn
University of Missouri Press, 2016 eISBN: 978-0-8262-7356-7 | Paper: 978-0-8262-2251-0 | Cloth: 978-0-8262-2069-1 Library of Congress Classification KFM7878.M57 2016
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kenneth H. Winn is the author or co-editor of a number of books and articles on Missouri political and cultural history, including Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846. He has taught history at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Columbia and ran a legal history internship program for the Missouri Supreme Court.
REVIEWS
“This is a first-rate book on Missouri legal history from prominent historians and legal scholars that is also varied in subject matter, legal principles, political questions, and social issues.”—Virginia Laas, Professor Emerita of History, Missouri Southern State University
“The essays in Missouri Law and the American Conscience are a wonderful collection of Missouri's legal lore, much of which has affected American legal history from the frontier days, through slavery and the civil war, judicial elections,juvenile justice, women's rights, baseball and the so-called right to die. For better (Virginia Minor and the battle for women's suffrage and the right of women to serve as jurors) and for worse (Dred Scott), the topics Kenneth Winn has selected, and the essayists who delivered, provide a series of snapshots that helps us to understand the convoluted history of Missouri and its effects on the present state of our law. The book is well written, informative, and a pleasure to read.”—Michael A. Wolff, Dean, Saint Louis University School of Law, and Former Judge and Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri
“Kenneth Winn’s Missouri Law and the American Conscience is a model of how legal history should – and can – be written. Its ten essays demonstrate how a diverse population in a diverse state has resorted to law to confront the changes that overtook their lives in the course of two centuries. As Winn has conceptualized and organized these essays, and as its authors so richly demonstrate, the apparent disorder of the past coheres into a powerful illustration of the importance of the rule of law and the ordinary people who gave it meaning.”—David Thomas Konig, Professor of History and Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction. Searching for Rights in Missouri History / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter One. Testing the Limits of American Justice: Indian Trials in Nineteenth-Century Missouri / William E. Foley
Chapter Two. The Frown of Fortune: George Sibley, Breach of Promise, and Anglo-Francophone Conflict on the Missouri Frontier / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter Three. The Politics of Slavery and Missouri’s First Elected Supreme Court: Dred Scott v. Emerson / Paul Finkelman
Chapter Four. The Judicial Ouster Ordinance of 1865 and Radical Reconstruction in Missouri / Dennis W. Belcher
Chapter Five. Disfranchised and Degraded: Virginia L. Minor and the Constitutional Case for Women’s Suffrage / Bonnie Stepenoff
Chapter Six. Missouri’s Long Road to Juvenile Justice / Douglas E. Abrams
Chapter Seven. The Living Example: Laurance M. Hyde and the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter Eight. Constitutional Mollycoddling: How Women Won the Right to Serve as Jurors in Missouri (but only if they wanted to) / Karen Anderson Winn
Chapter Nine. Shaking the Shackles: Curt Flood’s Challenge to Baseball’s Reserve Clause / James R. Devine
Chapter Ten. In the Midst of All Such Excitement: The Nancy Cruzan Case / Edward “Chip” Robertson, Jr.
Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
Missouri Law and the American Conscience: Historical Rights and Wrongs
edited by Kenneth H. Winn
University of Missouri Press, 2016 eISBN: 978-0-8262-7356-7 Paper: 978-0-8262-2251-0 Cloth: 978-0-8262-2069-1
Until recently, many of Missouri’s legal records were inaccessible and the existence of many influential, historic cases was unknown. The ten essays in this volume showcase Missouri as both maker and microcosm of American history. Some of the topics are famous: Dred Scott’s slave freedom suit, Virginia Minor’s women’s suffrage case, Curt Flood’s suit against professional baseball, and the Nancy Cruzan “right to die” case. Other essays cover court cases concerning the uneasy incorporation of ethnic and cultural populations into the United States; political loyalty tests during the Civil War; the alleviation of cruelty to poor and criminally institutionalized children; the barring of women to serve on juries decades after they could vote; and the creation of the “Missouri Court Plan,” a national model for judicial selection.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Kenneth H. Winn is the author or co-editor of a number of books and articles on Missouri political and cultural history, including Exiles in a Land of Liberty: Mormons in America, 1830-1846. He has taught history at Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Missouri-Columbia and ran a legal history internship program for the Missouri Supreme Court.
REVIEWS
“This is a first-rate book on Missouri legal history from prominent historians and legal scholars that is also varied in subject matter, legal principles, political questions, and social issues.”—Virginia Laas, Professor Emerita of History, Missouri Southern State University
“The essays in Missouri Law and the American Conscience are a wonderful collection of Missouri's legal lore, much of which has affected American legal history from the frontier days, through slavery and the civil war, judicial elections,juvenile justice, women's rights, baseball and the so-called right to die. For better (Virginia Minor and the battle for women's suffrage and the right of women to serve as jurors) and for worse (Dred Scott), the topics Kenneth Winn has selected, and the essayists who delivered, provide a series of snapshots that helps us to understand the convoluted history of Missouri and its effects on the present state of our law. The book is well written, informative, and a pleasure to read.”—Michael A. Wolff, Dean, Saint Louis University School of Law, and Former Judge and Chief Justice, Supreme Court of Missouri
“Kenneth Winn’s Missouri Law and the American Conscience is a model of how legal history should – and can – be written. Its ten essays demonstrate how a diverse population in a diverse state has resorted to law to confront the changes that overtook their lives in the course of two centuries. As Winn has conceptualized and organized these essays, and as its authors so richly demonstrate, the apparent disorder of the past coheres into a powerful illustration of the importance of the rule of law and the ordinary people who gave it meaning.”—David Thomas Konig, Professor of History and Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
Introduction. Searching for Rights in Missouri History / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter One. Testing the Limits of American Justice: Indian Trials in Nineteenth-Century Missouri / William E. Foley
Chapter Two. The Frown of Fortune: George Sibley, Breach of Promise, and Anglo-Francophone Conflict on the Missouri Frontier / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter Three. The Politics of Slavery and Missouri’s First Elected Supreme Court: Dred Scott v. Emerson / Paul Finkelman
Chapter Four. The Judicial Ouster Ordinance of 1865 and Radical Reconstruction in Missouri / Dennis W. Belcher
Chapter Five. Disfranchised and Degraded: Virginia L. Minor and the Constitutional Case for Women’s Suffrage / Bonnie Stepenoff
Chapter Six. Missouri’s Long Road to Juvenile Justice / Douglas E. Abrams
Chapter Seven. The Living Example: Laurance M. Hyde and the Missouri Nonpartisan Court Plan / Kenneth H. Winn
Chapter Eight. Constitutional Mollycoddling: How Women Won the Right to Serve as Jurors in Missouri (but only if they wanted to) / Karen Anderson Winn
Chapter Nine. Shaking the Shackles: Curt Flood’s Challenge to Baseball’s Reserve Clause / James R. Devine
Chapter Ten. In the Midst of All Such Excitement: The Nancy Cruzan Case / Edward “Chip” Robertson, Jr.
Contributors
Index
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE