The Law of Seduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-146
Author(s):  
Julie Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Her Family ◽  
The Law ◽  
James Russell Lowell ◽  
Better Than

This chapter recounts how Lydia Maria Child had taken Amelia Norman to her home to live with her as an intimate of her family after she won the trial. It notes how Lydia kept track of Amelia during the months that she lived with her in the spring of 1844, getting to know her better than she had been able to when Amelia was a prisoner at the Tombs. It also mentions Lydia's belief that Amelia's strong deep feelings were what drove her to the verge of madness. The chapter refers to Maria Lowell, wife of poet and diplomat James Russell Lowell, to whom Lydia recommended Norman for a job as a personal maid. It highlights Lydia's publication of “Letter from New York No. V” while Amelia was living with her, which was a jeremiad against the failure of the law to protect women and the men who made the law.

Cry of Murder on Broadway

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Miller
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Women's Rights ◽  
Lydia Maria Child ◽  
Women’S Rights ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
The Law ◽  
Social Upheaval ◽  
New Yorkers ◽  
Desperate Attempt

This book shows how a woman's desperate attempt at murder came to momentarily embody the anger and anxiety felt by many people at a time of economic and social upheaval and expanding expectations for equal rights. On the evening of November 1, 1843, a young household servant named Amelia Norman attacked Henry Ballard, a prosperous merchant, on the steps of the Astor House Hotel. Agitated and distraught, Norman had followed Ballard down Broadway before confronting him at the door to the hotel. Taking out a folding knife, she stabbed him. Ballard survived the attack, and the trial that followed created a sensation. Newspapers in New York and beyond followed the case eagerly, and crowds filled the courtroom every day. The prominent author and abolitionist Lydia Maria Child championed Norman and later included her story in her fiction and her writing on women's rights. Norman also attracted the support of politicians, journalists, and legal and moral reformers who saw her story as a vehicle to change the law as it related to “seduction” and to advocate for the rights of workers. This book describes how New Yorkers followed the trial for entertainment. Throughout all this, Norman gained sympathys, in particular the jury, which acquitted her in less than ten minutes. The book weaves together Norman's story to show how, in one violent moment, she expressed all the anger that the women of the emerging movement for women's rights would soon express in words.

„Rzymski” Żyd – nieznana twórczość Romana Brandstaettera

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-61
Author(s):  
Dariusz Konrad Sikorski
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Social Norms ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Free Speech ◽  
Role Model ◽  
The Self ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Law

Summary After 1946, ie. after embracing Christianity, Roman Brandstaetter would often point to the Biblical Jonah as a role model for both his life and his artistic endeavour. In the interwar period, when he was a columnist of Nowy Głos, a New York Polish-Jewish periodical, he used the penname Romanus. The ‘Roman’ Jew appears to have treated his columns as a form of an artistic and civic ‘investigation’ into scandalous cases of breaking the law, destruction of cultural values and violation of social norms. Although it his was hardly ‘a new voice’ with the potential to change the course of history, he did become an intransigent defender of free speech. Brought up on the Bible and the best traditions of Polish literature and culture, Brandstaetter, the self-appointed disciple of Adam Mickiewicz, could not but stand up to the challenge of anti-Semitic aggression.

Neoliberalism, Law and its Discontents: Three Recent Interventions

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Malhotra
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Princeton University ◽  
The Law

Honor Brabazon, ed. Neoliberal Legality: Understanding the Role of law in the neoliberal project (New York: Routledge, 2017). 214pp. Paperback.$49.95 Katharina Pistor. The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019). 297 pp. Hardcover.$29.95 Astra Taylor. Democracy May Not Exist, but We'll Miss It When It's Gone (New York: Metropolitan Books--Macmillan, 2019). Hardcover$27.00

The Common Law in Colonial America

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Colonial America ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Revolutionary Movement ◽  
American Colonies ◽  
American Law ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
The Law ◽  
Substantive Law ◽  
The Revolution

This volume begins where volumes 2 and 3 ended. The main theme of the four-volume project is that the law of America’s thirteen colonies differed profoundly when they first were founded, but had developed into a common American law by the time of the Revolution. This fourth volume focuses on what was common to the law of Britain’s thirteen North American colonies in the mid-eighteenth century, although it also takes important differences into account. The first five chapters examine procedural and substantive law in colonies and conclude that, except in North Carolina and northern New York, the legal system functioned effectively in the interests both of Great Britain and of colonial localities. The next three chapters examine changes in law and the constitution beginning with the Zenger case in 1735—changes that ultimately culminated in independence. These chapters show how lawyers became leading figures in what gradually became a revolutionary movement. It also shows how lawyers used legal and constitutional ideology in the interests, sometimes of an economic character, of their clients. The book thereby engages prior scholarship, especially that of Bernard Bailyn and John Phillip Reid, to show how ideas and constitutional values possessed independent causal significance in leading up to the Revolution but also served to protect institutional structures and socioeconomic interests that likewise possessed causal significance.

Wieland; or The Transformation, and Memoirs of Carwin, The Biloquist

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Brockden Brown
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Spontaneous Combustion ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Small Community ◽  
Actual Case ◽  
Her Family ◽  
American Novels

One of the earliest American novels, Wieland (1798) is a thrilling tale of suspense and intrigue set in rural Pennyslvania in the 1760s. Based on an actual case of a New York farmer who murdered his family, the novel employs Gothic devices and sensational elements such as spontaneous combustion, ventriloquism, and religious fanaticism. The plot turns on the charming but diabolical intruder Carwin, who exercises his power over the narrator, Clara Wieland, and her family, destroying the order and authority of the small community in which they live. Underlying the mystery and horror, however, is a profound examination of the human mind's capacity for rational judgement. The text also explores some of the most important issues vital to the survival of democracy in the new American republic. Brown further considers power and manipulation in his unfinished sequel, Memoirs of Carwin the Biloquist, which traces Carwin's career as a disciple of the utopist Ludloe.

Jesus' Legal Theory—A Rabbinic Reading

2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-130 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chaim Saiman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Legal Theory ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Politics And Religion ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Philosopher ◽  
President Bush

These are heady times in America's law and religion conversation. On the campaign trail in 1999, then-candidate George W. Bush declared Jesus to be his favorite political philosopher. Since his election in 2001, legal commentators have criticized both President Bush and the Supreme Court for improperly basing their decisions on their sectarian Christian convictions. Though we pledge to be one nation under God, a recent characterization of the law and religion discourse sees America as two sub-nations divided by God. Moreover, debate concerning the intersection between law, politics and religion has moved from the law reviews to the New York Times Sunday Magazine, which has published over twenty feature-length articles on these issues since President Bush took office in 2001. Today, more than anytime in the past century, the ideas of an itinerant first-century preacher from Bethlehem are relevant to American law.

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