For most of the ninety-three years between 1851, when the California State Legislature faced the problem of what to do with criminals, until 1944, when it finally organized the state's four prisons into one adult penal system, the prisons at San Quentin and Folsom were the only places of incarceration for the state's felons. Bookspan traces the development of a system emphasizing deterrence and retribution to one receptive to reform and rehabilitation. "This is the story," writes Bookspan, "of the penury and personality struggle through which California developed a prison system to assess,...
For most of the ninety-three years between 1851, when the California State Legislature faced the problem of what to do with criminals, until 1944, whe...
For forty years Ogden Hoffman presided over the federal district court for the Northern District of California, disposing of more than nineteen thousand cases brought before him. Federal Justice in California: The Court of Ogden Hoffman, 1851-1891 considers a career remarkable for longevity and productivity and at the same time examines the operation of a federal trial court in nineteenth-century America - the cases adjudicated, their significance, and the court's impact upon the community. Solidly researched, Christian G. Fritz's book is unique in attending to the law on the level at which...
For forty years Ogden Hoffman presided over the federal district court for the Northern District of California, disposing of more than nineteen thousa...
On the night of 16 October 1892, a double homicide occurred on Otay Mesa in San Diego County near the Mexican border. The two victims were an elderly couple, John and Wilhelmina Geyser, who lived on a farm on the edge of the mesa. Within minutes of discovering the crime, neighbors subdued and tied up the alleged killer, Jose Gabriel, a sixty-year-old itinerant Native American handyman from El Rosario, California, who worked for the couple. Since Gabriel was apprehended at the scene, most presumed his guilt. The local press, prosecutors, witnesses, and jurors called him by the epithet "Indian...
On the night of 16 October 1892, a double homicide occurred on Otay Mesa in San Diego County near the Mexican border. The two victims were an elderly ...
Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court, written by one of the state s leading legal minds, is the first history of the Nebraska Supreme Court and the first book-length study of a Great Plains supreme court. James W. Hewitt draws on his intimate knowledge of the subject matter gleaned from years as a lawyer in Nebraska and applies a historian s objectivity to the analysis.Hewitt explores the court through the work of the four men who greatly influenced and led it: Robert G. Simmons (1938 63, the first modern chief justice), Paul W. White (1963 78), Norman Krivosha...
Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court, written by one of the state s leading legal minds, is the first history of the Nebr...
In Practicing Law in Frontier California Gordon Morris Bakken combines collective biography with an analysis of the function of the bar in a rapidly changing socioeconomic setting. Drawing on manuscript collections, Bakken considers hundreds of men and women who came to California to practice law during the gold rush and later, their reasons for coming, their training, and their usefulness to clients during a period of rapid population growth and social turmoil. He shows how law practice changed over the decades with the establishment of large firms and bar associations, how the state's...
In Practicing Law in Frontier California Gordon Morris Bakken combines collective biography with an analysis of the function of the bar in a rapidly c...
The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 turns upside down the traditional way of thinking about one of the most important laws ever passed in American history. The act that created Nebraska and Kansas also, in effect, abolished the Missouri Compromise, which had prohibited slavery in the region since 1820. This bow to local control outraged the nation and led to vicious confrontations, including Kansas s subsequent mini-civil war. The essays in this volume shift the focus from the violent and influential reaction of Bleeding Kansas to the role that Nebraska played in this decisive...
The Nebraska-Kansas Act of 1854 turns upside down the traditional way of thinking about one of the most important laws ever passed in American ...
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a revolutionary period in the lives of women, and the shifting perceptions of women and their role in society were equally apparent in the courtroom. Women Who Kill Men examines eighteen sensational cases of women on trial for murder from 1870 to 1958.The fascinating details of these murder trials, documented in court records and embellished newspaper coverage, mirrored the changing public image of women. Although murder was clearly outside the norm for standard female behavior, most women and their attorneys relied on gendered...
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were a revolutionary period in the lives of women, and the shifting perceptions of women and their r...
Celebrated accounts of lawless towns that relied on the extra-legal justice of armed citizens and hired gunmen are part of the enduring cultural legacy of the American West. This image of the frontier has been fueled for more than a century by historians-both amateur and academic-and by various popular images. In the twenty-first century, Great Plains communities continue to perpetuate this image with tourist attractions and events that pay homage to their "lawless" past. But these romanticized depictions of the violent frontier do not accurately portray the legal culture of most early Great...
Celebrated accounts of lawless towns that relied on the extra-legal justice of armed citizens and hired gunmen are part of the enduring cultural legac...
Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court, written by one of the state's leading legal minds, is the first history of the Nebraska Supreme Court and the first book-length study of a Great Plains supreme court. James W. Hewitt draws on his intimate knowledge of the subject matter gleaned from years as a lawyer in Nebraska and applies a historian's objectivity to the analysis. Hewitt explores the court through the work of the four men who greatly influenced and led it: Robert G. Simmons (1938-63, the first modern chief justice), Paul W. White (1963-78), Norman Krivosha...
Slipping Backward: A History of the Nebraska Supreme Court, written by one of the state's leading legal minds, is the first history of the Nebraska Su...
Early in his judicial career, U.S. District Judge Warren K. Urbom was assigned a yearlong string of criminal trials arising from a seventy-one-day armed standoff between the American Indian Movement and federal law enforcementat Wounded Knee, South Dakota. In Called to Justice Urbom provides the first behind-the-scenes look at what quickly became one of the most significant series of federal trials of the twentieth century. Yet Wounded Knee was only one set of monumental cases Urbom presided over during his years on the bench, a set that in turn forms but one chapter in a remarkable...
Early in his judicial career, U.S. District Judge Warren K. Urbom was assigned a yearlong string of criminal trials arising from a seventy-one-day ...
