COMING UP | Western Legal History
The NJCHS will devote its next issue of Western Legal History to the centennial of Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), in which the U.S. Supreme Court invalidated an Oregon statute requiring all children to attend public school. The Court’s decision terminated a nationwide movement to eliminate private and religiously affiliated elementary and secondary schools. This symposium will explore the cultural, political, and religious controversies that generated the case, placing these issues within a distinctively Western context. This issue also will address the constitutional questions addressed by the decision and will consider Pierce’s enduring significance for a wide range of contemporary issues, including parental rights, the role of private education in American society, and unenumerated personal liberties, especially the right to privacy. The symposium also will place Pierce in the context of the related cases of Meyer v. Nebraska (1923), which struck down statutes prohibiting the teaching of German, and Farrington v. Tokushige (1927), which invalidated a Hawaiian law barring instruction in Asian languages.
Book Reviews included in the next volume:
- Hon. Michelle Friedman (9th Circuit), who clerked for Hon. David Tatel (D.C. Circuit), will review his new memoir, “Vision: A Memoir of Blindness and Justice”
- Gen. John Goodman will review Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams by Adam Lazarus
- Professor Tessa Dysart will review A Promise Kept: The Muskogee (Creek) Nation and McGirt v. Oklahoma by Robert J. Miller & Robbie Ethridge
- Professor Lenni Beth Benson will review Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here: The United States, Central America, and the Making of a Crisis by Jonathan Blitzer