This week's readings - 27 Feb 2013

I didn't much care for the Grossberg article.  His approach is very abstract and I left the article with the sense that he stood alone as the only historian who knew anything of value about the legal history of the American family.  In fact, he claims a "historical void" was present in family law and "a history of the law of the family does not exist."  There is quite a substantial gap between asserting existence of a "historical void" and tempering things a bit to say - for example - that there are historical gaps or deficiencies in the matter under consideration.  Hyperbole usually ends up undermining the credibility of its author and it usually isn't a stretch to identify its misleading characteristics.  To confirm the point a bit, I'll cite one example.  On page 845 of his article, Grossberg conveys that historian/lawyer James Schouler had written "The Law of Domestic Relations" in 1870, a work Grossberg identifies as "a comprehensive presentation of family law" that is "a summary of...nineteenth century American family law."  In a general manner, he supplements this theme by often referencing how "not much attention" has been paid to this or that.  That can pretty readily be taken as a broad, presumptuous, overreaching, and difficult to prove contention.  Consistent with what I saw as a negativity that prevailed throughout the article, he didn't have much good to say about his fellow historians, either.

I found the other two articles much more useful and insightful.  The Gordon article on Utah/Mormon polygamy was especially good at pointing out how often polygamy caught suffragettes in Catch 22 situations.  I found it particularly interesting how those who supposedly supported women's suffrage were simultaneously able to argue that women's suffrage in Utah was unacceptable.  There is a lot to be learned here about modern day political rhetoric and its inherent and consciously crafted duplicity.

I also found the Tanenhaus article very informative and well done.  His use of the Illinois Supreme Court and its relevant deliberations gave clear insights into some of the more essential family law deliberations.  And - like Novak had done last week - Tanenhaus was able to connect the Reconstruction Amendments to a much broader range of civil liberty considerations than that which the subject amendments were originally drafted to encompass.