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The Prison as Garden, 1796–1804

Jennifer Graber

in The Furnace of Affliction: Prisons and Religion in Antebellum America

This chapter discusses the fifteen convicts from Newgate Prison who made a “daring escape” across the Hudson River to New Jersey. New York State legislators responded by establishing an armed guard ... More

This chapter discusses the fifteen convicts from Newgate Prison who made a “daring escape” across the Hudson River to New Jersey. New York State legislators responded by establishing an armed guard on call in the surrounding neighborhood. The prison's agent, a Quaker and advocate of nonviolence, objected. He told state officials that overseeing the guard required duties that those “who are of the people called Quakers, cannot with propriety discharge.” Legislators were unmoved. The armed guard remained, straining the prison's budget and vexing its Quaker administrators. During the prison's early years, the armed guard served on several occasions. Its ongoing presence clearly signaled that all was not well inside Newgate Prison. The controversy over the guard's necessity and morality proved to be the first of many conflicts between Friends administering the prison and state officials involved in governmental oversight.Less

Comparative Law in the NJAC Judgment: A Missed Opportunity

Suhrith Parthasarathy

in Appointment of Judges to the Supreme Court of India: Transparency, Accountability, and Independence

This essay is an overview of the use of comparative law in the NJAC Case, and offers a critique of the Supreme Court’s analysis of comparative law in judicial appointments. The essay argues that the ... More

This essay is an overview of the use of comparative law in the NJAC Case, and offers a critique of the Supreme Court’s analysis of comparative law in judicial appointments. The essay argues that the Supreme Court adopted an isolationist approach by shunning international experience from fifteen countries cited before it by the Union of India to drive home the point that executive presence in judicial appointments does not, by itself, impinge upon judicial independence. The author contests the Supreme Court’s cursory dismissal of relevant international experience on the ground that India, with its peculiar set of circumstances cannot replicate the experiences of other nations in judicial appointments. The author argues that this is self-serving and the judgment would have been better served by a surer grasp of comparative law and its rationales.Less

A Chicana Third Space Feminist Reading of Chican@ Life Cycle Markers

Norma E. Cantú

in Age in America: The Colonial Era to the Present

Mixing personal reflection and feminist theory, this chapter analyzes the broad significance of Mexican American rituals celebrating a young women’s passage into adulthood at fifteen—quinceañeras—and ... More

Mixing personal reflection and feminist theory, this chapter analyzes the broad significance of Mexican American rituals celebrating a young women’s passage into adulthood at fifteen—quinceañeras—and elderhood at fifty—cincuentañeras. Norma E. Cantú finds in these ritualized birthday celebrations a form of resistance through which Chicanas are able to occupy a transitional space, moving between life stages and cultures in ways that enable transformation. Cantú employs a Chicana Third Space Feminist approach, a mode of analysis that valorizes personal expressions developed in liminal spaces and transitory stages outside the mainstream of American culture. Through this lens, she recovers the long history of quinceañera celebrations as well as the more recent adoption of cincuentañeras. She also explains why celebrations of men’s fifteenth and fiftieth birthdays have become more popular in recent years. By analyzing how particular individuals adopt established rituals, Cantú shows how quinceañeras and cincuentañeras enable Mexican Americans to transform their self-understandings and place in their communities at age fifteen and fifty.Less

Block designs

NORMAN BIGGS and ROBIN WILSON

in Combinatorics: Ancient and Modern

This chapter outlines the origins of design theory, with particular reference to the ‘Steiner triple systems’, the pioneering work of Thomas Kirkman, and early contributions by a number of writers on ... More

This chapter outlines the origins of design theory, with particular reference to the ‘Steiner triple systems’, the pioneering work of Thomas Kirkman, and early contributions by a number of writers on the ‘fifteen schoolgirls problem’. Connections are also made with finite projective planes and with the design of experiments.Less

A Genealogy of Undercover Investigation

in New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era

Undercover investigation in the United States was not an invention of Progressive social activists. Rather, it was a product of existing techniques that the activists adapted to their unique goals ... More

Undercover investigation in the United States was not an invention of Progressive social activists. Rather, it was a product of existing techniques that the activists adapted to their unique goals and needs. Undercover investigation dates back to the mid-nineteenth century, when private detective agencies were formed to fill (and profit from) the void in the system of public policing. The first private detective agency in the country was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, founded in 1850 by Allan Pinkerton, who relied on “shadows” — agents who followed suspects and gathered evidence. In New York City, private social reform organizations — including the Committee of Fifteen, the Committee of Fourteen, the People's Institute, and the National Civic Federation — relied on undercover investigators who gathered information which they used to confirm their perceptions or define new forms of social danger, such as the sexual and political behavior of immigrants and African Americans. Undercover investigation played a major role in the development of increasingly sophisticated and far-reaching federal power in the early twentieth century.Less

Public Raids, Undercover Investigators, and Native Informants

in New York Undercover: Private Surveillance in the Progressive Era

In the early part of the twentieth century, New York City's foremost businessmen and clergymen were alarmed by the rising disorder in the metropolis. Business, good-government, and social activist ... More

In the early part of the twentieth century, New York City's foremost businessmen and clergymen were alarmed by the rising disorder in the metropolis. Business, good-government, and social activist groups were particularly concerned with the “flagrant offenses against public morality and common decency” that thrived in “certain districts.” Although the city's social activists had grappled with the problems of poverty and morality for decades, they realized that these old problems required new strategies. In November 1900, the Committee of Fifteen was founded, initially conducting public raids to realize its vision of a “morally clean” New York. When the public and even its own members raised a howl against the use of such tactics, the Committee of Fifteen turned to undercover investigators and “native informants” from the tenement districts to continue gathering the information that permitted it to impose its agenda on New York City. In 1902, the Committee of Fifteen was disbanded, following the sudden and unexpected death of its chairman, William H. Baldwin, Jr.Less

Youth subcultures

Celia Hughes

in Young Lives on the Left: Sixties Activism and the Liberation of the Self

This chapter explores the political, social, and gendered dynamics of the activist left cultures that preceded the extra-parliamentary scene surrounding the VSC. It shows how young activists’ initial ... More

This chapter explores the political, social, and gendered dynamics of the activist left cultures that preceded the extra-parliamentary scene surrounding the VSC. It shows how young activists’ initial steps into these cultures invariably began with encounters with late fifties and early sixties sub-cultures, including ‘Angry Young Men’ and French existential movements, and CND. The chapter encompasses individuals’ radical reading, dramatic, musical, and other cultural and political experiences, to consider the meaning these held for youngsters in the context of their childhood histories. It addresses the gendered dimension of radical sub-cultural experiences in the early-to-mid 1960s, including young women and men’s experiences inside the YS and the Trotskyist groups, the IS and the International group (later known as the IMG). The argument is that masculine radical cultures added to the contradictory discourses constituting ‘woman’ and ‘man’ that visibly prevailed throughout the post-war society in which interviewees were shaping identities.Less

Quick Conversions and Slow Apologies in Postwar Japan

Christopher Ives

in Imperial-Way Zen: Ichikawa Hakugen's Critique and Lingering Questions for Buddhist Ethics

This chapter outlines Ichikawa's analysis of issues that lingered after 1945 and analyzes whether postwar Zen thinkers have reflected on their wartime political stances and on that basis expressed ... More

This chapter outlines Ichikawa's analysis of issues that lingered after 1945 and analyzes whether postwar Zen thinkers have reflected on their wartime political stances and on that basis expressed contrition, accepted responsibility, and criticized postwar vestiges—including State Shinto, the imperial ideology, and imperialism. Hovering over Zen and other sects of Japanese Buddhism is the issue of the extent to which their leaders should bear responsibility for Japan's expansionist imperialism and the Fifteen-Year War. This normative question raises the empirical question of what Buddhists have done since 1945 about their possible war responsibility (senso sekinin), and whether postwar Buddhists have formulated systems of social ethics rigorous enough to preclude future political stances reminiscent of Imperial-Way Buddhism.Less

First Downpour: Chinese Immigrants and Gilded Age Politics, 1876–1882

Lon Kurashige

in Two Faces of Exclusion: The Untold History of Anti-Asian Racism in the United States

This chapter examines the first policy to restrict Chinese immigration to the United States by tracing its background in broad political transformations during the Gilded Age, including the end of ... More

This chapter examines the first policy to restrict Chinese immigration to the United States by tracing its background in broad political transformations during the Gilded Age, including the end of Reconstruction, rapid industrialization, and swings in the business cycle. It provides a close analysis of congressional voting patterns during two Congresses that approved bills to restrict Chinese labor immigrants, the first (passed in 1879) was vetoed by the president, while the second (passed in 1882) became the law of the land. The debate over both policies revealed the polarization of views in Congress and the broader society about the Chinese. The return of the Democrats to power and the Midwestern revolt against big businesses (often identified with the Republicans) combined with racial prejudice to win support for the restriction of Chinese workers.Less

Limitation periods

Andrew Burrows

in Remedies for Torts, Breach of Contract, and Equitable Wrongs

Although, strictly speaking, the law of limitation is separate from the law of remedies, the two are closely connected. Moreover, it has been said to be ‘… trite law that the English Limitation ... More

Although, strictly speaking, the law of limitation is separate from the law of remedies, the two are closely connected. Moreover, it has been said to be ‘… trite law that the English Limitation Acts bar the remedy and not the right’. It has therefore been thought helpful to include here a very brief outline of limitation periods for claims for damages, albeit with the warning that this chapter does not attempt to deal with all the details of the law. Less