On March 26

On this day in ...
... 1913, in Chartres, France, a daughter, Jacqueline, was born to a novelist and her husband, a philosophy professor, who was killed in World War I combat the next year. As a school girl Jacqueline was a top student in Latin and ancient Greek, eventually studying the latter at École Normale Supérieure. Her 1940 marriage would end in divorce; she would be forced out of a teaching job and into hiding because of her Jewish heritage. After World War II, however, Dr. Jacqueline de Romilly (above left) would become a champion of the humanities, "one of France’s leading scholars of Greek civilization and language and only the second woman to be elected to the Académie Française." In 1973, de Romilly became the 1st woman professor at the Collège de France, the prestigious institution now home to IntLawGrrls ' guest/alumna Mireille Delmas-Marty. Professor de Romilly died, at age 97, in December of last year.

(Prior March 26 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On March 19

On this day in ...
... 1891 (120 years ago today), a son was born in Los Angeles, California, to an immigrant couple -- a mother born in Sweden and a Norway-born father who worked as a railroad car repairer and inspector. They would move to the Central Valley town of Bakersfield, where the father "slipped into the way of an eccentric who did not live with his family," and the son worked odd jobs while attending public schools. The son, Earl Warren (left), earned law degrees from the University of California, Berkeley, served in World War I, and then began a career in law and Republican politics that culminated in his 1953 appointment to be the 14th Chief Justice of the United States. Though he'd served as a prosecutor and also supported the World War II internment of Californians of Japanese ancestry, the Supreme Court over which Warren presided is known to this day for its pathbreaking recognitions of the rights of the accused and its condemnations of racial segregation. (image credit) Most noted among the latter is Brown v. Board of Education (1954), an opinion that Warren wrote after securing a unanimous holding that the segregation of schools by race is, in his words, "inherently unequal." Warren died at age 83 in 1974, 5 years after his retirement from the bench.


(Prior March 19 posts are here, here, here, and here.)

On March 17

On this day in ...
... 1921 (90 years ago today), the Republic of Poland that had been formed in 1918, after both World War I and the ouster by uprising of German/Prussian occupying forces, adopted a Polish Constitution. Based on its French counterpart, this Polish charter included many democratic elements, such as this ban on discrimination, in Article 95:

The Republic of Poland guarantees on its territory, to all, without distinction of extraction, nationality, language, race, or religion, full protection of life, liberty, and property.

It would come to an end with the adoption of a more authoritarian charter in 1935, in what would prove to be the runup to World War II.

(Prior March 17 posts are here, here, and here, and here.)

On February 9

On this day in ...
... 1916 (95 years ago today), Britain began conscripting men between 18 and 41 years of age to fight in the conflict that it had entered nearly 2 years earlier. A million persons already had volunteered, but more were needed due to heavy losses. (The July 1916 Battle of the Somme would claim 20,000 British lives on the 1st day alone.) By the time World War I ended, more than "4.5 million Britons served in arms (in addition to over three million troops from the British Empire)." Many in the latter group arrived only after significant resistance in their home countries, as described, e.g., here (photo credit) and here.

(Prior February 9 posts are here, here, and here.)

How 'bout a women's legal history trial?

A prince is about to stand trial for murder.

He's Hamlet, fatal assailant of the meddlesome man destined (if Ophelia had her way) to become his father-in-law.

At issue: given the welter of woe in which Shakespeare situated the troubled Dane, is the prince mentally competent to face judgment?

"The Trial of Hamlet" will take place January 31 at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. (here for tickets & image credit) Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who created the play, will preside. A jury including celebs like Helen Hunt will decide.

Karen Wada of the Los Angeles Times properly places the staging in a Court tradition, writing that "[i]n 1987, for instance, three high court jurists heard arguments over who really wrote Shakespeare's plays." (On continuing high court furor over the question, see this article by Jess Bravin.)

Blog readers no doubt also are familiar with the many trials of this sort staged by the American Bar Association.

So here's a thought:

How 'bout retrying some signature event of women's legal history? (And see here and here.)

Jumping to mind are 2, both involving IntLawGrrls foremothers:

► The 1873 conviction of Susan B. Anthony (by a U.S. Supreme Court Justice) for the offense of illegal voting.

► Any number of 1917 jailings -- at times brutal -- of Alice Paul, Lucy Burns (left), and their National Woman's Party colleagues for the "direct action campaign" against U.S. entry into World War I. As IntLawGrrls alumna Catherine Lanctot has posted, they took that campaign to "the very doorstep of the President of the United States, Woodrow Wilson."

Additional nominations welcome.

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

The wrangling over reparations also helped turn the German people against co-operation with the international system.

-- Oxford historian Margaret MacMillan (right) in a New York Times op-ed marking the recent payment-in-full by Germany of reparations assessed against it at the end of World War I. In the essay Macmillan (prior IntLawGrrls posts) seesaws between the good and the bad, the rightness and wrongness of these reparations -- an ambiguity that, as she notes, persists in postconflict situations to this day.

Decolonization dance

Indépendance cha-cha is the lively name Le Monde has given to the history of French decolonization featured in this multimedia presentation.
With the run of the cursor you can stream through time, clicking to stop when the spirit moves. Examples:
► Listen to the rallying song Débout les Zouaves while reading about World War I (1914-1918), during which French forces included more than 200,000 persons from colonies in sub-Saharan Africa and Madagascar -- more than 25,000 of whom died in the conflict.
► The Colonial Exposition -- and the Counter-Exposition mounted by André Breton and other surrealists -- both held in Paris in 1931.
► Publication of Peau noire, masques blancs (1952) by the Martinique-born psychiatrist and anticolonial theorist Frantz Fanon (depicted not only in a photograph but also via audio of a lecture he gave).
► The securing, in rapid succession in 1960 and 1961, of independence by many former French colonies in Africa; followed by occasional French interventions ever since.
► 2007 accusations of corruption by leaders in certain African countries, about which IntLawGrrls posted.
► Video of a 2007 speech in Senegal by President Nicolas Sarkozy -- that that left "Africans ... seething."
Worth your time to give cha-cha a spin.

On September 5

On this day in ...

... 1915 (95 years ago today), as trench warfare dragged on across Europe, about 40 delegates from 11 countries opened a 6-day meeting, known as the Zimmerwald Conference in recognition of the Swiss municipality where it was held. Among those attending this 1st First International Socialist Conference were the exiled Russians Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. The meeting would end on September 11 with a manifesto that demanded an immediate end to World War I:

[W]orkers within each country should try by any means necessary to convert the current capitalist struggle into a more enlightened one: an international workers’ revolution or civil war 'between the classes' that would spread throughout Europe, and eventually the world.

It further praised certain comrades, among them Rosa Luxemburg (above, near left), Clara Zetkin (far left), and Louise Saumoneau. (credit for 1911 photo)


(Prior September 5 posts are here, here, and here.)

On August 10

On this day in ...
... 1920 (90 years ago today), in a community outside Paris, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed by representatives of the Allied Powers who'd won World War I and of the Ottoman Empire they'd defeated. By the treaty's terms the Ottoman Empire was abolished. Turkey was to give up rights to Arab Asia and North Africa, while Armenia was to become independent and Kurdistan autonomous, and Greece was to control specified regions. (credit for photo of Greek Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos signing the treaty) "Rejected by the new Turkish nationalist regime, the Treaty of Sèvres was replaced by the Treaty of Lausanne," Switzerland, the 1923 pact discussed in this post.

(Prior August 10 posts are here, here, and here.)

On May 29

On this day in ...
... 1919, a group led by a former schoolmaster who'd fought in World War I invoked the self-determination provision in U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points speech, and declared the independent Republic of Prekmurje, the land (left) on which they lived, in southeastern Europe. (photo credit) Their effort was short-lived: within weeks the territory was "incorporated" into the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes created in the wake of the war. Later it was part of Yugoslavia. Today it's the eastermost tip of Slovenia.

(Prior May 29 posts are here, here, and here.)

On April 14

On this day in ...
... 1935 (75 years ago today), an international meeting ended at Stresa, a town at Lake Maggiore (below left), with the Final Declaration of the Stresa Conference. By this pact Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, along with leaders of France and Britain, aimed "to resist further German breaches" of the post-World War I Versailles Treaty "and German actions likely to endanger the peace of Europe." Among other things, the independence of Austria was deemed "common policy." Within years the parties would fight against one another in World War II.

(Prior April 14 posts are here, here, and here)

On March 29

On this day in ...
... 1919, the Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties, chaired by U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing (below left) and including 14 other men from 10 countries, presented its Report to the Preliminary Peace Conference convened at the end of World War I, as we've posted here, here, and here. (photo credit) Nearly 80 years later, in Prosecutor v. Delalić (1998), ¶¶ 336-37, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia discussed a key aspect of this report:

[I]t is often suggested that the roots of the modern doctrine of command responsibility may be found in the Hague Conventions of 1907. It was not until the end of the First World War, however, that the notion of individual criminal responsibility for failure to take the necessary measures to prevent or to repress breaches of the laws of armed conflict was given explicit expression in an international context. In its report presented to the Preliminary Peace Conference in 1919, the International Commission on the Responsibility of the Authors of the War and on Enforcement of Penalties recommended that a tribunal be established for the prosecution of, inter alia, all those who, "ordered, or with knowledge thereof and with power to intervene, abstained from preventing or taking measures to prevent, putting an end to or repressing violations of the laws or customs of war."
Such a tribunal was never realised, however, and it was only in the aftermath of the Second World War that the doctrine of command responsibility for failure to act received its first judicial recognition in an international context.

(Prior March 29 posts are here, here, and here)

On March 12

On this day in ...
... 1862, Jane Delano (left) was born in Schuyler County, New York, and soon after lost her father, a casualty of the Civil War. Following a short stint at teaching, she enrolled in the Bellevue Training School for Nurses, graduating in 1886. Her reason?

I think the nurse's profession is a fine one, and I like it.

Delano not only practiced but also taught nursing. She served as superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps from 1909 to 1912, and then founded the American Red Cross Nursing Service, which tended to those injured in World War I. During an inspection of conditions in postwar France, she contracted an ear infection and died in 1919 at a base hospital. She's buried in Washington's Arlington Cemetery.

(Prior March 12 posts are here, here, and here)

On December 3

On this day in ...
... 1914 (95 years ago today) , during World War I, Belgians, who'd been occupied over the course of recent months by the forces of the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, were delivered this proclamation:

His Majesty, the Emperor and King, having deigned to appoint me Governor-General in Belgium, I have to-day assumed the direction of affairs.
BARON VON BISSING. Brussels, December 3, 1914.

The rule of Moritz Ferdinand Freiherr von Bissing (above right), a Prussian military general, would be marked by collective punishments (violative of the Article 50 of the Annex to the 1907 Hague Convention No. IV respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land) and other harsh measures. Bissing signed the death warrant of a British nurse working with the Red Cross in Brussels -- Edith Cavell (left), who'd organized an underground network through whch Allied soldiers escaped Belgium.

(Prior December 3 posts are here and here.)

On July 16

On this day in ...
... 1862, in the middle of the Civil War and half a year before issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation, Ida B. Wells was born to a couple held in slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi. Ida attended Freedmen's School Shaw University, but dropped out of school and started working as a teacher at age 16 in order to keep her siblings together after their parents and an infant brother died from yellow fever. Eventually she moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where her refusal to sit in the train car designated for blacks gave rise both to a high-profile court case and to her career as a crusading journalist. She became a co-owner and editor of a leading antisegregation newspaper and an investigative reporter who focused on the crime of lynching. She settled in Chicago, where she helped to organize an African-American boycott of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, married and raised a family, and worked to improve the lot of the city's ever-growing African-American population. Wells traveled as far as Europe to speak in favor of racial equality before her death in Chicago in 1931. She is an IntLawGrrls transnational foremother, thanks to guest/alumna Lynne Henderson. As posted at Legal History blog, Wells also is the subject of a new biography, Ida: A Sword Among Lions (2008) (above left), by Smith College Professor Paula J. Giddings.
... 1945, about 6 weeks after Nazi Germany's surrender, leaders of 3 victorious Allied states -- Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union -- convened at Potsdam "to decide the future of a defeated Germany." Their conference (right) concluded on August 2 with issuance at this city southwest of Berlin of the Potsdam Declaration. It contained not only provisions for the division of Germany into 4 occupied zones, but also a warning, issued on July 26, which warned Japan that if it did not surrender the Allies would resort to

'[t]he full application of our military power, backed by our resolve,' which 'mean[t] the inevitable and complete destruction of the Japanese armed forces and just as inevitably the utter devastation of the Japanese homeland.'

No surrender ensued, and atomic bombs were dropped on Japan on August 6 and 9. (photo credit)

(Prior July 16 posts are here and here.)

International law & Liberty

By now many will have read that on this Independence Day Liberty's crown reopens to tourists willing to walk the 168 steps to the top of the 125-year-old Statue about which we've posted. It's the 1st day since September 11, 2001, that visitors will be permitted in this part of the statue.
But few may know that there's another off-limits part of the statue. It's the torch -- it too was closed on account of a terrorist act, and long before 9/11.
On the night of July 30, 1916, land in and around New York's harbor was rocked by "massive explosions, in quick succession." The devastation is evident in photos available here. What came to be known as the Black Tom blasts could be felt in Philadelphia 90 miles away, and shattered nearly all windows in Manhattan and New Jersey. The island on which Liberty stands was shaken, and her torch closed. (credit for Works Progress Administration poster)
There're 2 international law twists to this story:
► The bombing, which occurred as war raged in Europe, was attributed to agents of Imperial Germany. But by the time the American-German Mixed Claims Commission formed after World War I found Germany liable for $21 million plus interest, Hitler-led Germany refused to pay. (p. 500)
► Following the end of World War II, one German on whom suspicion for the Black Tom disaster had settled, Franz von Papen, was charged based on other conduct with crimes against peace and tried before the International Military Trial at Nuremberg, which acquitted him in the Trial of the Major War Criminals.
And the closed-off part of the statue? Later replaced and now on museum display, Liberty's original torch never reopened.

On June 16

On this day in ...
... 1938, Joyce Carol Oates (right) was born in Millersport, New York. She studied English at Syracuse University, and received her M.A. from the University of Wisconsin in 1961. Oates has had a very prolific writing career in various genres, including horror, supernatural fiction, nonfiction, and, under the pseudonym Rosamond Smith, mystery fiction. (photo credit) Oates is known for her violent writing, often with women abused at the hands of men. On the question of why her writing is violent, Oates contended that the question is sexist, and wrote,

The serious writer, after all, bears witness.

Among her honors are the National Book Award, 3 Pulitzer Prize nominations, and the 2007 Humanist of the Year. Oates also has taught for most of her life, 1st at the University of Detroit, then at the University of Windsor, and, since 1978, at Princeton University.
… 1915, Britain's 1st Women’s Institute (logo below left) meeting took place at Llanfairpwll on Anglesey, in north Wales. Its aim was to revitalize rural communities and encourage women to help produce food during World War I. Later, it campaigned for improvements in women's education, and lobbied governments about family-planning facilities and equal pay. Today, its website says,

We play a unique role in providing women with educational opportunities and the chance to build new skills, to take part in a wide variety of activities and to campaign on issues that matter to them and their communities.

The movie Calendar Girls (2003) is based on the nude calendar that an affiliate, the Rylstone Women’s Institute, produced to raise money for the British organization Leukaemia Research.

(Prior June 16 posts are here and here.)

On May 19

On this day in ...
... 1918, No. 1 Canadian Hospital, Canadian Army Medical Corps, in Étaples, France, was bombed by German airplanes. As a result of the air raid 25-year-old Katherine Maude MacDonald became the first Canadian nurse to die in action, during World War I. MacDonald (right) had graduated from the nursing school at Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario, and worked for as a private nurse before traveling to England to become a military nurse. (photo credit) She would receive a military funeral, burial in Étaples Military Cemetery, and posthumous award of the British War Medal and the Victory Medal.
... 1967, the Soviet Union ratified a treaty banning nuclear weapons in outer space. The Soviet Union, the United States, and Britain had signed what's commonly called the Outer Space Treaty -- known in full as the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies -- in Moscow on January 27th of the same year. The U.S. Senate had approved it 88-0 in April; in full, 79 states had signed the treaty in interim months. Entry into force awaited ratification by Britain and 2 additional states. That would occur on October 10, 1967. (photo credit)

(Prior May 19 posts are here and here.)

On May 4

On this day in ...
... 1919 (90 years ago today), "massive popular protest ... took place in China ... following the announcement of the terms of the Versailles Treaty," which, as we've posted, ceded territories on China's mainland that formerly had been held by Germany to Japan rather than returning them to China. The 1919 protests (left) exemplified what came to be called China's "May 4th Movement," or "new culture" movement, which emerged a few years earlier out of discontent with the failure of efforts in 1911 to set up a republican government. (image credit) This website maintains:

Its importance equals if not surpasses the more commonly known political revolutions of the century. The movement articulated the contempt for traditional Chinese culture felt by many Chinese intellectuals. These intellectuals blamed traditional culture for the dramatic and rapid fall of China into a subordinate international position, and maintained that China's cultural values prevented China from matching the industrial and military development of Japan and the West. ... The way out of China's problems, many believed, was to adopt Western notions of equality and democracy and to abandon the Confucian approach which stressed hierarchy in relationships and obedience. Science and democracy became the code words of the day.

... 1814 (195 years ago today), the 45-year-old former French Emperor, Napoleon I, began an exile on Elba in accordance with the 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau. He began his stay on the Italian island (pop. 12,000) by entering its capital city, Portoferraio, and declaring, "I want to live from now on like a justice of the peace." Within a year he would return to the European mainland to try to reclaim his prior empire. (credit for 1814 political cartoon)

(Prior May 4 posts are here and here.)

On April 30

On this day in ...
... 1927, at a 500-acre site in Alderson, West Virginia, about 270 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., the Federal Industrial Institution for Women, the 1st women's prison run by the U.S. government, opened. Intended for every woman sentenced to a year or more, the prison run by Dr. Mary Belle Harris (far left) held, for the most part, persons convicted of Prohibition-era alcohol- or drug-related crimes. Among those urging its establishment had been Eleanor Roosevelt (center, with Elinor Morgenthau near right). According to this website:

One judge described the prison as a 'fashionable boarding school.' In some respects the judge was correct; the overriding purpose of the prison was to reform the inmates, not punish them. The prisoners farmed the land and performed office work in order to learn how to type and file. They also cooked and canned vegetables and fruits.

Today, Alderson remains a minimum-security prison holding about a thousand convicted women. (credit for 1934 photo taken at Alderson)
... 1919 (90 years ago today), at the Paris Peace Conference, the "Big Three" powers of the United States, France, and Great Britain, agreed, over China's objection, with Japan's claim to the Shantung province that once had belonged to now-vanquished Germany. President Woodrow Wilson conditioned his approval on a requirement that Japan return the province -- now known as Shandong, in red on map (credit) -- "once China's civil strife ended."

(Prior April 30 posts are here and here.)