- The Old Story of a New Law? Chicago Husband-Killers and their Exonerations, 1867-1930 -

Dr. Marianne Constable discusses “Chicago Husband-Killing and the New Unwritten Law,” a study in history, law, and rhetoric that explores the cases of the 250+ women who killed their partners in Chicago between 1867 and 1931. Even before women were allowed on juries and contrary to much received wisdom, all-male coroner’s juries, grand juries and petit juries of the period exonerated most wives who killed their husbands, according to what newspapers dubbed “the new unwritten law.”

Dr. Marianne Constable is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of California (Berkeley). She is author of The Law of the Other: The Mixed Jury and Changing Conceptions of Citizenship, Law and Knowledge (winner of the Law & Society Association J. Willard Hurst Prize in Legal History); Just Silences: The Limits and Possibilities of Modern Law; and Our Word is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts (finalist for two Socio-Legal Studies Association book prizes).

This event is co-sponsored by the Canadian Research Chair in Rhetoric and Ethics and the Department of Philosophy.