Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West ed. by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell

Abstract

Reviewed by: Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West ed. by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell Benjamin C. Montoya Beyond the Borders of the Law: Critical Legal Histories of the North American West. Edited by Katrina Jagodinsky and Pablo Mitchell. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2018. Pp. 368. Illustrations, notes, index.) Beyond the Borders of the Law argues against a long-held perception of the American West as a historically lawless borderland region of the United States. Instead, this edited volume contends that an "abundance of law" played a key role in tying nascent, distant territories to U.S. society (viii). Even as law covered the land, however, the meanings and applicability of law in the borderlands were fluid and negotiated between the colonized and the colonizers. The volume demonstrates how marginalized peoples used "cracks and fissures" in the law to their advantage in the liminal spaces of the American West (ix). The volume's introduction highlights the various scholarly approaches that underline a critical legal history of the North American West. First is the new western history approach that focuses on histories of conquest and dispossession as a way to critique the Turner thesis; second, critical race theory, whichindicates how race, racism, and racialism were central to legal and historical formations of American authority over western border territories; third is new western legal history, which accounts for the statutory and social factors that marginalize nonwhite peoples in the West; and fourth is critical legal history, which signals how law is complicit in establishing and preserving inequality. The ten contributors to this volume offer compelling case studies of how law is interpreted, negotiated, and made across various borderlands spaces. Chapters 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9 will be of particular interest for readers [End Page 229] of southwestern history. Alicia Gutiérrez-Romine analyzes how American women increasingly crossed the border into Mexico to seek abortions as medical-legal constraints on the procedure became more prevalent in California between the 1930s and 1960s. Not coincidentally, increasing legal restraints on abortions led to the creation of an underground abortion market, which, in tandem with increasing restrictions against immigration, led to a "more visible" border between the United States and Mexico (117). Dana Elizabeth Weiner demonstrates how African Americans viewed property ownership as a way to forge autonomy and citizenship in mid-nineteenth century California. Land ownership represented independence at a time when the legal standing of African Americans and the institution of slavery itself were being fundamentally challenged nationwide. Tom Romero emphasizes how water law and policy created racism and racial hierarchy in the American West between the 1890s and 1930s. Access to water rights often paralleled the distinction between "desirable" immigrants who were considered fit for U.S. citizenship and "undesirable" immigrants who were deemed inferior. Kelly Lytle Hernández shows how the U.S. Bureau of Prisons designed programs to deport Mexican nationals to Mexico in the early twentieth century. Such actions were concurrent with increased federal efforts to restrict Mexican immigration during the 1920s and 1930s. Allison Powers Useche discusses how during those same years Mexican nationals filed claims to the U.S.-Mexico Claims Commission to seek legal redress for relatives who had been harmed while residing in the United States. These "now-forgotten claims" represented an "unanticipated challenge" to U.S. notions of political economy and to U.S. diplomatic power (282). Beyond the Borders of the Law shows how even as law was important in codifying the colonization of territory and the marginalization of borderlands peoples, it was utilized by colonized and marginalized persons to protect their interests and to provide for their needs. The chapters' vignettes of personal experiences along with the various liminal spaces of the American West are particularly suited for classroom use, especially at the graduate level. As such, a glossary explaining such terms as "the doctrine of prior appropriation" (167) and "mens rea defense" (241) would make this book more usable for student and non-scholarly readers. Benjamin C. Montoya Schreiner University Copyright © 2020 The Texas State Historical Association