Diverse Voices - Databases for Social Justice Topics on HeinOnline

HeinOnline has some excellent curated collections for researchers interested in different social justice issues in American legal history. 

Page of Cherokee laws, in
Cherokee. The Cherokee syllabary
(not exactly an alphabet) was
developed by Sequoyah
(without using any other
writing system!) and introduced
to the Cherokee people in 1821.
Sequoyah Birthplace
Museum. The syllabary is still used.
See Cherokee Nation's Language page.

The American Indian Law Collection has thousands of documents from a variety of sources. Some are from the perspective of the federal government—the government reports, legislation, and treaties. But there are also tribal documents that Hein's editors have found, such as Acts of the Cherokee Nation from 1870-72, in Cherokee, as well as hundreds of other tribal constitutions, bylaws, and acts.  

Exploring further, you can find non-legal material, like Cry of the Thunderbird: The American Indian's Own Story, a collection edited by Charles Hamilton in 1950, and the recent collection, Why You Can't Teach United States History Without American Indians (2015).

The Civil Rights and Social Justice collection brings together scholarly articles, hearings, government reports, and briefs. Browsing the briefs, I saw many topics, including fair housing, marriage equality, affirmative action, health care, and employment discrimination. With one search you can pull up books, law review articles, briefs, and more.

Did you know that Langston Hughes wrote an illustrated history of the NAACP? I didn't. But Fight for Freedom: The Story of the NAACP (1962) is on HeinOnline!

Are you interested in slavery, which has been so important in shaping American law and society? Then make use of HeinOnline's collection, Slavery in America and the World: History, Culture & Law. Edited by legal historian Paul Finkelman, this collection has statutes, cases, scholarly articles, books (from University of North Carolina Press), and an extensive bibliography. 

The Women and the Law collection (nicknamed Peggy, after a developer's mother) also has a wide variety of materials, from briefs to scholarly articles. It includes proceedings of a feminist legal theory conference that was held each year, 1985-2018. You can browse topics, such as abortion or suffrage. And it has a collection of biographies, from well-starched ladies from the nineteenth century to Florynce "Flo" Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical, by Sherrie M. Randolph (2015).

 

Tip: When you follow a link to HeinOnline and are asked for authentication, choose Off-Campus/Remote Access. You'll want "University of Washington Gallagher Law Library," after which you'll be prompted for your UW NetID. I usually search for "gallagher" because that's faster than searching for "washington." (There's only one Gallagher in HeinOnline's list of subscribers, but there are several universities and law schools with "Washington" in their names.)

 

This post is part of the Gallagher Law Library’s Diverse Voices Series.