Toward a History of Children as Witnesses

Authors

David S. Tanenhaus, University of Nevada, Las Vegas -- William S. Boyd School of Law
William Bush

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2007

Abstract

This brief essay offers a selective overview of recent trends in the historical scholarship on American childhood from the origins of the American Revolution to the early years of the Cold War. This overview of the literature has two purposes. First, it highlights recent socio-cultural scholarship that presents substantive challenges to the conventional ways of understanding the history of children and the law. Second, in so doing, it points out that legal histories concerned solely with doctrinal matters can, and often do, present a limited and distorted window into the past. Instead, the essay argues that the place of children, historically, has been far more complex and contingent than many, both inside and outside the courtroom, have assumed.

Publication Citation

82 Ind. L.J. 1059 (2007).

Recommended Citation

Tanenhaus, David S. and Bush, William, "Toward a History of Children as Witnesses" (2007). Scholarly Works. 592.
https://scholars.law.unlv.edu/facpub/592