The irony of McCarthyism is that this incident was truly a dark, “Un-American” incident of American history. Many historians and researchers have attempted to recount what really happened in that era and have tried to answer the question, “Why and how did one Senator manage to force America into being so devoid of reason and common sense for five years?” Many books and studies concerning McCarthyism have been published. While some of them have dealt with Joseph McCarthy—the person whose name was used to describe the era—or examined the foreign and internal affairs concerning the Cold War structure at the time, there have also been books which have focused on the influence which this incident had on show business, including especially Hollywood and Broadway. Among these writings was Scoundrel Time(1976), written by Lillian Hellman, a popular playwright for Broadway and a talented script writer for Hollywood at the time. In this work, she revisited her days and experiences with McCarthyism.

The highlight of the book is when Hellman recalls the time when she herself was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee known as the HUAC. She was a victim of the notorious act of “naming names.” Hellman was famous for her notable behavior at the meeting. Not only was she courageous, but she also outwitted the HUAC, and survived the ordeal without having to name names. She declared, “I cannot and will not cut my conscience to fit this year’s fashions,” and this declaration became her trademark. There were people who congratulated her for her courage. Yet, at the same time, some people such as Lionel Trilling and his wife Diane and other so-called “the educated, the intellectual” attacked Hellman for her lack of knowledge about Communism in the Soviet Union and denounced her as having been a supporter of Stalinism. There is, however, one similarity between those who supported Hellman and those who didn’t. Both referred to Scoundrel Time as just a historical record of the McCarthy era but failed to consider the fact that it was written in the form of a memoir. As Susan Sontag wrote in an essay, “the strongly individual style of each important writer is an organic aspect of his work.” Thus, when readers consider Hellman’s Scoundrel Time, it is not only important to understand it as a record of that era, but also to understand that it was written as her memoir.

This paper examines Hellman’s intentions in writing her account of McCarthyism in the form of a memoir by focusing on minor characters in the memoir, and by highlighting Hellman’s moral intention of questioning the role of “self” and the notion of “subject” with respect to her writing style. By paying attention to the fact that Scoundrel Time is, indeed, a memoir, this paper aims to shed light on the question of what it means to be “American” and Hellman’s ethical position in the era of McCarthyism.

It is a common understanding that trial by jury lies at the heart of American judicial system. Focusing on criminal petit jury, the author discusses in this paper that this notion is a “myth” in dual senses. On the one hand, it is a reality that jury trials do not play a major role in the handling of criminal cases today. On the other hand, however, the U.S. Supreme Court constructs a story that emphasizes the importance of jury trials as an essential element of American justice.

After formal indictment and arraignment, the defendant has the opportunity to enter a plea of guilty or of not-guilty. If the defendant maintains a plea of not-guilty, the case proceeds to trial stage, usually with a jury. However, if the defendant enters a guilty plea, a trial is skipped and the case goes forward to sentencing stage.

Today, the vast majority of criminal cases are resolved with guilty pleas after the practice called plea bargaining. To induce the defendant enter a plea of guilty, the prosecutor offers terms favorable to the defendant. Once the defendant is satisfied with the terms, he and the prosecutor enter into an agreement and the defendant changes his plea from not-guilty to guilty. The judge usually defers to the plea agreement.

In the 2010s, more than 95% of criminal cases, at both the federal and state levels, are disposed of with a guilty plea, usually after a plea bargain, while the rate was around 80–85% until the 1980s. It is difficult to pinpoint a specific cause, and both of legal and practical/cultural factors contribute to the trend. Faced with increased number of crimes and political pressure, prosecutors with limited resources want to resolve cases as easily as possible. They utilize the discretion afforded by the legal system, such as decisions regarding which defendant’s conduct to prosecute and under which offense, to obtain a plea of guilty. Recent developments in criminal law, including the adoption of sentencing guidelines and legislations of mandatory minimum sentencing laws, have given prosecutors even more power.

Despite these realities, recent U.S. Supreme Court cases have emphasized that juries are an essential part of the American justice system. In Ramos v. Louisiana, 140 S. Ct. 1390(2020), the Court held that the Sixth Amendment requires States that a unanimous jury is necessary to convict a defendant. While a 1968 case held that the Sixth Amendment was applied to the States, unanimity, the traditional style of jury, was not constitutionally required of the States, and Louisiana and Oregon used non-unanimous juries. Ramos ended the exception, requiring the traditional jury uniformly throughout the Nation.

Traditionally, sentencing was considered to be entirely within the discretion of the sentencing judge. Apprendi v. New Jersey, 530 U.S. 466(2000), and its progeny, however, recognized the jury’s expanded role in sentencing. Apprendi held that a fact or a factor that should enhance a sentence must be presented to, proved, and found by a jury under Amendment VI. The following cases have applied Apprendi to diverse sentencing schemes, including the death penalty and sentencing guidelines.

In addition, other Supreme Court cases seek to remove vestiges of racism from various aspects of jury trials, such as jury selection and the confidentiality of jury deliberations.

Through these cases, the Supreme Court has woven the story of the sanctity of the jury. On the other hand, the author finds no sign of change from the marginalization of jury trials. The divergence between the ideal and reality will be persisting.

The Constitution of the United States of America is the oldest among the ones in the modern ages as has been continuously inured to the present. One of the characteristics of the American political culture is the principle of “the rule of law,” which is thought to be the synonymy of democracy. Among others, the U.S. Supreme Court, as the ultimate referee of the meaning of the constitution and the last defender of the equal protection under the law, has changed its interpretations of the constitution. The U.S. Constitution itself has also changed its essential meanings by adding amendments, whose total number is twenty-seven so far. Especially, the Supreme Court’s decisions and the constitutional amendments concerning the “race” have dramatically influenced the American society in general. In this article, focuses are particularly put on the decisions on the following three fields, that is, slavery and the civil rights, school and residential integration, and the voting rights. The author is interested in, for instance, the following questions. Why and how could the original republic, successful in being independent based on the universal natural rights, justified the continuous existence of hereditary slavery strictly based on the “one-drop rule”? Why did the Jim Crow, the legalized segregation based on “race” authorized by the local laws in the South, was recognized by the Supreme Court after the establishment of the 14th and 15th Amendments? Why and on what logics did the Supreme Court justices apparently change their original mind of the Brown decision and was they determined to lead the American society back to the days of Jim Crow?

Chapter 1 deals with the relationship between the Supreme Court and the slavery and its aftermath. Focuses are put on the following three decisions: Dred Scott and Sandford(1857), which resulted in the Civil War and three constitutional amendments; the Civil Rights cases(1883), which declared the fatal limitation to the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments; and Pressey v. Ferguson(1896), which gave the national sanction to Jim Crow in the South.

Chapter 2 deals with the Supreme Court decisions concerning the integration of the school and the residence, one of the most controversial issues since the epoch-making Brown was delivered by all the nine justices unanimously in 1954. The case mainly picked up in this section is Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education which declared “integration now” in 1969.

Chapter 3 deals with the Supreme Court decisions in the field of the voting rights. Although the Voting Rights Act of 1965, one of the two positive results of the Civil Rights Movement led by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., brought about a tremendous change to the politics not only in the South but also in the American society in general, the Supreme Court, by a 5–4 narrow margin, undermined it by Shelby County v. Holder in 2013. Shelby decision has been the target of severe criticisms by a lot of lawyers and law school professors who have long been engaged in the civil rights issues. Obviously, it was the first example among the Supreme Court decisions that leads to the nation backward with regards to the civil rights. Shelby has no doubt helped the birth of the Trump administration and deepened the conspicuous political cleavage of the present-day American Society.

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The Indian Water Rights issues are issues of tribal sovereignty. The Indian reserved water rights doctrine, also known as Winters doctrine, was established through the U.S. Supreme Court decision, Winters v. United States (1908). In the decision, the Court decided that sufficient water should be implicitly reserved to fulfill the purpose of establishment of Indian reservations. Indian reserved water rights possess seniority over state water uses and retain validity regardless of whether tribes have put the water to beneficial use or not.

Winters doctrine’s significance lies in its respect for treaty rights of native nations which had been disgraced by previous court cases. The Marshall trilogy, a series of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the 1820s and 30s, denied the aboriginal land rights of native nations and justified federal power over tribal sovereignty; Native nations were defined as domestic dependent nations and put under federal laws. In the cases of United States v. Kagama, (1886) and Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock (1903), the Supreme Court declared that the U.S. Congress possesses “plenary power,” and its authority could abrogate United States’ treaty obligations promised to native nations.

The Winters decision left a window for tribes to exercise their sovereign power. However, for years, the doctrine had not brought the promised water to reservations. Federal assistance needed to assert tribes’ water rights had not been provided. While the Bureau of Indian Affairs had neglected irrigation projects in reservations, the Bureau of Reclamation offered generous funds to water resource developments in the West, exploiting native water.

The Winters doctrine was long neglected and resurrected by Arizona v. California (1963) which set PIA standards to calculate the amount of water promised to tribes. In the 1970s, Montana tribes fought a series of court cases against the state’s attempt to apply state water laws to the tribes’ reserved water. To reclaim their water rights, tribes had to deal with the McCarran Amendment (1952), the purpose of which was to settle water disputes between Western states and the United States. The amendment waives federal sovereign immunity in general stream adjudications in state courts, placing tribes’ water rights under state jurisdiction.

The series of rulings, such as U.S. v. Dist. Court for Eagle County (1971), Colo. River Water Cons. Dist. v. U.S. (1976), and Arizona v. San Carlos Apache Tribe (1983), had made the amendment applicable to Indian reserved water rights and made them vulnerable to state water laws. Arguing against this odd set by the McCarran Amendment, native tribes redefined “trust relationship” by which federal government had taken advantage of Winters doctrine for its own benefit. Eventually, the tribes made their way into water negotiation with states, beginning to finalize tribe-state water rights compacts in the 1980s.

Defending tribal sovereignty in contemporary resource war, native nations not only reclaimed long-forgotten Indian reserved water rights, but also established equal standing required to achieve water agreements in three-way relationship of tribe-state-federal government.

The (Second) Red Scare inflicted deep wounds on Hollywood. In the wake of World War II, the United States countered the Soviet Union with a “containment strategy” abroad while striving to preserve its ideological “consensus” at home. As a result, the U.S. government, led by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), carried out an intense and fiery investigation of the motion picture industry in an effort to eliminate liberal and left-wing activities. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Hollywood went “under trial” as HUAC subpoenaed a slew of filmmakers who were suspected of holding ties to communism. Some of them were “friendly witnesses” who “named names” of left-wing colleagues, while others were “unfriendlies” who refused to cooperate with the investigation. This not only led to the jailing of the so-called “Hollywood Ten,” but the denial of work for a hundreds of filmmakers in the years that followed.

This essay revisits this dark period in the history of U.S. cinema by scrutinizing how Hollywood confronted the Red Scare on the screens. During the 1950s and 1960s, filmmakers responded to the anti-communist “witch hunt” primarily by way of allegorical narratives, such as High Noon (1952), On the Waterfront (1954), Spartacus (1960), and The Planet of the Apes(1968). During the second half of the Cold War, the victims challenged the Red Scare more directly, through such films as The Way We Were (1973), The Front (1976), and Guilty by Suspicion (1991). The past two decades have witnessed the rise of fantasies (The Majestic, 2001) but filmmakers also “tried” the Red Scare through biographical presentations of actual subjects: Edward Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) and Dalton Trumbo in Trumbo (2015). Overall, the representation of HUAC, anti-communism, and the blacklist has become more direct through the passing of time, and the victims’ perspectives have increasingly occupied center stage. However, the cinematic “trial” of “Hollywood on trial” has not met its conclusion just yet. This lack of a consensus mirrors the larger political divide that has fractured American society over the decades.

In 1843, Commodore Matthew C. Perry visited Liberia as the commander of the first United States Africa Squadron (1843–1845) and conducted “palavers” (negotiations with native Africans) to resolve the difficulties faced by the fledging colonies. United States’ naval presence was expected to send clear messages not only to the troublesome natives, but also to the European powers, especially Britain and France, that would grab at the African tribal lands at the first sign of trouble. Perry also had to take into account his own government’s ambiguous attitude toward the colonies, as well as the missionary groups’ not-always amicable presence nearby. This paper analyzes the Commodore’s arbitration and interposition enacted in the palavers, and the ensuing punishment of a recalcitrant native family.

Two major palavers stand out in Perry’s itinerary on western Africa. At Sinoe, a town about halfway between Monrovia and Cape Palmas, native residents had captured a boat from the American schooner Edward Burley and killed two men on it. In the palaver with the guilty natives, Perry magnanimously condoned the murders, requiring only a small compensation for the loss of life. A few days later, at Little Bereby, on the western part of the present-day Cote d’Ivoire, Perry held another palaver, this time on the case of the Mary Caver, whose captain and the whole crew of five had been brutally murdered by a native clan. In this case, Perry was contrastingly hard on the offenders; two leading members of the clan were killed during the scuffle, and 4 towns were burned to ashes.

Even considering the extenuating circumstances in the Edward Burley affair (where the captain was suspected of being involved in slave trade), Perry’s judgments in these two palavers appear to be a bit lopsided. But the difference can be understood if we take a closer look at the social and political contexts behind these two affairs. In the case of the Sinoe palaver, the colonial government was looking primarily at gaining the secure control of the land there, by vanishing the squatting Fishmen. It did not wish to offend the landowners by exacting severe retributive amendments; it did not want to destabilize the peaceful relationship the white missionaries kept with the natives either. Perry’s pardoning of the murderers (while giving powerful negotiating leverage to Governor Roberts) also enabled the colony to develop without interference from European powers. In the Mary Carver affair, however, Perry had to intimidate the native tribes, which had not yet come under the colonial authority, so that Maryland in Africa could wield power over the uncharted territory beyond its borders. The Africa Squadron’s operations evidently had decisive influence on the colony’s acquisition of the land on the western Ivory Coast, but the political legacy he and his squadron would leave on the new republic has not always been auspicious.

This study explores how a broader sense of citizenship was connected to behavior at home and the act of tasting food. How one should behave at home and how one tastes the food on the table not merely propagated the traditional domestic roles of women and class consciousness, but also defined membership in the New Republic from a deep stratum. Moving beyond the framework of women’s and gender history, this paper examines the role of the cookbook and its link to the controversy over who could be a befitting citizen of the New Republic.

In the early 19th century, during the period of the expansion of civil society, Lydia Maria Child (1802–1880), a famous American female writer and social activist, published The Frugal Housewife: Dedicated to Those Who Are Not Ashamed of Economy([1829] 1830). The Frugal Housewife became a bestseller, but simultaneously, was an unusual recipe book. For the “poor” or “middling class” table, Child provided extremely thrifty recipes using animal heads, brains, organs, and even rotten ingredients. This chap and crude cuisine clearly differed from the recipes in other cooking manuals for wealthy middle-class wives. Not surprisingly, reviewers of the Boston literary society spoke ironically of Child’s book as “information at which a palate of tolerable nicety would revolt.”

This study points out that the process of acquiring status as citizens offers a key to unraveling the essence of this strange recipe book. Focusing on The Frugal Housewife’s whole structure, principles, order, and context, it becomes apparent that it was not just a vulgar volume, but embodied a sensibility of citizenship identity that can be called a “taste of republicanism.” During a period of civil society reformation, Child attempted to redefine civic virtue through her cookbook and recreate civil society through the sense of taste. According to Child, her crude recipes expressed a sense of taste appropriate to citizens: for the 19^th-century republican, this meant frugality, simplicity, industry, and self-made character.

This article traces the making of “unaccompanied alien minors (UAMs)” as an inadmissible class at the US border. This category which first appeared in the Immigration Act of 1907 was a milestone in the codification of what I call the guardianship principle: foreign-born children needed the support of their father or guardians legally responsible and socio-economically capable for their protection in the United States.

As more Americans felt concerned about padrones, the US government made the first step in creating the guardianship principle, with the passage of the Padrone Act of 1874. Over time, immigration officials examined more closely the background of children arriving without parental supervision. In 1887, the Treasury Department issued an order to exclude “children unaccompanied by families or friends and presumed to be from charitable institutions.” Still there was no law to prohibit their entry for arriving alone and unsupported.

William Williams, whom President Theodore Roosevelt assigned to Ellis Island in 1902, played a key role in the categorization of unaccompanied alien minors as an inadmissible class. By the turn of the century, the growth of the crusade against child labor made it easier for the immigration service to exclude solitary children on the ground that they would need parental protection abroad. On June 20, 1903, Commissioner Williams posted a notice that would henceforth prevent the release of unaccompanied children without extra scrutiny. Under his command, frontline inspectors demanded more identifying information from each arriving child. This procedure, on the one hand, allowed immigration officials to deliver more children to their rightful guardians in the United States. These officials contacted their alleged family members, asking parents to come and pick up their loved ones from the immigration station. Many youngsters were now relieved from the challenge of finding out where their parents were and how to get there. On the other hand, the same procedure revealed that not all child migrants were able to establish who they were and with whom they were to live in the country. Williams urged the exclusion of such children by claiming that their entry might result in unwanted outcomes, such as an increase in child labor in the United States. As more states enacted state laws regulating child labor, immigration officials had more reasons to deny their ability to be self-supporting in the country and dismiss their allegations.

As US immigration authorities started excluding children arriving unaccompanied, Greek boys emerged as targets of profiling at the US border. Statistical records suggest that the number of Greek entrants under age fourteen declined after Williams prohibited frontline inspectors from admitting unaccompanied minors without reporting them to his office. Around the time when the Immigration Act of 1907 came into force, American reformers believed that Greek boys as most frequent victims of child trafficking. Hence, they had no substantial reason to oppose the preventive exclusion of child migrants to suppress the padrone system.

This paper discusses the first visit of the New York City Ballet [NYCB] to Japan in 1958. In the 1950s, as the Cold War continued, both Washington and the Kremlin realized the significance of cultural diplomacy. After the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, Soviet leaders began to spend vast sums of money in a cultural offensive; they began to finance the trips of Soviet artists to many countries and also emphasized the barrenness of American culture.

In order to counteract such Soviet cultural propaganda, Dwight Eisenhower created the President’s Emergency Fund for International Affairs in 1954. The U.S. government began actively sponsoring tours abroad of American performing arts to show American excellence in cultural achievement and promote its message of democracy all over the world. NYCB’s visit to Japan in 1958 was one of the tours under the auspices of this fund.

American ballet, with European traditions and American elements, was regarded as a weapon of the cultural Cold War. In particular, NYCB, which had a “modern” style that was supposed to show the superiority of American culture, enhanced its status as a ballet company unique to the United States that was successful in its overseas tours.

In Asia, where the Soviet cultural offensive intensified in the mid-1950s, American performing arts were in demand. In order to hold performances efficiently on a low budget in Asia, the U.S. government considered the San Francisco Ballet, which was small and had a style similar to that of NYCB, the best choice.

The U.S. government’s plan to send the San Francisco Ballet to Japan, however, was opposed by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese government as well as Japanese impresarios. Aware of the U.S. and Soviet competition for sending artists to Japan, the Japanese impresarios requested well-known “first-class” artists and did not accept the San Francisco Ballet. The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, appreciating the aesthetic sense of Japanese intellectuals with deep knowledge of the arts, also insisted that the NYCB should visit Japan to satisfy them. The Japanese government, furthermore, with a sense of crisis about the favorable reaction to the visit of the Bolshoi Ballet in 1957, asked the U.S. government to promote a more active cultural offensive in Japan. In short, NYCB’s visit to Japan, which was a part of the U.S. government’s cultural program, demonstrated the various motivations of a number of “actors” in realizing it.

NYCB received a favorable response from intellectuals and the media in Japan, the target of U.S. cultural diplomacy toward Japan. In this sense, it can be said that the tour was successful. However, the NYCB’s performance was a box office failure; some Japanese had a negative reaction to the characteristics of the NYCB, which the U.S. government considered a weapon in its cultural diplomacy. This paper shows that a deep analysis of some negative opinions of the NYCB and the causes of its box office failure should have been carried out by the U.S. government, with a view to subsequent projects.