employee and spouse. The census and certificates of birth, death and marriage, meanwhile, reveal a woman who led a complicated life. She married several times, fell on hard times, and rebounded to become a proud and honorable matriarch. Taken together, I think these sources demonstrate how law is not only a “place” where people are portrayed by others, but also where they portray themselves and live out multi-faceted existences.
What are the main takeaways from your book? First, it illustrates how people without formal legal training shape law. It also demonstrates that law changes outside of courts. Lawmakers, bureaucrats, presidents, and even individual litigants and lawyers change what the Constitution means. Lastly, it shows that whenever people thought about law, they were also thinking about race and gender. How judges and others saw the world profoundly influenced what the law was and what it could become.
Does your book have significance to our current political and historical moment? The early 20th century was a time when racism and sexism were very much out in the open. Today, as our politics have grown coarser — when questions of race and sex seem more on the surface — it can be helpful to reflect on how a prior generation’s biases affected how judges ruled and politicians legislated. Prof. Sam Erman
young age, but not before fathering her first two children. So much for my academic’s cynicism. The family’s view of their ancestor was the more accurate one. After the case was heard, Isabel Gonzalez settled in Staten Island, then moved to New Jersey. Her extended family is now all over the United States. It’s a very American story.
What other sources did you unearth, and how did they shape your book? I used three types of sources: records from the dispute, published letters to the editor and government records. Court documents show that the government kept Isabel Gonzalez out of the country by depicting her as an alien who was not a good mother, worker, wife or daughter. Published letters to the editor that she and her uncle wrote portray the opposite: She was a commendable woman, parent,
After last year’s hurricanes threw Puerto Rico’s hardships into the national spotlight, has anything changed? Is there support from Congress — and the American public — for statehood? Our polarized partisan politics means that the less popular party has strong reasons to oppose statehood, and the more popular party has strong reasons to support statehood. But it would be unfortunate if either approach were taken in contraposition to the expressed preferences of Puerto Ricans. To make Puerto Rico a state without its people’s consent would breed a great deal of resentment and reinforce a sense of colonialism. If Puerto Ricans, however, want the island to become a state, then to hold them on the outside indefinitely would do damage to our nation as a democracy. To learn more, visit: gould.law/sam-erman
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