A Multi-User Relational Database of Habeas Corpus Petitions in the American West

虽然人身保护令主要被认为是对非法逮捕或拘留的请愿的宪法保护，但人身保护令程序也为请愿者提供了挑战剥夺权利和自由的机会。本项目计划通过创建一个关系（互动）数据库，记录1812年至1924年美国西部民事人身保护令请愿书的使用情况。该数据库的目标是使学者和其他人能够了解边缘化人群如何利用人身保护令程序来主张权利和自由，并了解他们如何利用人身保护令请愿来推动和扩大法律改革。该项目还将记录美国早期扩张和历史时期这些案件的司法判决。该项目采用西部六个州的战略样本，将收集并编码大约6000份未公布的人身保护令请愿书，这些请愿书目前存放在这些样本州的联邦和州档案中。其结果将是一个开源和开放获取的图形数据库，其中包含由寻求使用人身保护申请来表达公民动态概念的个人编写的索引和可量化的法律文件汇编。该数据库将免费向公众和学者开放，允许检索有关法学家和当事人、审理请愿书的司法管辖区以及从请愿书中提取的关键字。来自这些人身保护令请愿书的数据将为多个学科的学者和从业者的工作提供信息，包括儿童和家庭法、联邦印度法、移民法、劳动法、种族关系、刑事司法以及法律动员和改革。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

While habeas corpus is primarily conceived as the constitutional protection to petition against wrongful arrest or detainment, the habeas procedure also offers petitioners an opportunity to challenge deprivations of rights and liberties. This project plans to document the use of habeas corpus by creating a relational (interactive) Database of writ of civil habeas corpus petitions in the American West from 1812 through 1924. The goal of the Database is to enable scholars and others to understand how marginalized populations utilized the habeas corpus procedure to claim rights and liberties, and to learn how they used habeas petitions to push for and expand legal reforms. The project also will document judicial decision making in these cases during this early time period of U.S. expansion and history.Employing a strategic sample of six Western states, the project will collect and encode roughly 6,000 unpublished habeas corpus petitions currently housed in federal and state archives in those sampled states. The result will be an open source and open access graph Database incorporating an indexed and quantifiable compilation of legal documents by individuals who sought to use habeas petitions to express dynamic notions of citizenship. The Database will be freely available to the general public and scholars alike, allowing for searches on the jurists and parties involved, the jurisdictions hearing the petitions, and keywords drawn from the petitions. Data from these habeas corpus petitions will inform the work of scholars and practitioners in multiple disciplines, including (among others) child and family law, federal Indian law, immigration law, labor law, race relations, criminal justice, and legal mobilization and reform.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.