2025

Jerry Chen

  • Doctoral Student
  • Harvard University
Picture of Jerry Chen

Program

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowships

Project

“In Common Justice and Humanities”: Alien Land Law Litigation and Asian American Legal Culture, 1913-29

Department

History

Abstract

This project studies Asian American legal challenges to discriminatory alien land laws between 1913 and 1929 in California and Washington State. Going beyond the US Supreme Court cases and drawing on county court documents, probate case files, and legal records of Asian American civic organizations, this project writes a new, bottom-up legal history of strategic and everyday alien land litigation led by ordinary Asian Americans. Engaging with Asian American community partners, this project shows a pan-ethnic movement through the framework of “legal culture.”