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Award-winning historian Susan Pearson traces the birth certificate s two-hundred-year history to explain when, how, and why they came to matter so much in the United States. This is a fascinating biography of a piece of paper that grounds our understanding of how those who live in the United States are considered Americans

In 1877, the American Humane Society was formed as the national organization for animal and child protection. Thirty years later, there were 354 anticruelty organizations chartered in the United States, nearly 200 of which were similarly invested in the welfare of both humans and animals. In The Rights of the Defenseless, Susan J. Pearson seeks to understand the institutional, cultural, legal, and political significance of the perceived bond between these two kinds of helpless creatures, and the attempts made to protect them. Unlike many of today's humane organizations, those Pearson follows w.

Nineteenth-century animal protectionists endeavored to frame laws that gave animals direct legal protections, & they conducted large-scale public education campaigns to define the harm of cruelty to animals in terms of animals' own suffering. However, animal suffering was only one of the many possible definitions of cruelty's harms, & when judges & other legal interpreters interpreted animal protection laws, they focused less on animal suffering & more on human morality & the dangers of cruelty to human society. Battling over the definition of human guilt for cruelty, protectionists & judges drew & redrew the boundaries of the law's reach & the moral community. 1 Figure, 63 References. [Copyright 2005 Elsevier Ltd.]