In an overview of recent research on the history of the family, Tamara Hareven (1991) points out that this field of study took its inspiration from developments in historical demography and from the “new social history” of the 1960s. Family historians, like other social historians, had “a commitment to reconstructing the life patterns of ordinary people, to viewing them as actors as well as subjects in the process of change” (ibid.: 95). The flowering of research in this field has provided us with a more detailed understanding of the relationship between social change and family life than was previously available. We have learned, among other things, that rather than a single trajectory of change from extended family life before industrialization to the nuclear family afterward, changes in family organization have rarely been invariant, linear, or unidirectional.

Studies of the Supreme Court confirmation process have traditionally concentrated on factors that lead to Senate defeat of nominees (e.g., Scigliano 1971; Songer 1979; Palmer 1983; Segal 1987; Cameron et al. 1990; Ruckman 1993; Van Winkle 1994). Thus, they look at such institutional and political variables as presidential strength, timing, the partisan composition of the Senate, and whether an appointment may alter partisan coalitions on the Court. More recently, a separate body of literature has begun to examine the effects of interest-group lobbying for and against Supreme Court nominees (e.g., Caldeira 1988-89; Caldeira and Wright 1990,1991; Austen-Smith and Wright 1994). For example, Austen-Smith and Wright characterize the allocation of lobbying resources across senators supporting, opposing, and indifferent to Robert Bork's 1987 nomination. Our study, which examines the lobbying against the 1881 nominations of Stanley Matthews, is part of this second wave of research on group lobbying and Supreme Court nominations. We argue that National Grange influence affected senators' votes on Matthews's nomination during a period not associated with interest-group activity.

Although many Americans casually refer to the “institution” of marriage, most rarely consider the implications of that terminology. One enters into marriage by participating in fairly well-defined rites, and couples are warned of the solemnity of the undertaking. But seldom do the parties enter into marriage with a thorough understanding of what it means to subject oneself to governance by the law of marriage.

The law is widely recognized as an institution that may profoundly affect the choices and lives of individuals. It is designed to affect individual behavior, encouraging “appropriate” actions by penalizing those that are seen as problematic for society. Its rules allow for the balancing of competing rights, and the courts provide a remedy when the rules are broken. Marriage law provides ground rules to govern the specific relationship characterized by a lifetime sexual and economic partnership between a man and a woman and endorses that relationship by giving it legal force.

By the close of the first decade following ratification of constitutional female suffrage in the United States, it had become commonplace to read of female political leaders bemoaning the inefficacy of women's lobbying organizations, which despite their lobbying efforts did not engage in any electoral activity such as the mobilization of female voters (see, for example, NYT 10 March 1928: 3; NYT 31 March 1931: 22). That this should have been the case raises an interesting question: Why not? That is, given the likelihood that women's votes would have increased the efficacy of these lobbying efforts, why weren't the leaders of women's lobbying organizations, in particular those of the former suffrage machine, the National League of Women Voters (NLWV), pursuing those votes?