By digitizing and publishing habeas petitions from marginalized communities, this project helps to restore visibility to people who have been historically silenced by oppression in the United States.
Habeas petition from Agnes Smith’s case. A woman who was unlawfully held at the Institute for Feeble-Minded Youth
The petitions within this database consist of marginalized people’s challenges to enslavement, child removal, domestic abuse, deportation, incarceration, and institutionalization. Digitizing these documents transforms these people and legal battles from forgotten artifacts into powerful testimonies against a corrupt legal system. It can help inform future discussions of civil rights and legal inequality. The American legal system is the way it is now because of habeas corpus.