Karen Tani
Ph.D. Candidate (ABD)
ktani@sas.upenn.edu
Education
I graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A., summa cum laude, in 2002. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania Law School, magna cum laude, in 2007. From 2007 to 2008, I clerked for the Honorable Guido Calabresi on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Fields (primary field of specialization listed first)
U.S. legal and constitutional history; U.S. history, 1865-present; U.S. politics and policy
Dissertation Topic
My dissertation, tentatively titled "Securing a Right to Welfare: Public Assistance Administration and the Rule of Law, 1938-1960," is about how federal social welfare administrators sought to establish a legal right to public assistance in the decades between the New Deal and the welfare rights movement.
Dissertation Committee
Personal Statement
From 2008 to 2010 I was in residence at the University of Pennsylvania Law School as the Sharswood Fellow in Law and History. For the 2010-11 academic year, I will be a Samuel I. Golieb fellow in legal history at New York University School of Law. I am also the graduate student representative on the board of the American Society for Legal History. Students with questions about the J.D. / Ph.D. Program in American Legal History should feel free to contact me!
Publications
"Flemming v. Nestor : Anticommunism, the Welfare State, and the Making of 'New Property,'" 26 Law & Hist. Rev. 379 (2008).
"Where Law Meets Poverty," in Blackwell Companion to American Legal History (Sally Hadden and Alfred Brophy, eds.) (forthcoming 2011) (with Felicia Kornbluh).
Review, Champion of Civil Rights: Judge John Minor Wisdom (2009), 28 Law & Hist. Rev. 268 (2010).
