SPECIAL ISSUE INTRODUCTION The Many Faces of Habeas Corpus in the American West

This introduction to a special issue offers a broad outline of habeas corpus historiography and explains the historical significance of that legal mechanism for people throughout the American West. It also explains the links between the special issue’s three articles—by Katrina Jagodinsky, Matthew Villeneuve, and Cory James Young—about women’s resistance to gendered violence, Indigenous families challenging federal Indian boarding school confinement, and Black minors’ ongoing vulnerability to coercive labor in the late nineteenth century.