Law Commons^™

Resistance Proceduralism: A Prologue To Theorizing Procedural Subordination, Portia Pedro

Washington and Lee Law Review

Several legal scholars have discussed the role of slavery within their own family histories and a growing number of scholars are exploring the successes and strategies of lawyers and Black litigants in freedom suits and other litigation in the United States antebellum South. I build on these literatures with a focus on procedure. In this Article, I analyze procedures involved in a few of my ancestral and personal experiences. Some of the experiences with process involved litigation to be free from slavery while other experiences did not explicitly involve any law. But they all involved process.

Engaging in this practice—marshaling …

Toward A Better Criminal Legal System: Improving Prisons, Prosecution, And Criminal Defense, David A. Harris, Created And Presented Jointly By Students From State Correctional Institution - Greene, Waynesburg, Pa, And University Of Pittsburgh School Of Law, Chief Editor: David A. Harris

Articles

During the Fall 2023 semester, 15 law (Outside) students from the University of Pittsburgh School of Law and 13 incarcerated (Inside) students from the State Correctional Institution – Greene, in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania, took a full semester class together called Issues in Criminal Justice and Law. The class, occurring each week at the prison, utilized the Inside-Out Prison Exchange pedagogy, and was facilitated by Professor David Harris. Subjects include the purposes of prison, addressing crime, the criminal legal system and race, and issues surrounding victims and survivors of crime. The course culminated in a Group Project; under the heading “improving the …

Restitution For Haiti, Reparations For All: Haiti’S Place In The Global Reparations Movement, Brian Concannon Jr., Kristina Fried, Alexandra V. Filippova

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

Haiti’s claim for restitution of the debt coerced by France in exchange for Haiti’s 1804 independence has unique legal advantages that can open the door to broader reparations for the descendants of all people harmed by slavery. But in order to assert the claim, Haiti first needs help reclaiming its democracy from a corrupt, repressive regime propped up by the powerful countries that prospered through slavery and overthrew the Haitian President who dared to assert his country’s legal claim. This article explores Haiti’s Independence Debt, and the fight for restitution of it, in the context of two centuries of continued …

Haiti: Confronting An Immense Challenge, Irwin Stotzky

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article analyzes the history of Haiti, from its origins as a slave colony of France, which was the richest colony in the Americas, to its war of independence leading to the first Black independent nation in the Americas, to its economic re-enslavement under the power of France and then the United States. The article discusses the great harm the French caused the Haitian people by imposing through force a ransom of billions of dollars that has led Haiti to its present position of being on the brink of becoming a failed state, with all of the disastrous consequences for …

Haiti’S Legal Claim For Restitution: The Political Context For The Recovery Of The Double-Debt, Ira J. Kurzban

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

This article discusses Haiti’s efforts to seek restitution from France for the “Double-Debt” imposed in 1825. After Haiti gained independence in 1804 following a slave revolt, France threatened to invade and re-enslave the Haitian people if they did not pay compensation to French slave owners for their lost “property.” This became known as the Double-Debt, as French and American banks profited by converting the debt into high-interest loans. In 2003, on the 200th anniversary of Haitian hero Toussaint Louverture’s death, Haiti’s president Jean-Bertrand Aristide announced his intention to demand repayment from France. This sparked retaliation from France and Haiti’s elite, …

Redress For Historical Injustices: Haiti’S Claim For The Restitution Of Post-Independence Payments To France, Günther Handl

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

Haiti And The Indemnity Question, Alex Dupuy

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

1) Haiti did not agree to pay an indemnity to France in 1825 because it feared a war with its former colonial power. In 1814, France sent envoys to Haiti to demand that King Henry Christophe, who controlled the north of Haiti, and President Alexandre Pétion, who controlled the south and west, resubmit to French sovereignty. Christophe had that envoy arrested and jailed. Pétion, on the other hand, offered to pay an indemnity to France to compensate the former colonial property owners in return for France’s official recognition of Haiti’s independence.

2) Jean-Pierre Boyer succeeded Pétion as president of the …

Haiti And The Burden Of History, Frédérique Beauvois

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Lost Haitian Generation And The 1826 “French Debt”: The Case For Restitution To Haiti, Charlot Lucien

University of Miami Inter-American Law Review

No abstract provided.

James Oakes's Treatment Of The First Confiscation Act In Freedom National: The Destruction Of Slavery In The United States, 1861-1865, Angi Porter

Articles in Law Reviews & Other Academic Journals

In his work, Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, James Oakes provides an overview of several Civil War era legal instruments regarding enslavement in the United States. One of the statutes he examines is An Act to Confiscate Property Used for Insurrectionary Purposes, passed by the Thirty Seventh Congress in August, 1861. This law, popularly known as the First Confiscation Act (FCA), is one of the several "Confiscation Acts" that contributed to the weakening of legal enslavement during the War. Fortunately, scholars have contextualized and deemphasized President Lincoln's role as the "Great Emancipator" by examining …

Teaching Slavery In Commercial Law, Carliss N. Chatman

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

Public status shapes private ordering. Personhood status, conferred or acknowledged by the state, determines whether one is a party to or the object of a contract. For much of our nation’s history, the law deemed all persons of African descent to have a limited status, if given personhood at all. The property and partial personhood status of African-Americans, combined with standards developed to facilitate the growth of the international commodities market for products including cotton, contributed to the current beliefs of business investors and even how communities of color are still governed and supported. The impact of that shift in …

Douglass, Lincoln, And Douglas Before Dred Scott: A Few Thoughts On Freedom, Equality, And Affirmative Action, Henry L. Chambers Jr.

Law Faculty Publications

In 1854, Senator Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass delivered speeches about the newly passed Kansas-Nebraska Act. That law opened the Kansas and Nebraska Territories to slavery by extending popular sovereignty, the practice of letting territorial majorities decide whether to allow slavery in a territory, to them. Given before Dred Scott v. Sandford, the infamous case in which the Supreme Court ruled that Black Americans—whether freeborn, freed, or enslaved—could not be citizens of the United States absent congressional action or constitutional amendment, the speeches are worth revisiting. They focus on whether or how slavery should be limited, reflecting …

Higher Education Redress Statutes: A Critical Analysis Of States’ Reparations In Higher Education, Christopher L. Mathis

Washington and Lee Law Review

This Article introduces a novel concept, higher education redress statutes (“HERS”), to illustrate efforts that acknowledge and amend past wrongs towards African Americans. More proximally, the Article shines a probing light on the escalation of HERS in southeastern states that serve as a site for state regulation and monitoring. The Author exposes how higher education redress statutes, designed to provide relief or remedy to Black people for states’ higher education’s harm, categorically ignore groups of Black people who rightfully should also be members of the statutorily protected class. This Article queries whether legislators can expand the scope of such statutes …

Antiracist Lawyering In Practice Begins With The Practice Of Teaching And Learning Antiracism In Law School, Danielle M. Conway

Utah Law Review

I was honored by the invitation to deliver the 2021 Lee E. Teitelbaum keynote address. Dean Teitelbaum was a gentleman and a titan for justice. I am confident the antiracism work ongoing at the S.J. Quinney College of Law would have deeply resonated with him, especially knowing the challenges we are currently facing within and outside of legal education, the legal academy, and the legal profession. I am fortified in this work by Dean Elizabeth Kronk Warner’s commitment to antiracism and associated diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Finally, I applaud the students who serve on the Utah Law Review for …

Law School News: Welcome, Professor Bernard Freamon 04-20-2022, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Rwu Law News: The Newsletter Of Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden, Gregory W. Bowman, Brooklyn Crockton

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek

Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)

Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …

The History Wars And Property Law: Conquest And Slavery As Foundational To The Field, K-Sue Park

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This Article addresses the stakes of the ongoing fight over competing versions of U.S. history for our understanding of law, with a special focus on property law. Insofar as legal scholarship has examined U.S. law within the historical context in which it arose, it has largely overlooked the role that laws and legal institutions played in facilitating the production of the two preeminent market commodities in the colonial and early Republic periods: expropriated lands and enslaved people. Though conquest and enslavement were key to producing property for centuries, property-law scholars have constructed the field of property law to be largely …

Can I Touch Your Hair?: Business Diversity, Slavery, Disparate Outcomes, And The Crown Act, Ashley Jones

The Journal of Business, Entrepreneurship & the Law

This comment will begin by looking at why hair in the United States is related to issues of race. This comment will then look at how businesses’ rules for appearance and hair disproportionately affect Black employees. Next, this paper will look at Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to point out how the vague language has created loopholes, which allow businesses to lawfully discriminate against people with natural hair. We will then move to explore what role some city and state governments have had in creating natural hair-safe workspaces for employees in their respective boundaries. Lastly, we …

Freedom, Democracy, And The Right To Education, Derek W. Black

Northwestern University Law Review

While litigation continues in an effort to establish a fundamental right to education under the U.S. Constitution, the full historical justification for this right remains missing—a fatal flaw for many jurists. This Article fills that gap, demonstrating that the central, yet entirely overlooked, justification for a federal right to education resides in America’s education story during the era of slavery and Reconstruction.

At that time, education was first and foremost about freedom. The South had criminalized education to maintain a racialized hierarchy that preserved slavery. Many African-Americans, seeing education as the means to both mental and physical freedom, made extraordinary …

Structural Racism And The Redressing Of Foundational Wrongs, Natsu Taylor Saito

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

Reparations And The International Law Origin Story, John Linarelli

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

On Time, (In)Equality, And Death, Fred O. Smith Jr.

Michigan Law Review

In recent years, American institutions have inadvertently encountered the bodies of former slaves with increasing frequency. Pledges of respect are common features of these discoveries, accompanied by cultural debates about what “respect” means. Often embedded in these debates is an intuition that there is something special about respecting the dead bodies, burial sites, and images of victims of mass, systemic horrors. This Article employs legal doctrine, philosophical insights, and American history to both interrogate and anchor this intuition.

Law can inform these debates because we regularly turn to legal settings to resolve disputes about the dead. Yet the passage of …

The Religion Of Race: The Supreme Court As Priests Of Racial Politics, Audra Savage

Utah Law Review

The tumultuous summer of 2020 opened the eyes of many Americans, leading to a general consensus on one issue—racism still exists. This Article offers a new descriptive account of America’s history that can contextualize the zeitgeist of racial politics. It argues that the Founding Fathers created a national civil religion based on racism when they compromised on the issue of slavery in the creation of the Constitution. This religion, called the Religion of Race, is built on a belief system where whiteness is sacred and Blackness is profane. The sacred text is the Constitution, and it is interpreted by the …

Law School News: A Juneteenth Message From The Dean, Gregory W. Bowman

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

The Thirteenth Amendment And Equal Protection: A Structural Interpretation To "Free" The Amendment, Larry J. Pittman

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

The hope is that the Court will one day hold that the Thirteenth Amendment has its own equal protection clause or component and that strict scrutiny will not be used for benign racial classifications designed to eradicate current badges and incidents of slavery. This Article critiques the Court’s decision in the Civil Rights Cases regarding the scope of section 1 of the Amendment and it offers a holistic or structural interpretation of the Amendment to include an equal protection component and a lesser standard of review than strict scrutiny. Essentially, the Thirteenth Amendment, if properly used, could become a public …

A Different Type Of Property: White Women And The Human Property They Kept, Michele Goodwin

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. by Harriet A. Jacobs, and They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South. by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers.

Sexual Exploitation Of Black Women From The Years 1619-2020, Dominique R. Wilson

Journal of Race, Gender, and Ethnicity

No abstract provided.

In Fear Of Black Revolutionary Contagion And Insurrection: Foucault, Galtung, And The Genesis Of Racialized Structural Violence In American Foreign Policy And Immigration Law, Ciji Dodds

Michigan Journal of Race and Law

This article investigates the power relation between the political anatomy of the Black soul and non-somatic expressions of white supremacy-based violence. Utilizing Michel Foucault’s theories of discipline and punishment in conjunction with Johan Galtung’s theory of structural violence, I posit that the exercise of state-sanctioned discipline and punishment in furtherance of white supremacy constitutes racialized structural violence. Thus, this article contributes to the current public discourse concerning the role white supremacy plays in America by establishing a new construct that can be used to dissect the nature of racial oppression.

Furthermore, this article analyzes the genesis and construction of racialized …