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Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski Jan 1995

Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski

Faculty Scholarship

The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …


Holmes's Legacy And The New Constitutional History, Eben Moglen Jan 1995

Holmes's Legacy And The New Constitutional History, Eben Moglen

Faculty Scholarship

The most significant collaborative effort in the literature of American constitutional history, the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise History of the Supreme Court of the United States, is nearing completion. A generation has passed since the appearance of the first volume, authored by Julius Goebel, Jr., and (after many vicissitudes affecting several of the works in the series) the appearance of this volume marks the antepenultimate stage. Though Professor Fiss's remarkable achievement deserves to be viewed primarily on the basis of its own merits as a study of the Fuller Court, a just appreciation of its contribution to the literature requires …