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Full-Text Articles in Law
The Oberlin Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Victory For The Higher Law, Steven Lubet
The Oberlin Fugitive Slave Rescue: A Victory For The Higher Law, Steven Lubet
Faculty Working Papers
This article tells the story of the Oberlin fugitive slave rescue and the ensuing prosecutions in federal court. The trial of rescuer Charles Langston marked one of the first times that adherence to "higher law" was explicitly raised as a legal defense in an American courtroom. The article is adapted from my book -- Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers, and Slavery on Trial -- which tells this story (and several others) in much more detail.
In the fall of 1859, John Price was a fugitive slave living in the abolitionist community of Oberlin, Ohio. He was lured out of town and …
What Will We Lose If The Trial Vanishes?, Robert P. Burns
What Will We Lose If The Trial Vanishes?, Robert P. Burns
Faculty Working Papers
The number of trials continues to decline andfederal civil trials have almost completely disappeared. This essay attempts to address the significance of this loss, to answer the obvious question, "So what?" It argues against taking a resigned or complacent attitude toward an important problem for our public culture. It presents a short description of the trial's internal structure, recounts different sorts of explanations, and offers an inventory of the kinds of wounds this development would inflict.