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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
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
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 …
Lincoln, Presidential Power, And The Rule Of Law, Daniel A. Farber
Lincoln, Presidential Power, And The Rule Of Law, Daniel A. Farber
Northwestern University Law Review
Every era has its unique challenges, but history may still offer lessons on how law empowers and restrains presidents. This Essay examines how President Lincoln negotiated the tension between crisis authority and the rule of law. This analysis requires an appreciation of the wartime imperatives, institutions, and political forces confronting Lincoln, as well as the legal framework in which he acted. Similar issues unexpectedly arose in our times in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, providing a new point of comparison with Lincoln’s era. We need to better understand how political actors and institutions, the media, and public opinion can …
The Abraham Lincoln Lecture On Constitutional Law, Steven G. Calabresi
The Abraham Lincoln Lecture On Constitutional Law, Steven G. Calabresi
Northwestern University Law Review
These introductory remarks to the Inaugural Abraham Lincoln Lecture on Constitutional Law were delivered at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law on April 6, 2017.
Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton
Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton
Akron Law Review
In a classic article in the Journal of American History, which was based on his presidential address to the Organization of American Historians in 1978, the great Civil War historian Kenneth Stampp made the claim that the arguments in favor of the constitutionality of secession made by the Southern states were as strong, if not stronger than the constitutional arguments made, then and now, in opposition to secession. Stampp is to my mind the greatest Civil War historian of the 20th century and his views on secession remain required reading and are cited routinely today. This is not to say …
Saving The Constitution: Lincoln, Secession, And The Price Of Union, Craig S. Lerner
Saving The Constitution: Lincoln, Secession, And The Price Of Union, Craig S. Lerner
Michigan Law Review
The year is 1860. After failing to obtain, as he had expected, the Democratic Party nomination for President at its Charleston convention, Stephen Douglas abandons his candidacy. In the ensuing election, Democrat John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky edges Republican Abraham Lincoln. The official platform of the Democratic Party includes endorsement of the Dred Scott decision, slavery's expansion in the federal territories, rigorous enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act, and elimination of the tariff. Abolitionists in New England are inconsolable. For several years, Henry Lloyd Garrison had advocated Northern secession, denouncing the Constitution as a "union with slaveholders," and "a covenant …
Taking Aim At An American Myth, Paul Finkelman
Taking Aim At An American Myth, Paul Finkelman
Michigan Law Review
Every American had a musket hanging over his fireplace at night, and by his side during the day. Like Cincinnatus, time and again Americans dropped their plows to shoulder their arms, to fight the Indians, the French, the Indians, the British, the Indians, the Mexicans, the Indians yet again, and then, from 1861 to 1865, each other. American men were comfortable with guns; they needed them and wanted them. They felt at home in woods, in search of food, or in defense of their homesteads. It is a story as old as our first pulp novels and earliest movies. It …
The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky
The Second Amendment: Structure, History, And Constitutional Change, David Yassky
Michigan Law Review
A fierce debate about the Second Amendment has been percolating in academia for two decades, and has now bubbled through to the courts. The question at the heart of this debate is whether the Amendment restricts the government's ability to regulate the private possession of firearms. Since at least 1939 - when the Supreme Court decided United States v. Miller, its only decision squarely addressing the scope of the right to "keep and bear Arms" - the answer to that question has been an unqualified "no." Courts have brushed aside Second Amendment challenges to gun control legislation, reading the Amendment …
Transcript: What Makes The District An Anomaly? , American University Law Review
Transcript: What Makes The District An Anomaly? , American University Law Review
American University Law Review
No abstract provided.
Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander
Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
No abstract provided.
Constitutional Interpretation And Judicial Self-Restraint, Vincent M. Barnett Jr.
Constitutional Interpretation And Judicial Self-Restraint, Vincent M. Barnett Jr.
Michigan Law Review
The newly reconstituted Supreme Court of the United States has become the center of an earnest controversy with respect to the true role of the Court in constitutional interpretation. The general controversy is, of course, far from new. What makes it of more than ordinary significance is that the Court itself is revealing a tendency substantially to alter the extent, if not the nature, of judicial review. This tendency has not yet become clearly dominant, but it is apparent enough to shake the implicit faith in the Court of many of those to whom, before 1937, any criticism of the …
Freedom Of The Press And Of The Mails, Eberhard P. Deutsch
Freedom Of The Press And Of The Mails, Eberhard P. Deutsch
Michigan Law Review
It should be unnecessary to amend the Federal Constitution to accommodate the facilities of government to the needs of society, as those needs develop with the social and scientific advance of civilization. But the trend of legislative effort to reach beyond constitutional limits to satisfy fleeting economic or political expediencies, without regard for the vital distinction between sound and substance, and of courts to seek justification for such excursions, under the benefit of constitutional doubt due "solemn expressions of legislative will," may lead to highly dangerous situations. As this trend is permitted to reach extremes, the erasure of the well-defined …