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Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Man’S Best Friend? How Dogs Have Been Used To Oppress African Americans, Shontel Stewart
Man’S Best Friend? How Dogs Have Been Used To Oppress African Americans, Shontel Stewart
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
The use of dogs as tools of oppression against African Americans has its roots in slavery and persists today in everyday life and police interactions. Due to such harmful practices, African Americans are not only disproportionately terrorized by officers with dogs, but they are also subject to instances of misplaced sympathy, illsuited laws, and social exclusion in their communities. Whether extreme and violent or subtle and pervasive, the use of dogs in oppressive acts is a critical layer of racial bias in the United States that has consistently built injustices that impede social and legal progress. By recognizing this pattern …
Slaves As Plaintiffs, Alfred L. Brophy
Slaves As Plaintiffs, Alfred L. Brophy
Michigan Law Review
Review of Redemption Songs: Suing for Freedom Before Dred Scott by Lea VanderVelde.
Race And Constitutional Law Casebooks: Recognizing The Proslavery Constitution, Juan F. Perea
Race And Constitutional Law Casebooks: Recognizing The Proslavery Constitution, Juan F. Perea
Michigan Law Review
Federalist No. 54 shows that part of Madison's public defense of the Constitution included the defense of some of its proslavery provisions. Madison and his reading public were well aware that aspects of the Constitution protected slavery. These aspects of the Constitution were publicly debated in the press and in state ratification conventions. Just as the Constitution's protections for slavery were debated at the time of its framing and ratification, the relationship between slavery and the Constitution remains a subject of debate. Historians continue to debate the centrality of slavery to the Constitution. The majority position among historians today appears …
"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner
"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner
Michigan Law Review
Richard H. Pildes argued in an influential 2000 article that the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Giles v. Harris, which was written by Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, was the "one decisive turning point" in the history of "American (anti)-democracy." In Giles, Holmes rejected on questionable grounds Jackson W. Giles's challenge to the new Alabama Constitution of 1901-a document which was designed to disfranchise and had the effect of disfranchising African Americans. The decision thus contributed significantly to the development of the all-white electorate in the South, and the concomitant marginalization of southern African Americans. According to Pildes, however, the …
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Ghosts Of Alabama: The Prosecution Of Bobby Frank Cherry For The Bombing Of The Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, Donald Q. Cochran
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Perhaps no other crime in American history has shocked the conscience of America like the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. In May of 2002- almost thirty-nine years after the bombing- Bobby Frank Cherry was brought to trial for the murders of Addie, Carole, Cynthia, and Denise. He was the last person to be tried for the bombing. As an Assistant United States Attorney in Birmingham, Alabama it was my privilege to be a part of the prosecution team that brought Cherry to justice. This Article tells the story of that prosecution and explores the …
Obligations Impaired: Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright And The Failure Of Reconstruction In South Carolina, Caleb A. Jaffe
Obligations Impaired: Justice Jonathan Jasper Wright And The Failure Of Reconstruction In South Carolina, Caleb A. Jaffe
Michigan Journal of Race and Law
Part I of this article, on the historiography of South Carolina Reconstruction, explains the difficulty scholars have had in uncovering the documentary history of Reconstruction, and outlines the development of historical interpretations of Reconstruction from the Nineteenth century Redeemer-era accounts to the revisionists of the 1970's. Part II provides brief biographies of both Justice Wright and William James Whipper. Parts III and IV track the different approaches of Whipper and Wright on two vital issues of their day: (1) whether to repudiate all private debts relating to slavery; and (2) how to construct a homestead law to protect cash-poor landowners. …
Race, Class, And Suburbia: The Modern Black Suburb As A 'Race-Making Situation', Mary Jo Wiggins
Race, Class, And Suburbia: The Modern Black Suburb As A 'Race-Making Situation', Mary Jo Wiggins
University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
In her Article, Professor Wiggins discusses the complex social phenomenon of "Black suburbanization, " focusing on the commercial "disinvestment" in and around predominately Black suburbs. She traces the historical relationship between Black Americans and the suburbs, and describes in detail the commercial disinvestment in two contemporary Black suburbs, Prince George's County, Maryland, and south DeKalb, Georgia. In her Article, she offers possible explanations for disinvestment, including the application of protective zoning; inefficient zoning laws and practices; prior investment decisions; demographic explanations; and independent effects .of race. Wiggins analyzes some of the resulting negative social and economic consequences, including a sense …
History's Stories, Stephan Landsman
History's Stories, Stephan Landsman
Michigan Law Review
A Review of Stories of Scottsboro by James Goodman
To Set The Law In Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau And The Legal Rights Of Blacks, 1865-1868, Michigan Law Review
To Set The Law In Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau And The Legal Rights Of Blacks, 1865-1868, Michigan Law Review
Michigan Law Review
A Review of To Set the Law in Motion: The Freedmen's Bureau and the Legal Rights of Blacks, 1865-1868 by Donald G. Nieman