Legal History Commons^™

A Theory Of Federalization Doctrine, Gerald S. Dickinson

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The doctrine of federalization—the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court consulting state laws or adopting state court doctrines to guide and inform federal constitutional law—is an underappreciated field of study within American constitutional law. Compared to the vast collection of scholarly literature and judicial rulings addressing the outsized influence Supreme Court doctrine and federal constitutional law exert over state court doctrines and state legislative enactments, the opposite phenomenon of the states shaping Supreme Court doctrine and federal constitutional law has been under-addressed. This lack of attention to such a singular feature of American federalism is striking and has resulted in …

Class As Caste: The Thirteenth Amendment’S Applicability To Class-Based Subordination, William M. Carter Jr.

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As part of a symposium marking the sesquicentennial of the Thirteenth Amendment, this Article briefly explores whether the Thirteenth Amendment applies to class-based subordination. While recognizing that the increasingly rigid class-based stratification of our society, rampant discrimination against the poor, increasing income inequality, and the concentration of enormous wealth in the hands of so few are all pressing social challenges that the legal system must address, this Article concludes that generalized class-based discrimination likely would not fall within the scope of the “badges and incidents of slavery” that the Amendment prohibits.

This Article argues, however, that the Thirteenth Amendment's prohibition …

Afterword: Kindling The Programmatic Production Of Critical And Outsider Legal Scholarship, 1996-2016, Sarudzayi M. Matambanadzo, Francisco Valdes, Sheila I, Velez Martinez

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This afterword to a conference-based symposium represents not only an inter-generational reflection on LatCrit theory @ XX, but also an aspirational reminder of our foundational propositions and values as we look and venture ahead. Beginning with an introduction to the foundational theoretical principles of LatCrit knowledge production - as embodied principally by LatCrit values and the related functions, guidelines, and postulates - we discuss in detail and depth how these theoretical principles underpin the various projects in the LatCrit "portfolio" and provide a historical sketch of the development of these projects as programmatic knowledge production. In particular, we aim …

Representing Interdisciplinarity, Kunal Parker

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No abstract provided.

The Promises Of Freedom: The Contemporary Relevance Of The Thirteenth Amendment, William M. Carter Jr.

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This article, an expanded version of the author's remarks at the 2013 Honorable Clifford Scott Green Lecture at the Temple University Beasley School of Law, illuminates the history and the context of the Thirteenth Amendment. This article contends that the full scope of the Thirteenth Amendment has yet to be realized and offers reflections on why it remains an underenforced constitutional norm. Finally, this article demonstrates the relevance of the Thirteenth Amendment to addressing contemporary forms of racial inequality and subordination.

The Thirteenth Amendment And Pro-Equality Speech, William M. Carter Jr.

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The Thirteenth Amendment’s Framers envisioned the Amendment as providing federal authority to eliminate the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The freemen and their descendants are the most likely to be burdened with the effects of stigma, stereotypes, and structural discrimination arising from the slave system. Because African Americans are therefore the most obvious beneficiaries of the Amendment’s promise to eliminate the legacy of slavery, it is often mistakenly assumed that federal power to eradicate the badges and incidents of slavery only permits remedies aimed at redressing the subordination of African Americans. While African Americans were the primary victims of slavery …

Tax As Urban Legend, Anthony C. Infanti

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In this essay, I review UC-Berkeley history professor Robin Einhorn's book, American Taxation, American Slavery. In this provocatively-titled book, Einhorn traces the relationship between democracy, taxation, and slavery from colonial times through the antebellum period. By re-telling some of the most familiar set piece stories of American history through the lens of slavery, Einhorn reveals how the stories that we tell ourselves over and over again about taxation and politics in America are little more than the stuff of urban legend.

In the review, I provide a brief summary of Einhorn's discussion of the relationship between slavery and colonial taxation, …

Race, Rights, And The Thirteenth Amendment: Defining The Badges And Incidents Of Slavery, William M. Carter Jr.

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The Supreme Court has held that the Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery or involuntary servitude and also empowers Congress to end any lingering "badges and incidents of slavery." The Court, however, has failed to provide any guidance as to defining the badges and incidents of slavery when Congress has failed to identify a condition or form of discrimination as such. This has led the lower courts to conclude that the judiciary's role under the Thirteenth Amendment is limited to enforcing only the Amendment's prohibition of literal enslavement.

This article has two primary objectives. First, it offers an interpretive framework for defining …

Judicial Power And Mobilizable History, Richard A. Primus

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One contribution that law professors can make to constitutional discourse, I suggest, is the nurturing of new mobilizable histories. A "mobilizable history," as I will use the term, is a narrative, image, or other historical source that is sufficiently well-known to the community of constitutional decisionmakers so as to be able to support a credible argument in the discourse of constitutional law. It draws upon materials that are within the collective memory of constitutional interpreters; indeed, a necessary step in nurturing a new mobilizable history is to introduce new information into that collective memory or to raise the prominence of …

Punitive Damages Revisited: Taking The Rationale For Non-Recognition Of Foreign Judgments Too Far, Ronald A. Brand

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Punitive damages have been a controversial aspect of U.S. law; often criticized both at home and abroad. Neither U.S. law on punitive damages nor the foreign climate regarding their reception has remained static. This article notes the continuing legislative attack on punitive damages in the United States at both the state and federal level, and focuses on recent developments in case law and treaty negotiations concerning the reception of punitive damages abroad.

Politicizing The Crime Against Humanity: The French Example, Vivian Grosswald Curran

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The advantages of world adherence to universally acceptable standards of law and fundamental rights seemed apparent after the Second World War, as they had after the First. Their appeal seems ever greater and their advocates ever more persuasive today. The history of law provides evidence that caution may be in order, however, and that the human propensity to ignore what transpires under the surface of law threatens to dull and silence the ongoing self-examination and self-criticism required in perpetuity by the law if it is to be correlated with justice.

This Essay presents one side, the dark side, of the …

Theorists' Belief: A Comment On The Moral Tradition Of American Constitutionalism, Jospeh Vining

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The Moral Tradition of American Constitutionalism is one of those rare works that leads us to face, at the center of law and legal thought, the largest questions about human life and human purpose. There is a special reader's shudder, a certain gestural shift in the chair, reserved for that moment of realizing where one is being led-not to the edge, but to the center, so that the questions become insistent, and whatever we and others say and do in the face of them becomes our response to them.

Promise Fulfilled And Principle Betrayed, James J. White

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My responsibility in this paper is to address three questions. (1) How has the legal realist body of thought affected contract law and its application? (2) How will contract law and its application be affected in the future by realist thinking? (3) If the realist viewpoint were fully accepted, what kind of system would result and how would contract law be affected? Because my focus is upon a principal legislative monument to realism, Article Two of the Uniform Commercial Code (the "U.C.C."), and upon its drafter, Karl Llewellyn, I will not answer any of the three questions explicitly. By focusing …

Constitutional Interpretation, Terrance Sandalow

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"[We] must never forget," Chief Justice Marshall admonished us in a statement pregnant with more than one meaning, "that it is a constitution we are expounding."' Marshall meant that the Constitution should be read as a document "intended to endure for ages.to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs."'2 But he meant also that the construction placed upon the document must have regard for its "great outlines" and "important objects."'3 Limits are implied by the very nature of the task. There is not the same freedom in construing the Constitution as in constructing a …