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2009

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Civil Rights and Discrimination

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Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Ideologia E Utopias Nas Mais Recentes Constituintes Brasileira E Portuguesa: Algumas Linhas De Leitura, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha Nov 2009

Ideologia E Utopias Nas Mais Recentes Constituintes Brasileira E Portuguesa: Algumas Linhas De Leitura, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Based upon a political compromise, in which « democratic socialists » and « social democrats » were the main protagonists, the ideology of Portuguese Constitution of 1976 was discrete, subtle. And ulterior constitutional revisions confirmed that fondamental aspect. Of course, utopia was present. But, even more present was the « hope principle ». We believe that the Brazilean constituent assembly, with the original importance of popular contributions, also had hope principle’s decisive influence. But the dinamics of the constituent assembly moderated, since the very beggining, the verbal signs of less discret ideologies. Utopia, neverthless, is very present in the aim …


The Sit-Ins And The State Action Doctrine, Christopher W. Schmidt Nov 2009

The Sit-Ins And The State Action Doctrine, Christopher W. Schmidt

All Faculty Scholarship

By taking their seats at “whites only” lunch counters across the South in the spring of 1960, African American students not only launched a dramatic new stage in the civil rights movement, they also sparked a national reconsideration of the scope of the constitutional equal protection requirement. The critical constitutional question raised by the sit-in movement was whether the Fourteenth Amendment, which after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) prohibited racial segregation in schools and other state-operated facilities, applied to privately owned accommodations open to the general public. From the perspective of the student protesters, the lunch counter operators, and …


The Residential Segregation Of Baltimore's Jews: Restrictive Covenants Or Gentlemen's Agreement?, Garrett Power Sep 2009

The Residential Segregation Of Baltimore's Jews: Restrictive Covenants Or Gentlemen's Agreement?, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

No abstract provided.


Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances Of 1910-1913, Garrett Power Sep 2009

Apartheid Baltimore Style: The Residential Segregation Ordinances Of 1910-1913, Garrett Power

Garrett Power

On May 15, 1911, Baltimore Mayor J. Barry Mahool signed into law an ordinance for “preserving the peace, preventing conflict and ill feeling between the white and colored races in Baltimore City.” This ordinance provided for the use of separate blocks by African American and whites and was the first such law in the nation directly aimed at segregating black and white homeowners. This article considers the historical significance of Baltimore’s first housing segregation law.


Rights, Race, And Manhood: The Spanish American War And Soldiers’ Quests For First Class American Citizenship, Julie Novkov Jun 2009

Rights, Race, And Manhood: The Spanish American War And Soldiers’ Quests For First Class American Citizenship, Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov

Unlike the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Spanish American War and the Philippine Resistance were not accompanied by significant rights advances for people of color. Rather, rights continued to flow in retrograde, with increased political and cultural repression. Men of color contributed substantially and formally to the war effort, with companies of black and Filipino soldiers serving in combat and many individual Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian men and male descendants of Asians serving as well. Nonetheless, they were unable to leverage service into successful claims to the rights of manhood. This paper explores these dynamics in the context of …


O Que É Uma Universidade?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha May 2009

O Que É Uma Universidade?, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Pouca gente sabe hoje o que é uma Universidade, a sério. Confunde-se muito Universidade e super-mercado de aulas, ou fábrica de « investigação » ou « pesquisa », assim como se confunde serviço público com negócio, vocação com interesse pessoal, etc. É a própria essência da Universidade que está em causa. A confusão é grande no público, que vê a Universidade sobretudo como uma forma de promoção social, pelos diplomas. A confusão não é menor na própria Universidade. Os universitários mais responsáveis interrogam-se sobre a sua função, o sentido do trabalho que fizeram e fazem, e a sua sorte na …


The First Integration Of The University Of Maryland School Of Law, David S. Bogen Apr 2009

The First Integration Of The University Of Maryland School Of Law, David S. Bogen

David S. Bogen

No abstract provided.


Sacrifice And Civic Membership: The Case Of World War I, Julie Novkov Mar 2009

Sacrifice And Civic Membership: The Case Of World War I, Julie Novkov

Julie Novkov

In the Civil War and World War II, many men of color gained rights while women's rights were in retrograde. While World War I is not a perfect mirror image of the Civil War and World War II, it may make sense to think of World War I as reversing the polarities that were in operation in the two other major conflicts. To understand this dynamic, this paper will explore the kinds of claims that men of color and women made for rights based in forms of civic service and sacrifice, how those claims were met by various state actors, …


"Airbrushed Out Of The Constitutional Canon": The Evolving Understanding Of Giles V. Harris, 1903-1925, Samuel Brenner Mar 2009

"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 …


Precursors Of Rosa Parks: Maryland Transportation Cases Between The Civil War And The Beginning Of World War I, David S. Bogen Feb 2009

Precursors Of Rosa Parks: Maryland Transportation Cases Between The Civil War And The Beginning Of World War I, David S. Bogen

David S. Bogen

When Rosa Parks refused to move to a seat in the back of the bus in Montgomery, it sparked the boycott and was a critical event in the Civil Rights movement. But Mrs. Parks was the culmination of a long tradition of resistance to segregation. Many teachers, ministers, businessmen and ordinary citizens refused to accept second class treatment on the railways and waterways of Maryland between the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I, and took their protest to the courts. Facing hostile state courts after the Civil War, African-American plaintiffs needed to access the …


Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford Jan 2009

Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction, Anthony C. Infanti, Bridget J. Crawford

Book Chapters

Our book Critical Tax Theory: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press 2009) highlights and explains the major themes and methodologies of a group of scholars who challenge the traditional claim that tax law is neutral and unbiased. The contributors to this volume include pioneers in the field of critical tax theory, as well as key thinkers who have sustained and expanded the investigation into why the tax laws are the way they are and what impact tax laws have on historically disempowered groups. This volume will provide an accessible introduction to this new and growing body of scholarship. It will be …


How Earl Warren Previewed Today’S Civil Liberties Debate—And Got It Right In The End, Sandhya Ramadas Jan 2009

How Earl Warren Previewed Today’S Civil Liberties Debate—And Got It Right In The End, Sandhya Ramadas

Sandhya Ramadas

Earl Warren is revered for his tenure as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and for his legacy as the icon of American civil liberties, but a dark moment lurked in his past. In late 1941 and early 1942, as the Attorney General of California, Warren confronted a host of difficult questions involving constitutional law, civil liberties, and race relations. With the United States still reeling from the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and with the dawn of the involvement of American combat troops in World War II, Warren advocated for the relocation and internment of both Japanese Americans and …


Changing Equalities, Jack B. Weinstein Jan 2009

Changing Equalities, Jack B. Weinstein

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.


Social Movements, Social Process: A Response To Gerald Rosenberg, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 671 (2009), Laura Beth Nielsen Jan 2009

Social Movements, Social Process: A Response To Gerald Rosenberg, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 671 (2009), Laura Beth Nielsen

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


Organizing In The Obama Era: A Progressive Moment Or A New Progressive Era?, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 685 (2009), Peter Dreier Jan 2009

Organizing In The Obama Era: A Progressive Moment Or A New Progressive Era?, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 685 (2009), Peter Dreier

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


Alinsky's Prescription: Democracy Alongside Law, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 723 (2009), Barbara L. Bezdek Jan 2009

Alinsky's Prescription: Democracy Alongside Law, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 723 (2009), Barbara L. Bezdek

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr. Jan 2009

The Framers' Search Power: The Misunderstood Statutory History Of Suspicion & Probable Cause, Fabio Arcila, Jr.

Scholarly Works

Originalist analyses of the Framers’ views about governmental search power have devoted insufficient attention to the civil search statutes they promulgated for regulatory purposes. What attention has been paid concludes that the Framers were divided about how accessible search remedies should be. This Article explains why this conventional account is mostly wrong and explores the lessons to be learned from the statutory choices the Framers made with regard to search and seizure law. In enacting civil search statutes, the Framers chose to depart from common law standards and instead largely followed the patterns of preceding British civil search statutes. The …


Created In Its Image: The Race Analogy, Gay Identity, And Gay Litigation In The 1950s-1970s, Craig J. Konnoth Jan 2009

Created In Its Image: The Race Analogy, Gay Identity, And Gay Litigation In The 1950s-1970s, Craig J. Konnoth

Publications

Existing accounts of early gay rights litigation largely focus on how the suppression and liberation of gay identity affected early activism. This Note helps complicate these dynamics, arguing that gay identity was not just suppressed and then liberated, but substantially transformed by activist efforts during this period, and that this transformation fundamentally affected the nature of gay activism. Gay organizers in the 1950s and 1960s moved from avoiding identity-based claims to analogizing gays to African-Americans. By transforming themselves in the image of a successful black civil rights minority, activists attempted to win over skeptical courts in a period when equal …


Lawyers And The Power Of Community: The Story Of South Ardmore, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 595 (2009), Corey S. Shdaimah Jan 2009

Lawyers And The Power Of Community: The Story Of South Ardmore, 42 J. Marshall L. Rev. 595 (2009), Corey S. Shdaimah

UIC Law Review

No abstract provided.


"Neutral" Principles: Rethinking The Legal History Of Civil Rights, 1934-1964, Anders Walker Jan 2009

"Neutral" Principles: Rethinking The Legal History Of Civil Rights, 1934-1964, Anders Walker

All Faculty Scholarship

This paper recovers Columbia Law Professor Herbert Wechsler's constitutional involvement in the long civilrights movement. Derided for criticizing Brown v. Board of Education in 1959, Wechsler first became involved in civil rights litigation in the 1930s, continued to be interested in civil rights issues in the 1940s, and argued one of the most important civil rights cases to come before the Supreme Court in the 1960s. His critique of Brown, this article maintains, derived not from a disinterest in the black struggle but from a larger conviction that racial reform should be process rather than rights-based. By recovering Wechsler's approach, …


Microhistory Set In Motion: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary, Rebecca J. Scott Jan 2009

Microhistory Set In Motion: A Nineteenth-Century Atlantic Creole Itinerary, Rebecca J. Scott

Book Chapters

Sidney Mintz’s Worker in the Cane is a model life history, uncovering the subtlest of dynamics within plantation society by tracing the experiences of a single individual and his family. By contrast, Mintz’s Sweetness and Power gains its force from taking the entire Atlantic world as its scope, examining the marketing, meanings, and consumption of sugar as they changed over time. This essay borrows from each of these two strategies, looking at the history of a single peripatetic family across three long-lived generations, from enslavement in West Africa in the eighteenth century through emancipation during the Haitian Revolution in the …


A New E.R.A. Or A New Era? Amendment Advocacy And The Reconstitution Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri Jan 2009

A New E.R.A. Or A New Era? Amendment Advocacy And The Reconstitution Of Feminism, Serena Mayeri

All Faculty Scholarship

Scholars have largely treated the reintroduction of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) after its ratification failure in 1982 as a mere postscript to a long, hard-fought, and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to enshrine women’s legal equality in the federal constitution. This Article argues that “ERA II” was instead an important turning point in the history of legal feminism and of constitutional amendment advocacy. Whereas ERA I had once attracted broad bipartisan support, ERA II was a partisan political weapon exploited by advocates at both ends of the ideological spectrum. But ERA II also became a vehicle for feminist reinvention. Congressional consideration …


Rebalancing The Scales: Restoring The Availability Of Disparate Impact Causes Of Action In Title Vi Cases, Victor Suthammanont Jan 2009

Rebalancing The Scales: Restoring The Availability Of Disparate Impact Causes Of Action In Title Vi Cases, Victor Suthammanont

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.


Misinformed Consent: Non-Medical Bases For American Birth Recommendations As A Human Rights Issue, Lisa L. Chalidze Jan 2009

Misinformed Consent: Non-Medical Bases For American Birth Recommendations As A Human Rights Issue, Lisa L. Chalidze

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.


New York Recognition Of A Legal Status For Same-Sex Couples: A Rapidly Developing Story, Arthur S. Leonard Jan 2009

New York Recognition Of A Legal Status For Same-Sex Couples: A Rapidly Developing Story, Arthur S. Leonard

NYLS Law Review

No abstract provided.


Strader V. Graham: Kentucky's Contribution To National Slavery Litigation And The Dred Scott Decision, Robert G. Schwemm Jan 2009

Strader V. Graham: Kentucky's Contribution To National Slavery Litigation And The Dred Scott Decision, Robert G. Schwemm

Law Faculty Scholarly Articles

In 1841, three Kentucky slaves in Louisville boarded a steamboat bound for Cincinnati. Within days, they had made their way to Detroit and then to permanent freedom in Canada. Their owner, a prominent central Kentucky businessman, soon tracked them down and tried to lure them back to bondage in the United States. When these efforts failed, he sued the steamboat owners for the value of the lost slaves in a Kentucky court. After ten years of litigation, this case reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court’s decision in favor of the Kentucky slaveholder would prove to be an important precedent …


Reinventar La Esclavitud, Garantizar La Libertad: De Saint-Domingue A Santiago A Nueva Orleáns, 1803-1809, Rebecca J. Scott Jan 2009

Reinventar La Esclavitud, Garantizar La Libertad: De Saint-Domingue A Santiago A Nueva Orleáns, 1803-1809, Rebecca J. Scott

Articles

From French and Creole to Spanish, the domain of the Napoleonic Empire to the king of Spain, crossing the strait separating the French colony of Saint-Domingue and the Spanish colony of Cuba entailed a change of language and government. Some 18,000 people made that transition between the spring and summer of 1803 during the Revolutionary War in Saint-Dominque. Six years later, many crossed the Gulf of Mexico from Cuba to New Orleans and the recently acquired Louisiana Territory under the authority of a territorial governor and the United States Congress. What would these crossings lead to for those who had …


Loneliness And The Law: Solitude Action And Power In Law And Literature, Marc L. Roark Dec 2008

Loneliness And The Law: Solitude Action And Power In Law And Literature, Marc L. Roark

Marc L. Roark

How do our thoughts and attitudes impact the law? Is there a correlation between the way the law is decided and the way we as lawyers and scholars approach law? These questions are the ultimate indicators of the direction of law. Traditionally, we assume that law develops artificially--that is, without direct correlation to any particular individual's contribution thereto--with few exceptions. We attribute broader forces to the development of legal movements; social movements and historical moments that ascend to the law. [FN1] In such scenarios, the individual is lost to the broader panoply of thought, rendered as little more than a …


Politeia And Arete. Archeology Of Senses And Hellenic Legacy, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha Dec 2008

Politeia And Arete. Archeology Of Senses And Hellenic Legacy, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

The idea of the Republic and its value is again the order of the day, not only due to Neorepublican theorists, but also because of many current debates, such as multiculturalism, the laicity of states and societies, transparency and corruption, etc. Along with Republican constitutional rules, principles and values, some proclaimed during the French Revolution (such as Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité), the debate shows the importance of an even deeper question: the importance of virtues, and the Greek legacy of Republican virtues. In this paper, among other points, we remember Pericles’ funereal speech in Thucydides’ History of Peloponnesian War, and some …


Hermenêutica Constitucional Entre Savigny E O Neoconstitucionalismo, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha Dec 2008

Hermenêutica Constitucional Entre Savigny E O Neoconstitucionalismo, Paulo Ferreira Da Cunha

Paulo Ferreira da Cunha

Apontar para os novos rumos jurisfilóficos mas também práticos do Neoconstitucionalismo contrastando as suas aportações hermenêuticas com o legado de Savigny nesta matéria.