Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

History Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in History

The Mystery Of Missing Marvin: Determining The Alumni Status Of A Century-Old Student, Marcus Walker Jul 2020

The Mystery Of Missing Marvin: Determining The Alumni Status Of A Century-Old Student, Marcus Walker

Faculty Scholarship

In 1920, the Law Department of the University of Louisville increased its curriculum from two to three years. The expanded course along with the earlier disruption of regular coursework due to World War I made for irregular graduating rosters, but two classes — 1920 and 1922 — stood out in particular. The latter was simple to resolve, but a conflict of information with the first opened an investigation of records that covered six different organizations in order to answer a deceptively difficult question: Was Marvin Taylor a graduate of the law school or not?


Slave Hounds And Abolition In The Americas, Tyler D. Parry, Charlton W. Yingling Feb 2020

Slave Hounds And Abolition In The Americas, Tyler D. Parry, Charlton W. Yingling

Faculty Scholarship

The lash and shackles remain two primary symbols of material degradation fixed in the historical memory of slavery in the Americas. Yet as recounted by states, abolitionists, travellers, and most importantly slaves themselves, perhaps the most terrifying and effective tool for disciplining black bodies and dominating their space was the dog. This article draws upon archival research and the published materials of former slaves, novelists, slave owners, abolitionists, Atlantic travelers, and police reports to link the systems of slave hunting in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, and the US South throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Slave hounds were skillfully honed biopower …


Fixing America's Founding, Maeve Glass Jan 2020

Fixing America's Founding, Maeve Glass

Faculty Scholarship

The forty-fifth presidency of the United States has sent lawyers reaching once more for the Founders’ dictionaries and legal treatises. In courtrooms, law schools, and media outlets across the country, the original meanings of the words etched into the U.S. Constitution in 1787 have become the staging ground for debates ranging from the power of a president to trademark his name in China to the rights of a legal permanent resident facing deportation. And yet, in this age when big data promises to solve potential challenges of interpretation and judges have for the most part agreed that original meaning should …


The Dual Origin Of The Duty To Disclose In Roman Law, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci Jan 2020

The Dual Origin Of The Duty To Disclose In Roman Law, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Faculty Scholarship

The Roman law remedies for failure to disclose in sales contracts were developed by two different institutions: that of the aediles, with jurisdiction on market transactions effected through auctions, and that of the praetor, with general jurisdiction including private transactions. The aedilician remedies — the actiones redhibitoria and quanti minoris — allowed for rapid transactions and inexpensive litigation but generated some allocative losses ex post, as they did not incentivize the parties to exchange information about idiosyncratic characteristics of the goods for sale. In contrast, the remedy developed by the praetor — the actio ex empto — implied …


Agency Problems And Organizational Costs In Slave-Run Business, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci Jan 2020

Agency Problems And Organizational Costs In Slave-Run Business, Barbara Abatino, Giuseppe Dari-Mattiacci

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the internal economic organization of the peculium servi communis — that is, of separate business assets assigned to a slave — and its (external) relationships with creditors. Literary, legal, and epigraphic evidence points predominantly to businesses of small or medium size, suggesting that there must have been some constraints to growth. We identify both agency problems arising within the business organization (governance problems) and agency problems arising between the business organization and its creditors (limited access to credit). We suggest that, although the praetorian remedies had a remarkable mitigating effect, agency problems operated as a constraint to …