Law Commons^™

John A. Bingham And The Story Of American Liberty: The Lost Cause Meets The "Lost Clause", Michael Kent Curtis

Akron Law Review

Nations have stories too. Ours is a story about the American Revolution against monarchy and aristocracy, a revolution based on the faith that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The revolution espoused the ideal that legitimate governmental power comes only from the consent of the governed.

In the old world, kings were sovereign. In America, the sovereign was “the people.” That ideal appeared in the preamble of the Constitution—a preamble that declared (somewhat inaccurately) that the Constitution came from “we the people” and was designed to assure liberty and justice. Though we …

Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventeenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks

Akron Law Review

After a brief discussion of English subjecthood in seventeen century England and the American colonies I explore the legal theories advanced in Elizabeth Key’s freedom suit to determine whether the factors considered by the judging parties continue to have validity in contemporary America. I conclude that treating Elizabeth’s claim only as a challenge to slavery is problematic because seventeenth century English judges, unfamiliar with modern slavery, were uncertain about the applicable common law principles to apply. Villeinage – English serfdom – was an imperfect analogy to African slavery; and even if villeinage principles were applied to Elizabeth’s case the outcome …