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Full-Text Articles in Law
Crisis? Whose Crisis?, Jack M. Beermann
Crisis? Whose Crisis?, Jack M. Beermann
Faculty Scholarship
Every moment in human history can be characterized by someone as “socially and politically charged.” For a large portion of the population of the United States, nearly the entire history of the country has been socially and politically charged, first because they were enslaved and then because they were subjected to discriminatory laws and unequal treatment under what became known as “Jim Crow.” The history of the United States has also been a period of social and political upheaval for American Indians, the people who occupied the territory that became the United States before European settlement. Although both African-Americans and …
From Racial Discrimination To Separate But Equal: The Common Law Impact Of The Thirteenth Amendment, David S. Bogen
From Racial Discrimination To Separate But Equal: The Common Law Impact Of The Thirteenth Amendment, David S. Bogen
Faculty Scholarship
Many forces produced the shift in the United States from the acceptance of slavery and racial inequality to the doctrine of separate but equal. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and authorized legislation to enforce that abolition, but these well-known direct effects are only part of the story. This paper examines the Amendment’s indirect impact on racial discrimination – furthering a standard of equality in public relationships without threatening the existing racial separation. The Amendment is evidence of a change in values that justified overturning prior decisions, and abolition created a new context for legislation and common law decisions. It reinforced …
Privileges Or Immunities, Philip A. Hamburger
Privileges Or Immunities, Philip A. Hamburger
Faculty Scholarship
What was meant by the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause? Did it incorporate the U.S. Bill of Rights against the states or did it do something else? In retrospect, the Clause has seemed to have the poignancy of a path not taken – a trail abandoned in the Slaughter-House Cases and later lamented by academics, litigants, and even some judges. Although wistful thoughts about the Privileges or Immunities Clause may seem to lend legitimacy to incorporation, the Clause actually led in another direction. Long-forgotten evidence clearly shows that the Clause was an attempt to resolve a national dispute about …
John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai
John Brown's Constitution, Robert L. Tsai
Faculty Scholarship
It will surprise many Americans to learn that before John Brown and his men briefly captured Harper’s Ferry, they authored and ratified a Provisional Constitution. This deliberative act built upon the achievements of the group to establish a Free Kansas, during which time Brown penned an analogue to the Declaration of Independence. These acts of writing, coupled with Brown’s trial tactics after his arrest, cast doubts on claims that the man was a lunatic or on a suicide mission. Instead, they suggest that John Brown aimed to be a radical statesman, one who turned to extreme tactics but nevertheless remained …
Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks
Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks
Faculty Scholarship
Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom after being classified as a negro by the overseers of her late master’s estate. Her lawsuit is one of the earliest freedom suits in the English colonies filed by a person with some African ancestry. Elizabeth’s case also highlights those factors that distinguished indenture from life servitude—slavery in the mid-seventeenth century. She succeeds in securing her freedom by crafting three interlinking legal arguments to demonstrate that she was a member of the colonial society in which she lived. Her evidence was her asserted ancestry—English; her …
Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Reflections On From Slaves To Citizens Bondage, Freedom And The Constitution: The New Slavery Scholarship And Its Impact On Law And Legal Historiography, Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
The thesis of Professor Donald Nieman's paper, "From Slaves to Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, and Reconstruction," is that the nation experienced a revolution in the United States Constitution and in the consciousness of African Americans. According to Professor Nieman, the Reconstruction Amendments represented "a dramatic departure from antebellum constitutional principles,"' because the Thirteenth Amendment reversed the pre-Civil War constitutional guarantee of slavery and "abolish[ed] slavery by federal authority." The Fourteenth Amendment rejected the Supreme Court's "racially-based definition of citizenship [in Dred Scott v. Sandford4], clearly establishing a color-blind citizenship” and the Fifteenth Amendment "wrote the principle of equality into the …
Book Review: Slave Law In The Americas, David S. Bogen
Book Review: Slave Law In The Americas, David S. Bogen
Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.