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Full-Text Articles in Law
Was Slavery Unconstitutional Before The Thirteenth Amendment? Lysander Spooner’S Theory Of Interpretation, Randy E. Barnett
Was Slavery Unconstitutional Before The Thirteenth Amendment? Lysander Spooner’S Theory Of Interpretation, Randy E. Barnett
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
In 1843, radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison called the Constitution of the United States, "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." Why? Because it sanctioned slavery, one of the greatest crimes that one person can commit against another. Slavery was thought by abolitionists to be a violation of the natural rights of man so fundamental that, as Lincoln once remarked: "If slavery were not wrong, nothing is wrong." Yet the original U.S. Constitution was widely thought to have sanctioned this crime. Even today, many still believe that, until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting involuntary servitude, slavery …
Communities, Texts, And Law: Reflections On The Law And Literature Movement, Robin West
Communities, Texts, And Law: Reflections On The Law And Literature Movement, Robin West
Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works
How do we form communities? How might we form better ones? What is the role of law in that process? In a recent series of books and articles, James Boyd White, arguably the modern law and literature movement's founder, has put forward distinctively literary answers to these questions. Perhaps because of the fluidity of the humanities, White's account of the nature of community is not nearly as axiomatic to the law and literature movement as is Posner's depiction of the "individual" to legal economists. Nevertheless, White's conception is increasingly representative of the literary-legalist's world view. Furthermore, with the exception of …