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Articles 1 - 12 of 12
Full-Text Articles in Legal History
Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek
Truth And Reconciliation: The Ku Klux Klan Hearings Of 1871 And The Genesis Of Section 1983, Tiffany R. Wright, Ciarra N. Carr, Jade W.P. Gasek
Dickinson Law Review (2017-Present)
Over the course of seven months in 1871, Congress did something extraordinary for the time: It listened to Black people. At hearings in Washington, D.C. and throughout the former Confederate states, Black women and men—who just six years earlier were enslaved and barred from testifying in Southern courts—appeared before Congress to tell their stories. The stories were heartbreaking. After experiencing the joy of Emancipation and the initial hope of Reconstruction, they had been subjected to unspeakable horror at the hands of white terrorists. They had been raped and sexually humiliated. Their children and spouses murdered. They had been savagely beaten …
A Painful History : Symbols Of The Confederacy: A Conversation About The Tension Between Preserving History And Declaring Contemporary Values 1-19-2018, Michael M. Bowden
A Painful History : Symbols Of The Confederacy: A Conversation About The Tension Between Preserving History And Declaring Contemporary Values 1-19-2018, Michael M. Bowden
School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events
No abstract provided.
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
Thomas W. Mitchell
This article considers one of the primary ways in which African Americans have lost millions of acres of land that they were able to acquire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning part of the twentieth century and the sociopolitical implications of this land loss. Specifically, this article highlights the fact that forced partition sales of tenancy in common property, referred to more commonly as heirs' property, have been a major source of black land loss within the African American community. The article argues that involuntary black land loss has had a significant negative impact upon …
Coming To Terms With Dred Scott: A Response To Daniel A. Farber, Paul Finkelman
Coming To Terms With Dred Scott: A Response To Daniel A. Farber, Paul Finkelman
Pepperdine Law Review
When thinking about Dred Scott, the issue is not how do we “rehabilitate” the opinion. The goal of scholarship here is to understand the opinion, place it in the context of its own time, and explain its enduring significance. After that, we may praise or damn it, and rehabilitate it or condemn it. No one today likes the Dred Scott opinion or the result. But, this article argues that Professor Daniel A. Farber is so incensed by the opinion that he vastly overstates its historical significance including incorrectly blaming Chief Justice Taney for causing the Civil War. This article rejects …
Social Justice And The Law, Elaine R. Jones
Social Justice And The Law, Elaine R. Jones
University of Richmond Law Review
No abstract provided.
The Riddle Of Hiram Revels, Richard A. Primus
The Riddle Of Hiram Revels, Richard A. Primus
Articles
In 1870, a black man named Hiram Revels was named to represent Mississippi in the Senate. Senate Democrats objected to seating him and pointed out that the Constitution specifies that no person may be a senator who has not been a citizen of the United States for at least nine years. Before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Democrats argued, Revels had not been a citizen on account of the Supreme Court's 1857 decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford. Thus, even if Revels were a citizen in 1870, he had held that status for only two years. …
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
From Reconstruction To Deconstruction: Undermining Black Landownership, Political Independence, And Community Through Partition Sales Of Tenancies In Common, Thomas W. Mitchell
Faculty Scholarship
This article considers one of the primary ways in which African Americans have lost millions of acres of land that they were able to acquire in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the beginning part of the twentieth century and the sociopolitical implications of this land loss. Specifically, this article highlights the fact that forced partition sales of tenancy in common property, referred to more commonly as heirs' property, have been a major source of black land loss within the African American community. The article argues that involuntary black land loss has had a significant negative impact upon …
Spiritual Equality, The Black Codes, And The Americanization Of The Freedmen, David F. Forte
Spiritual Equality, The Black Codes, And The Americanization Of The Freedmen, David F. Forte
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
The notion of spiritual equality grew from the abolitionist movement - the precursor for the political ideology of the radical Republicans. The radical Republicans did not think one could achieve the acceptance of spiritual equality through forced material equality. [I]t was a religious revival that brought our country to confront the reality of slavery. It was a theological doctrine from which we derived our notion of equality in the Reconstruction Amendments. And in that era, the free-thinkers - the secularists of the age - were temporizers on the issue. They were simply of no use in the raising to liberty …
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 …
Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander
Discovering Our Connections: Race And Gender In The Law Symposium Keynote Address, Margaret Walker Alexander
American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law
No abstract provided.
America And Reconsruction, Thomas B. Grier
America And Reconsruction, Thomas B. Grier
IUSTITIA
Reconstruction has variously been termed "repressive. . . uncivilized" and "a sordid time" as well as "a noble experiment." Reflected in those judgments of the era is the dispute over the effects of Reconstruction. To be more correct, one might say that there has been much conjecture in determining what, in fact, Reconstruction was. Questioned also has been the role of the black man during the period; much of what he did, or was responsible for, has, like Reconstruction itself, been subject to many and varied accounts and evaluations. The intent of this paper is to examine several volumes concerned …