Legal History Commons^™

The Opinion Volume 37 Number 1 – September 12, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue dated September 12, 1996

What’S Pragmatic About Legal Pragmatism?, David Luban

Cardozo Law Review

Does legal pragmatism have anything at all to do with pragmatism? Both Thomas Grey and Richard Posner seem to suggest that in important respects the answer is no. Grey tells us that even a devout anti-pragmatist in matters ontological can endorse legal pragmatism, while Posner adds the converse, that pragmatic philosophy may at times impel a judge to decide cases like a formalist. These conclusions suggest that talk of legal pragmatism may simply be a pun on what philosophers take pragmatism to be. Lest this appear a far-fetched suggestion, remember that in philosophy the word "realism" often refers to the …

The Vital Common Law: Its Role In A Statutory Age, M. Stuart Madden

University of Arkansas at Little Rock Law Review

No abstract provided.

The First 100 Years: Umkc School Of Law: An Abridged History, Robert C. Downs

Faculty Works

This article provides a historical account of the first century of the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) School of Law, highlighting its founding, evolution, and key milestones. Established in 1895 as the Kansas City School of Law, the institution grew from a small private legal training center into a fully integrated part of the University of Missouri system. The history details the school’s transformation through significant events such as its merger with the University of Kansas City in 1938 and its incorporation into the University of Missouri in 1963. The narrative also explores the changing demographics of the student body, …

Constitutional Fictions And Meritocratic Success Stories, Robin West

Washington and Lee Law Review

No abstract provided.

Revenge For The Condemned, Sara Sun Beale, Paul H. Haagen

Michigan Law Review

A Review of V.A.C. Gatrell, The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868

The Opinion Volume 36 Number 12 – May 1, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue dated May 01, 1996

The Unlikely Hero Of Dred Scott: Benjamin Robbins Curtis And The Constitutional Law Of Slavery, Earl M. Maltz

Cardozo Law Review

The standard account portrays Dred Scott v. Sandford as a story of villains and heroes. The villains are the members of the majority, led by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney, who concluded that descendants of slaves could never become citizens of the Union and that Congress could not outlaw slavery in the territories. The heroes, on the other hand, are the two dissenters, John McLean and Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who rejected these conclusions and determined that Scott should be deemed a free man. McLean's opinion, however, was not tightly reasoned and was rather clearly designed to advance his presidential ambitions; …

Comment On Earl Maltz, Kenneth M. Stampp

Cardozo Law Review

Professor Earl Maltz has written an excellent brief account of Benjamin R. Curtis's judicial record as it relates to slavery, including his dissenting argument in the famous Dred Scott case. He found Curtis to be a perfect example of mid-nineteenth century Northern conservative Whigs-the "Cotton Whigs," as their antislavery critics called them. They disliked slavery, but, in equal measure, they disliked those who agitated against it. Both Southern proslavery extremists and Northern abolitionists appalled them, for both groups endangered the Union. Conservative Whig President Millard Fillmore would not have appointed Curtis to the Supreme Court if he had shared the …

The Slavery Of Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Cardozo Law Review

The Thirteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution commands that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist." What has been the effect of this command?

It will serve my present purpose to offer the following toosimple answer to this complex question: the Thirteenth Amendment secured little more than the manumission of slaves already practically freed by the friction of war. It guaranteed, in Confederate General Robert Richardson's now well-known phrase, "nothing but freedom."

Supposing this answer to be true, a further question presents itself: Did the Thirteenth Amendment's effect fulfill its command? Did universal manumission abolish slavery?

A full answer to …

Bondage, Freedom & The Constitution, Eric Foner

Cardozo Law Review

Linking the papers on this most interesting panel are questions that center on the meaning of freedom. What is freedom? Who has the power to define what freedom is? What are the consequences of slavery and its abolition for Americans' understandings of freedom? In one way or another, these papers, as well as many others in this conference, illuminate these questions.

From Slaves To Citizens: African-Americans, Rights Consciousness, And Reconstruction, Donald G. Nieman

Cardozo Law Review

Addressing a racially mixed jury selected to try Ku Klux Klansmen in federal circuit court in Columbia, South Carolina in 1871, United States Attorney Daniel T. Corbin highlighted the dramatic changes that the previous decade had witnessed. "Gentlemen," he remarked, "we have lived over a century in the last ten years." Corbin did not exaggerate. The Civil War and Reconstruction years witnessed changes as revolutionary as any the nation has ever experienced. And nowhere were the changes as sweeping as in the realm of constitutional law.

Comment On Donald Nieman's Paper, Randall Kennedy

Cardozo Law Review

I have two responses to Professor Neiman's paper. One emphasizes a point he makes. The other disagrees a bit with his reading of the promise of Reconstruction.

Black Suffrage And The Redefinition Of American Freedom, 1860-1870, Xi Wang

Cardozo Law Review

One of the most important outcomes of the Civil War was the establishment of a new constitutional order. Under this new order, African Americans, a people whose essential human rights had been denied under the old constitutional order, were constitutionally emancipated from slavery and recognized as American citizens. They received the privileges and immunities that white Americans had automatically assumed. Male black Americans also received the right to vote. This new order, as embraced by the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, was a truly remarkable achievement of Reconstruction. What is additionally significant is that these Amendments became …

Stories About Property, William W. Fisher Iii

Michigan Law Review

A Review of Carol M. Rose, Property and Persuasion: Essays on the History, Theory, and Rhetoric of Ownership

The Slavery Of Emancipation, Guyora Binder

Journal Articles

The Thirteenth Amendment abolishes the institution of slavery rather than freeing individual slaves. Yet it quickly came to stand for little more than granting universal rights to make labor contracts and to leave service. This article develops a distinction between abolishing an institution and reclassifying individuals within it. Drawing on the comparative history of slavery, it shows that the institution of slavery has generally included mechanisms for the manumission of slaves and their passage into a liminal status combining self-ownership with social subordination and relative isolation. A critical account of the Antelope litigation shows that proponents of mass manumission still …

The Fifteenth Amendment And "Political Rights", Akhil Reed Amar

Cardozo Law Review

Professor Xi Wang has offered us an altogether exemplary paper on black suffrage. Rather than trying to criticize it, I shall attempt to extend it by picking up where he left off. My main text is the Fifteenth Amendment. I would like to suggest that the best interpretation of the Fifteenth Amendment would read it as encompassing a cluster of political rights; the Amendment protects not only the right to vote, but also the right to hold office, the right to be voted for, the right to vote in a legislature, the right to serve on a jury, and even …

Comments On James Oakes, “The Compromising Expedient”, Robert A. Burt

Cardozo Law Review

Professor Oakes's excellent paper convincingly characterizes the 1787 Constitution as a reactionary abandonment of the antislavery ethos of the 1776 Revolution that had appeared to set the new country on a course toward the abolition of slavery. "What," he asks, "accounts for the Constitution's failure to promote the cause already pushed so far by the Revolution?" If we could answer this question, we might not only explain the reactionary falling away from the Revolution, but also shed light on the historically parallel phenomena that Oakes identifies at the end of his paper-the abandonment of the emancipatory impulse from the Civil …

The Opinion Volume 36 Number 11 – April 17, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue dated April 17, 1996

The Opinion Volume 36 Number 10 – April 3, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue dated April 3, 1996

Charles Hamilton Houston And The Search For A Just Society, North Carolina Central Law Review

North Carolina Central Law Review

No abstract provided.

The Opinion Volume 36 Number 10 – April 1, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

Spoof issue of The Opinion newspaper ("The Onion") dated April 01, 1996. Marked as Number ?

The Federalism Pendulum, Ronald J. Bacigal

Law Faculty Publications

Following Franklin's example, this essay takes a protracted view of the federalization of criminal procedure. It is important to review how the federalism pendulum has swung over the years to reflect concepts of what the Constitution was meant to mean, what it has come to mean, and what it ought to mean.

Aspects Of Reception Of Law, Alan Watson

Scholarly Works

In most places at most times borrowing is the most fruitful source of legal change. The borrowing may be from within the system, by analogy - from negligence in torts to negligence in contract, for instance - or from another legal system. The act of borrowing is usually simple. To build up a theory of borrowing on the other hand, seems to be an extremely complex matter. Receptions come in all shapes and sizes: from taking over single rules to (theoretically) almost a whole system. They present an array of social phenomena that are not easily explained: from whom can …

Skunk In An Onion Patch Buchanan Threatens Dole If He Doesn't Shut Up-And America If He Does, Kenneth Lasson

All Faculty Scholarship

Regardless of his finish in the primaries, Mr. Buchanan is determined to be heard from at the Republican National Convention in late summer. Mr. [Bob Dole] would like his endorsement for the votes it would provide, but cannot be serious about hoping "that Pat Buchanan would find it in his heart as a good Republican to join forces and close ranks." Can good Republicans be outright bigots? Does Mr. Dole have a political death wish?

What's in Mr. Buchanan's heart is the cause. "We'll go forward," he vowed on national television, "fighting for the cause." But the purity of the …

The Opinion Volume 36 Number 9 – March 13, 1996, The Opinion

The Opinion Newspaper (all issues)

The Opinion newspaper issue dated March 13, 1996

The Retrieval Of The Democratic Ethos, Richard J. Bernstein

Cardozo Law Review

For over thirty years I have been a sympathetic although critical reader of Habermas. Initially, I was struck by his nuanced insight into the American pragmatic tradition and his appropriation of the radical democratic ethos of the pragmatic movement. I felt then, and still believe, that Habermas has a more profound and subtle understanding of what is best and most enduring in pragmatism-especially in the thought of Peirce, Dewey, and Mead-than many of my American colleagues. I was also attracted to Habermas for other reasons. He is a dialectical thinker who has the courage to buck fashionable trends-who refuses to …

Law And Political Culture, Dick Howard

Cardozo Law Review

A decade ago Habermas announced a project in his The Theory of Communicative Action. Those who slipped into the habit of talking about this project as his Rechtsphilosophie may be surprised by the sobriety of Habermas's choice for the book's title. The foreword to Faktizitat und Geltung rejects any comparison with Hegel's systematic Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. Habermas contrasts his "methodical-pluralistic" proposals to the idealistic concepts of Geist and Sittlichkeit, which are unable to account for complex modern societies. The apparent modesty of Habermas's claims is underlined by his subtitle, Contributions to a Discourse Theory of …

Habermas And The Counterfactual Imagination, Michael K. Power

Cardozo Law Review

The epistemological problem of critical theories is easy to state but hard to resolve. On the one hand, if the theories are too descriptive and draw their conceptual resources from the ideas and institutions which currently exist, they lose their critical force. While they may provide elaborate reconstructions of the structure of social practices, they remain internal to these practices, part of a field of knowledge in which, at worst, theory is merely a form of public relations. On the other hand, if they articulate forms of critique that are entirely external to the systems of knowledge and practice that …

Liberties And Popular Sovereignty: On Jurgen Habermas’S Reconstruction Of The System Of Rights, Ingeborg Maus

Cardozo Law Review

The justifications Jurgen Habermas gives for a system of rights bring together the central intentions of his theory of law. The chapter of his book which provides these justifications is devoted in part to developing the underlying tension between "facticity and validity" as the basic structure of law taking the extreme and, for that reason, illuminating aspect of the guarantee of liberty through coercion. It also elucidates the motives for reestablishing the centuries-old connection between legal theory and social theory in the context of the most topical social problems. Whereas all subsectors of contemporary society have been juridified on a …