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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 11 of 11
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Rethinking Antebellum Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo
Rethinking Antebellum Bankruptcy, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
Bankruptcy law has been repeatedly reinvented over time in response to changing circumstances. The Bankruptcy Act of 1841—passed by Congress to address the financial ruin caused by the Panic of 1837—constituted a revolutionary break from its immediate predecessor, the Bankruptcy Act of 1800, which was the nation’s first bankruptcy statute. Although Congress repealed the 1841 Act in 1843, the legislation lasted significantly longer than recognized by scholars. The repeal legislation permitted pending bankruptcy cases to be finally resolved pursuant to the Act’s terms. Because debtors flooded the judicially understaffed 1841 Act system with over 46,000 cases, the Act’s administration continued …
Racialized Bankruptcy Federalism, Rafael I. Pardo
Racialized Bankruptcy Federalism, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
Notwithstanding the robust national power conferred by the U.S. Constitution’s Bankruptcy Clause, the design and administration of federal bankruptcy law entails choices about the extent to which non-bankruptcy-law entitlements will remain un-displaced. When such entitlements sound in domestic nonfederal law (i.e., state or local law), displacing them triggers federalism concerns. Considerations regarding the relationship between the federal government and the nation’s smaller political subdivisions might warrant preserving nonfederal-law entitlements even though their displacement would be authorized pursuant to the bankruptcy power. But such considerations might also suggest replacing those entitlements with bankruptcy-specific ones. Some scholarship has theorized about the principles …
Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum
Reconstructing Racially Polarized Voting, Travis Crum
Scholarship@WashULaw
Racially polarized voting makes minorities more vulnerable to discriminatory changes in election laws and therefore implicates nearly every voting rights doctrine. In Thornburg v. Gingles, the Supreme Court held that racially polarized voting is a necessary—but not a sufficient—condition for a vote dilution claim under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court, however, has recently questioned the propriety of recognizing the existence of racially polarized voting. This colorblind approach threatens not only the Gingles factors but also Section 2’s constitutionality.
The Court treats racially polarized voting as a modern phenomenon. But the relevant starting point is the 1860s, …
Federally Funded Slaving, Rafael I. Pardo
Federally Funded Slaving, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
This Article presents a new frame of reference for thinking about the federal government’s complicity in supporting the domestic slave trade in the antebellum United States. While scholars have accounted for several methods of such support, they have failed to consider how federal bankruptcy legislation during the 1840s functionally created a system of direct financial grants to slave traders in the form of debt discharges. Relying on a variety of primary sources, including manuscript court records that have not been systematically analyzed by any published scholarship, this Article shows how the Bankruptcy Act of 1841 enabled severely indebted slave traders …
Bankrupted Slaves, Rafael I. Pardo
Bankrupted Slaves, Rafael I. Pardo
Scholarship@WashULaw
Responsible societies reckon with the pernicious and ugly chapters in their histories. Wherever we look, there exist ever-present reminders of how we failed as a society in permitting the enslavement of millions of black men, women, and children during the first century of this nation’s history. No corner of society remains unstained. As such, it is incumbent on institutions to confront their involvement in this horrific past to fully comprehend the kaleidoscopic nature of institutional complicity in legitimating and entrenching slavery. Only by doing so can we properly continue the march of progress, finding ways to improve society, not letting …
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Slaves To Contradictions: 13 Myths That Sustained Slavery, Wilson Huhn
Akron Law Faculty Publications
People have a fundamental need to think of themselves as “good people.” To achieve this we tell each other stories – we create myths – about ourselves and our society. These myths may be true or they may be false. The more discordant a myth is with reality, the more difficult it is to convince people to embrace it. In such cases to sustain the illusion of truth it may be necessary to develop an entire mythology – an integrated web of mutually supporting stories. This paper explores the system of myths that sustained the institution of slavery in the …
Book Review (Paul Frymer's Black And Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, And The Decline Of The Democratic Party)., Sophia Z. Lee
Book Review (Paul Frymer's Black And Blue: African Americans, The Labor Movement, And The Decline Of The Democratic Party)., Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
Race, Sex, And Rulemaking: Administrative Constitutionalism And The Workplace, 1960 To The Present, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
This Article uses the history of equal employment rulemaking at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Power Commission (FPC) to document and analyze, for the first time, how administrative agencies interpret the Constitution. Although it is widely recognized that administrators must implement policy with an eye on the Constitution, neither constitutional nor administrative law scholarship has examined how administrators approach constitutional interpretation. Indeed, there is limited understanding of agencies’ core task of interpreting statutes, let alone of their constitutional practice. During the 1960s and 1970s, officials at the FCC relied on a strikingly broad and affirmative interpretation of …
Book Review (Risa L. Goluboff's The Lost Promise Of Civil Rights), Sophia Z. Lee
Book Review (Risa L. Goluboff's The Lost Promise Of Civil Rights), Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Hotspots In A Cold War: The Naacp's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948-1964, Sophia Z. Lee
Hotspots In A Cold War: The Naacp's Postwar Workplace Constitutionalism, 1948-1964, Sophia Z. Lee
All Faculty Scholarship
No abstract provided.
Social Science And Segregation Before Brown, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
Social Science And Segregation Before Brown, Herbert J. Hovenkamp
All Faculty Scholarship
The courts must bear a heavy share of the burden of American racism. An outpouring of historical scholarship on racism and the American law reveals the outrageous and humiliating extent to which American lawyers, judges, and legislators created, perpetuated, and defended racist American institutions. The law is not autonomous, however, particularly in areas of explicit public policy making. Lawyers did not invent racism. Rather they created racist institutions because society was racist and racism was implicit in its values. The trend in scholarship on the legal history of American racism, however, has been to place most of the blame for …