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Author: Norman A. Coles Publisher: ISBN: 9781789760422 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The US Constitutions, both of 1788 and 1791, contain at Article IV (para 2, Section 3) a clause generally called The Fugitive Slave Clause. This Clause was held to make it legal to both recapture and return fugitive slaves to the states where they had lived or the owner, even if he or she resisted. The Clause was held to be constitutionally legal by lawyers and legal commentators. Even Lincoln as a lawyer thought the Clause was constitutionally legal, even though he thought slavery evil. Norman Coles presents arguments which show that the Clause has at least two (and possibly three) meanings. The Clause may not refer to slaves at all, when it is interpreted in accord with its actual phrasing rather than its intended meaning promoting the wishes of owners. Alvan Stewart, a renowned Abolitionist lawyer, argued that the Clause was inconsistent with that part of the 1791 US Constitution which is Amendment IV, reasoning premised on the definition of person, which applied to the two dated Constitutions; and with regard to the Fourth Amendment (1791) where slavery (unless a result of crime and jury trial) was illegal under US law. Stewarts arguments are about Constitutional principles, not the practical consequences of believing the Clause was law. Stewarts reasoning is penetrating; arguments relating to ambiguity and legal jargon are superseded by the logical consequence of the fact that if the Clause is about fugitive slaves, its legality rests on false assumptions. Herein lay the potential to avoid an historical tragedy. In the course of time legal and political champions, in conjunction with a growing number of US States, favoured laws which barred slave-hunting, but in the interim legal inadequacy resulted in the unnecessary continuation of slave-holding. This publication is a fundamental reconsideration of the intertwining of American History and American Constitutional Law.
Author: Norman A. Coles Publisher: ISBN: 9781789760422 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The US Constitutions, both of 1788 and 1791, contain at Article IV (para 2, Section 3) a clause generally called The Fugitive Slave Clause. This Clause was held to make it legal to both recapture and return fugitive slaves to the states where they had lived or the owner, even if he or she resisted. The Clause was held to be constitutionally legal by lawyers and legal commentators. Even Lincoln as a lawyer thought the Clause was constitutionally legal, even though he thought slavery evil. Norman Coles presents arguments which show that the Clause has at least two (and possibly three) meanings. The Clause may not refer to slaves at all, when it is interpreted in accord with its actual phrasing rather than its intended meaning promoting the wishes of owners. Alvan Stewart, a renowned Abolitionist lawyer, argued that the Clause was inconsistent with that part of the 1791 US Constitution which is Amendment IV, reasoning premised on the definition of person, which applied to the two dated Constitutions; and with regard to the Fourth Amendment (1791) where slavery (unless a result of crime and jury trial) was illegal under US law. Stewarts arguments are about Constitutional principles, not the practical consequences of believing the Clause was law. Stewarts reasoning is penetrating; arguments relating to ambiguity and legal jargon are superseded by the logical consequence of the fact that if the Clause is about fugitive slaves, its legality rests on false assumptions. Herein lay the potential to avoid an historical tragedy. In the course of time legal and political champions, in conjunction with a growing number of US States, favoured laws which barred slave-hunting, but in the interim legal inadequacy resulted in the unnecessary continuation of slave-holding. This publication is a fundamental reconsideration of the intertwining of American History and American Constitutional Law.
Author: Norman Coles Publisher: Liverpool University Press ISBN: 1782846794 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 147
Book Description
The US Constitutions, both of 1788 and 1791, contain at Article IV (para 2, Section 3) a clause generally called The Fugitive Slave Clause. This Clause was held to make it legal to both recapture and return fugitive slaves to the states where they had lived or the owner, even if he or she resisted. The Clause was held to be constitutionally legal by lawyers and legal commentators. Even Lincoln as a lawyer thought the Clause was constitutionally legal, even though he thought slavery evil. Norman Coles presents arguments which show that the Clause has at least two (and possibly three) meanings. The Clause may not refer to slaves at all, when it is interpreted in accord with its actual phrasing rather than its intended meaning promoting the wishes of owners. Alvan Stewart, a renowned Abolitionist lawyer, argued that the Clause was inconsistent with that part of the 1791 US Constitution which is Amendment IV, reasoning premised on the definition of person, which applied to the two dated Constitutions; and with regard to the Fourth Amendment (1791) where slavery (unless a result of crime and jury trial) was illegal under US law. Stewarts arguments are about Constitutional principles, not the practical consequences of believing the Clause was law. Stewarts reasoning is penetrating; arguments relating to ambiguity and legal jargon are superseded by the logical consequence of the fact that if the Clause is about fugitive slaves, its legality rests on false assumptions. Herein lay the potential to avoid an historical tragedy. In the course of time legal and political champions, in conjunction with a growing number of US States, favoured laws which barred slave-hunting, but in the interim legal inadequacy resulted in the unnecessary continuation of slave-holding. This publication is a fundamental reconsideration of the intertwining of American History and American Constitutional Law.
Author: Jeanine Michna-Bales Publisher: Chronicle Books ISBN: 1616896094 Category : Photography Languages : en Pages : 192
Book Description
They left in the middle of the night—often carrying little more than the knowledge to follow the North Star. Between 1830 and the end of the Civil War in 1865, an estimated one hundred thousand slaves became passengers on the Underground Railroad, a journey of untold hardship, in search of freedom. In Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad, Jeanine Michna-Bales presents a remarkable series of images following a route from the cotton plantations of central Louisiana, through the cypress swamps of Mississippi and the plains of Indiana, north to the Canadian border— a path of nearly fourteen hundred miles. The culmination of a ten-year research quest, Through Darkness to Light imagines a journey along the Underground Railroad as it might have appeared to any freedom seeker. Framing the powerful visual narrative is an introduction by Michna-Bales; a foreword by noted politician, pastor, and civil rights activist Andrew J. Young; and essays by Fergus M. Bordewich, Robert F. Darden, and Eric R. Jackson.
Author: Andrew Delbanco Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0735224137 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 482
Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book Selection Winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize Winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner of the Lionel Trilling Book Award A New York Times Critics' Best Book "Excellent... stunning."—Ta-Nehisi Coates This book tells the story of America’s original sin—slavery—through politics, law, literature, and above all, through the eyes of enslavedblack people who risked their lives to flee from bondage, thereby forcing the nation to confront the truth about itself. The struggle over slavery divided not only the American nation but also the hearts and minds of individual citizens faced with the timeless problem of when to submit to unjust laws and when to resist. The War Before the War illuminates what brought us to war with ourselves and the terrible legacies of slavery that are with us still.
Author: Allan Colbern Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 110884104X Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 457
Book Description
States have historically led in rights expansion for marginalized populations and remain leaders today on the rights of undocumented immigrants.
Author: Goodwin Liu Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0199752834 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 274
Book Description
Chief Justice John Marshall argued that a constitution "requires that only its great outlines should be marked [and] its important objects designated." Ours is "intended to endure for ages to come, and consequently, to be adapted to the various crises of human affairs." In recent years, Marshall's great truths have been challenged by proponents of originalism and strict construction. Such legal thinkers as Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argue that the Constitution must be construed and applied as it was when the Framers wrote it. In Keeping Faith with the Constitution, three legal authorities make the case for Marshall's vision. They describe their approach as "constitutional fidelity"--not to how the Framers would have applied the Constitution, but to the text and principles of the Constitution itself. The original understanding of the text is one source of interpretation, but not the only one; to preserve the meaning and authority of the document, to keep it vital, applications of the Constitution must be shaped by precedent, historical experience, practical consequence, and societal change. The authors range across the history of constitutional interpretation to show how this approach has been the source of our greatest advances, from Brown v. Board of Education to the New Deal, from the Miranda decision to the expansion of women's rights. They delve into the complexities of voting rights, the malapportionment of legislative districts, speech freedoms, civil liberties and the War on Terror, and the evolution of checks and balances. The Constitution's framers could never have imagined DNA, global warming, or even women's equality. Yet these and many more realities shape our lives and outlook. Our Constitution will remain vital into our changing future, the authors write, if judges remain true to this rich tradition of adaptation and fidelity.
Author: Jacobus tenBroek Publisher: Univ of California Press ISBN: 0520344847 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 238
Book Description
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1951.
Author: David J. Bodenhamer Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019991303X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
The framers of the Constitution chose their words carefully when they wrote of a more perfect union--not absolutely perfect, but with room for improvement. Indeed, we no longer operate under the same Constitution as that ratified in 1788, or even the one completed by the Bill of Rights in 1791--because we are no longer the same nation. In The Revolutionary Constitution, David J. Bodenhamer provides a comprehensive new look at America's basic law, integrating the latest legal scholarship with historical context to highlight how it has evolved over time. The Constitution, he notes, was the product of the first modern revolution, and revolutions are, by definition, moments when the past shifts toward an unfamiliar future, one radically different from what was foreseen only a brief time earlier. In seeking to balance power and liberty, the framers established a structure that would allow future generations to continually readjust the scale. Bodenhamer explores this dynamic through seven major constitutional themes: federalism, balance of powers, property, representation, equality, rights, and security. With each, he takes a historical approach, following their changes over time. For example, the framers wrote multiple protections for property rights into the Constitution in response to actions by state governments after the Revolution. But twentieth-century courts--and Congress--redefined property rights through measures such as zoning and the designation of historical landmarks (diminishing their commercial value) in response to the needs of a modern economy. The framers anticipated just such a future reworking of their own compromises between liberty and power. With up-to-the-minute legal expertise and a broad grasp of the social and political context, this book is a tour de force of Constitutional history and analysis.
Author: James F. Simon Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 0743250338 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 338
Book Description
The clashes between President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney over slavery, secession, and the president's constitutional war powers are vividly brought to life in this compelling story of the momentous tug-of-war between these two men during the worst crisis in American history.
Author: Andrew E. Taslitz Publisher: NYU Press ISBN: 0814783260 Category : Law Languages : en Pages : 377
Book Description
The modern law of search and seizure permits warrantless searches that ruin the citizenry's trust in law enforcement, harms minorities, and embraces an individualistic notion of the rights that it protects, ignoring essential roles that properly-conceived protections of privacy, mobility, and property play in uniting Americans. Many believe the Fourth Amendment is a poor bulwark against state tyrannies, particularly during the War on Terror. Historical amnesia has obscured the Fourth Amendment's positive aspects, and Andrew E. Taslitz rescues its forgotten history in Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment, which includes two novel arguments. First, that the original Fourth Amendment of 1791—born in political struggle between the English and the colonists—served important political functions, particularly in regulating expressive political violence. Second, that the Amendment’s meaning changed when the Fourteenth Amendment was created to give teeth to outlawing slavery, and its focus shifted from primary emphasis on individualistic privacy notions as central to a white democratic polis to enhanced protections for group privacy, individual mobility, and property in a multi-racial republic. With an understanding of the historical roots of the Fourth Amendment, suggests Taslitz, we can upend negative assumptions of modern search and seizure law, and create new institutional approaches that give political voice to citizens and safeguard against unnecessary humiliation and dehumanization at the hands of the police.
Author: Norman A. Coles
Author: Norman A. Coles
Author: Norman Coles
Author: Jeanine Michna-Bales
Author: Andrew Delbanco
Author: Allan Colbern
Author: Goodwin Liu
Author: Jacobus tenBroek
Author: David J. Bodenhamer
Author: James F. Simon
Author: Andrew E. Taslitz