Chesney on the Military-Intelligence Convergence

To understand law and security in the post-9/11 years, historians will need to move beyond broad questions of the impact of war and security on domestic law, and to unpack the labyrinth of the intersection between domestic law and the law of armed conflict.  In doing so, Robert Chesney, University of Texas School of Law, is a very helpful guide.  In his new paper:  Military-Intelligence Convergence and the Law of the Title 10/Title 50 Debate,  Journal of National Security Law and Policy, 2011, Chesney sets the origins of a convergence in military and intelligence operations in the context of Truman administration efforts to reshape American national security during the early Cold War years.  In that respect, the paper reinforces the importance for legal history of Truman-era national security policy, a point raised in Stephen Griffin's recent paper.  Here's Chesney's abstract:

One of the most striking features of the post-9/11 era has been the convergence of military and intelligence operations. Nothing illustrates the trend better than the CIA‟s emergence as a veritable combatant command in the conflict with al Qaeda, though it manifests as well through the expansion of clandestine special forces activities, joint CIA-special forces operations, and cyber activities that defy conventional categorization. All of which obviously is important from a policy perspective. Less obviously, it also has significant legal implications.

I do not refer to questions such as who lawfully may be targeted or what computer network operations amount to “armed attack,” though those are of course important matters. Rather, I am concerned here with America‟s domestic legal architecture for military and intelligence operations. That architecture is a half-baked affair consisting of a somewhat haphazard blend of decision-making rules, congressional notification requirements, and standing authorizations and constraints relevant to particular agencies. Convergence has a disruptive impact on key elements in that framework, especially those that rely on categorical distinctions that convergence confounds (like the notion of crisp delineations among collection, covert action, and military activity).

My first aim in this article is to map that impact as thoroughly as can be done through the public record, drawing attention to and disaggregating issues that have bedeviled government lawyers behind closed doors for some time. My second aim is normative, as I suggest a modest set of changes to the existing legal framework meant to improve democratic accountability and compliance with the rule of law in such operations, while preserving the benefits convergence generates.

Call for Papers: Invisible Constitutions: Culture, Religion, and Memory

Anders Walker at St. Louis University is organizing an interesting conference.  While conferences like this are usually organized by soliciting participants, an important difference here is an open call for papers.  This is a great approach, and a great opportunity for you!

Call for Papers
“Invisible Constitutions: Culture, Religion, and Memory”
Sponsored by the Center for Intercultural Studies and the Center for International & Comparative Law at Saint Louis University
March 1-2, 2012

Much comparative law scholarship focuses on technical questions of constitutional design, asking for example whether strong presidential or parliamentary systems better serve normatively attractive constitutional goals (separation of powers, federalism, rights enforcement, and so on). Missing from such literature, however, is sufficient discussion of the interpretive risks involved in abstracting constitutional texts from their larger cultural/temporal contexts, not to mention the role that those contexts play in creating constitutional meaning. For example, frameworks of practices, customs, and beliefs, including religious traditions, cultural values, and historical memories can all serve as invisible sources of constitutional law, social imaginaries that actually perform the role of invisible constitutions. To elaborate, this conference will draw scholars from different disciplines to shed light on current and past examples of “invisible” constitutions in the comparative context. Papers are welcome from any historic period or geographic space. The conference will be held on March 1-2, 2012 in Saint Louis, travel and lodging provided.

To apply, submit an abstract of 1000 words, including a one-page CV to Anders Walker, Saint Louis University School of Law, 3700 Lindell Boulevard, St. Louis, MO 63108 or by email  by January 15, 2012. All accepted papers will be published in the Saint Louis University Law Journal.

CFP: Policy History Conference

The Policy History Conference has issued a call for papers:

The Institute for Political History and the Journal of Policy History, and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia are hosting the seventh biennial Conference on Policy History at the Marriott in downtown Richmond, Virginia from Wednesday, June 6 to Saturday, June 9, 2012. We are currently accepting panel and paper proposals on all topics regarding American political and policy history, political development, and comparative historical analysis. Complete sessions are encouraged, and individual paper proposals are welcome. The deadline for submission is December 2, 2011.

For submission requirements, consult the policy history conference website.


The plenary sessions have already been determined:

How Social Scientists Use History
Ira Katznelson - Columbia University, Political Science
Nolan McCarty - Princeton, Political Science

The Crisis in Higher Education
Edward Ayers - President of the University of Richmond
Richard Vedder - Ohio University, Economics

Keynote Speaker
Gerald L. Baliles, Director and CEO of the Miller Center for Public Affairs and former Governor of Virginia

More information, including how to apply for the Hugh Davis Graham Grant and the Thomas H. Critchlow Grant, is here.

Griffin, Reconceiving the War Powers Debate

Stephen M. Griffin, Tulane University Law School, has posted an important new paper, Reconceiving the War Powers Debate.   He brings basic ideas and arguments from diplomatic history about the use of the war powers during the Cold War into a discussion about constitutional war power.  This is important because legal scholars writing about war sometimes read and cite each other, but not works on the history of war and diplomacy.  Just one thing that gets missed is the nature of Cold War era statebuilding, including the war powers.

Griffin takes up the fusion of the ideas of war and peace during the early Cold War years, and the way that enabled executive power.  I would put many things differently (i.e. it is jarring to see the post-1945 years called "postwar," when of course there is so much war after 1945), but still there is a synergy between this passage and my forthcoming work (a Cold War early-ish draft is here).  Here's a passage from the paper, relying on Michael Hogan's essential book, Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945-1954:

The most important aspect of the postwar constitutional order, one with subtle, far-reaching and long-lasting effects, was the gradual erasure of the difference between wartime and peacetime. Because all foreign wars prior to 1950 had been authorized by Congress, the prewar constitutional order featured a sharp distinction between the powers of government in war and peace. As Hogan demonstrates, the early Cold War featured a massive effort to convince the President, Congress and the public that this distinction no longer made sense. This new "national security" ideology promoted the concept of "total war" in which all elements of government, society and the economy would be mobilized to meet the Soviet threat. As Hogan explains, "[i]n total war, the battle was not confined to the front lines but extended to the home front as well." Modern atomic weaponry meant that tremendous destruction could come with little warning. In these new circumstances, "American leaders would no longer have the time to debate the issue of war or peace or to prepare at a slow pace."

Here's Griffin's abstract:

Since the Vietnam War congressionalists and presidentialists have been locked into an unceasing controversy on presidential war powers. It has been increasingly difficult for each side to offer fresh evidence or new arguments. The purpose of this article and the larger project from which it is drawn is not so much to contribute to the existing scholarly debate as it is to reconceive it.

The war powers debate itself has lacked a historical context. Scholars have tended to assume that the debate is an age-old controversy from the early republic. I argue that it is fundamentally a product of the Cold War. Once we situate the war powers debate in a Cold War context, this naturally suggests that we focus on the distinctive assertions of power presidents made in this period. Over time, the academic debate has focused more on the claims of scholars than of presidents. While this is not entirely surprising, what is startling is how badly many prominent scholars have misunderstood the nature of these presidential claims. In turn, because of this misunderstanding the clarity with which the evidence from the founding period speaks to the contemporary war powers debate has not been appreciated fully. Beginning with Truman, all postwar presidents claimed that they had the unilateral power under Article II to initiate war, “real” war, full-scale war. The underappreciated crux of the war powers debate is what while this bold presidential claim was inconsistent with the historical meaning of the Constitution, it had an eminently defensible policy rationale that was widely supported, at least in the circumstances prevailing after World War II.

While I am not sympathetic to this unilateral presidential claim, the standard congressionalist critique is simply too limited. From the perspective of the executive branch, this claim did not appear extraordinary because it was encapsulated in a larger perspective, which many found persuasive, in which military force was one tool among others in advancing the foreign policy and preserving the national security of the United States. I contend that presidential war powers claims should be understood within the framework of American diplomacy generally and, more specifically, within the context of U.S. objectives and strategy in the Cold War period. The presidentialist position in the war powers debate cannot be understood and evaluated unless we have a firm grasp on the situation the executive branch faced in the early Cold War. We must expand the frame of the debate considerably in order to do this. This article and the project from which it is drawn are based on extensive research into primary and secondary sources in diplomatic history that have generally been bypassed in the traditional war powers debate.

In Part I, I describe briefly what postwar presidents have claimed with respect to their power to go to war. Like many scholars, I argue that Truman’s 1950 decision to intervene in Korea without congressional authorization marked a signal change. But while this argument is not new, scholars have been unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of why it occurred and how subsequent presidents were able to claim the Korea decision as a “precedent.” To establish the significance of Truman’s decision, in Part II I compare the power Truman and his successors claimed to the original constitutional plan for war. The specific nature of Truman’s claim allows us to establish with reasonable precision that it was inconsistent with the historical meaning of the Constitution. Along the way, I critique John Yoo’s argument that evidence from the eighteenth century supports the presidentialist position. Part III begins explaining how this constitutional change occurred by elaborating the concept of a constitutional order and describing the prewar constitutional order in which President Roosevelt made decisions prior to Pearl Harbor. Part IV completes the explanation by setting out in detail how Truman’s Korea decision grew out of the circumstances of the early Cold War.

Jerome Hall Postdoctoral Fellowship at Indiana University-Bloomington

[Our friends at Indiana-Bloomington Law have sent us the following announcement:]

The Indiana University Center for Law, Society, and Culture will appoint up to three post-doctoral fellows per year beginning with the 2012-13 academic year. We invite applications from scholars of law, the humanities, or social sciences working in the field of socio-legal studies. Pre-tenure scholars, recently awarded PhDs, and those with equivalent professional degrees are encouraged to apply. Advanced graduate students may alsopph apply, but evidence of completion of the doctoral degree or its equivalent is required before beginning the fellowship.

Fellows will devote a full academic year to research and writing in furtherance of a major scholarly project, and will receive a stipend plus a research allowance, health insurance, other benefits, and work-space at Indiana Law. They will conduct research at Indiana University and participate in the activities of the Center, which include an annual symposium, a colloquia series, and regular workshops and lectures. (The term of the appointment will be 10 to 12 months, beginning August 1, 2012. The amount of the stipend will be the same regardless of the duration of the appointment.)

More information is here.

Around the Colloquia

Legal Scholarship Blog reports that in the week just past Erika Lee, Minnesota History, presented “Wong Kim Ark v. U.S., Birthright Citizenship and the Current Debate over Immigration.” to the Minnesota Law and History workshop, Paul Finkelman, Albany Law, presented “Defining Slavery Under a ‘Government Instituted for Protection of the Rights of Mankind” at Denver Law, Peter Onuf, Virginia History, presented “Imperialism and Nationalism in the Early American Republic,” at the NYU Legal history Colloquium, and Kenneth Mack, Harvard Law presented at the UC Berkeley Law and Society workshop.  In addition, Laura Kalman, UC Santa Barbara History, presented "The Last Days of the Warren Court" at Boston University Law.

This Week in the Book Pages

Over at the Nation, Martha Nussbaum reviews Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle With India (Knopf), by Joseph Lelyveld. Here's a taste:

The strength of Great Soul is its detailed coverage of the evolution of Gandhi’s views about political activism, caste and race during his stay in South Africa. Although Gandhi worked there for twenty-one years, returning to India at age 44, his life there hasn’t been as closely chronicled as his later years in India. Lelyveld underscores its importance, explaining how through work on a constellation of political and ethnic issues Gandhi developed the combination of intense spirituality and canny pragmatism he later used so effectively as a political leader in India.

Nussbaum also discusses the furor that the book has caused among the Hindu right. The full review is here. (We noted an earlier review, from the New York Review of Books, here.)

Also in the pages of the Nation, a review of The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families After World War II (Harvard University Press), by Tara Zahra.  In Zahra's words, orphaned and unaccompanied children held “a special grip on the postwar imagination.”  They also, reviewer Holly Case adds, "embodied an uncomfortable relationship with the past": "Finding a home for these children after the war required obliterating or making some sense of their tangled origins and of the wartime experience itself. Most Europeans were ill prepared for the task."

In the Los Angeles Times, you'll find a review of Five Chiefs: A Supreme Court Memoir (Little Brown), by John Paul Stevens (mentioned previously here). Here's the takeaway:

Stevens' memoir is not a source of court gossip or even deep insight into its inner workings. Laced with observations on the court's architecture, traditions and even its seating arrangements, it is rather the collected ruminations of a man who has served his country in war and peace, across the decades. . . . He is a national treasure.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review gives top billing to The Magnificent Medills: America’s Royal Family of Journalism During a Century of Turbulent Splendor (Harper/HarperCollins), by Megan McKinney, and Newspaper Titan: The Infamous Life and Monumental Times of Cissy Patterson (Knopf), by Amanda Smith.  (We mentioned an earlier Washington Post review of both books here).  Together, the books "expend more than 1,000 pages chronicling the escapades of Joseph Medill and his family." The pay-off remains unclear:

Contra McKinney, the Medills were not magnificent but neurotic, alcoholic, megalomaniac and inordinately unpleasant generally. Far from being a titan, of newspapers or anything else, Cissy Patterson was, in Smith’s own showing, capricious, spoiled, headstrong, snobbish, litigious, anti-­Semitic, a mean drunk and vindictive. Not, as we should say today, a fun family . . . .

The full review is here.

A new issue of the London Review of Books is out. Enjoy open access to Joanna Biggs's essay on legal aid ("Who will get legal aid now?") and Jeremy Harding's discussion of the war on America's southern border ("The Deaths Map").  Subscribers may read David Bell's review of Common Sense: A Political History (Harvard University Press), by Sophia Rosenfeld
, and Adam Phillips's review of Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex (Fourth Estate), by Christopher Turner
.

The featured review over at the New Republic is of The Gaze of the Gazelle: The Story of a Generation (Seagull Books), by Arash Hejazi. According to the review, "[t]his book is a story of failure—the failure of the Islamic Republic, despite thirty years of propaganda and political education, to inculcate in a new generation of Iranians faith in the ideology of the regime."

Also reviewed: Ron Suskind's Confidence Men (here). Suskind's account of Obama's "education" in the White House has been making the rounds of the book pages (we've mentioned earlier reviews here and here).

In the book pages of the Washington Post, Michelle Alexander reviews A Plague of Prisons: The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America (New Press), by public health scholar and physician Ernest Drucker, and The Collapse of American Criminal Justice (Belknap Press), by the late Harvard Law professor William J. Stuntz.  "Missing from both [these] analyses," Alexander argues, "is a deeper understanding of how race has operated: much like a virus, infecting the belief systems and attitudes of people of all colors and mutating into new institutional forms."
 
Also reviewed Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (Little, Brown), by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin (here).

Symposium: A Radical Notion of Democracy: Law, Race, and Albion Tourgée, 1865-1905

There are many interesting upcoming symposia!  The Center for the Study of the American South is holding this terrific conference.  Legal historians Al Brophy and Michael Kent Curtis, and other important scholars are speaking. 

A Radical Notion of Democracy: Law, Race, and Albion Tourgée, 1865-1905
A Public Law and Humanities Symposium
Friday November 4, 2011 from 8:30 AM to 6:30 PM
State Library Building and State Capitol Building, Raleigh, NC
*Continuing Legal Education Credit of five hours has been approved.*

Albion Tourgée

“A Radical Notion of Democracy: Law, Race, and Albion Tourgée, 1865-1905” recalls the legacies of Reconstruction to offer insight into ongoing policy debates. A former Union soldier, Albion Tourgée settled in Greensboro in 1865 in hopes of helping to shape the new post-slavery South. A lawyer, judge, novelist, and activist, Tourgée worked for racial equality in the state for thirteen years. His North Carolina legacy lives on in the provisions of the state Constitution guaranteeing free public education, as well as other reforms. He later achieved national fame for representing Homer Plessy in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the U.S. Supreme Court case that established separate-but-equal facilities as the foundation of de jure segregation.

The program features two keynote lectures and two panel discussions with eight distinguished scholars of law and history. Special attention will be devoted to Tourgée’s contributions to the North Carolina Constitution of 1868, including his commitment to the guarantee of equality in public education. The symposium also will consider Tourgée’s lasting contribution to the discourse of civil rights, as it has come down to us through Justice John Harlan’s dissent in Plessy:  the concept of a “color-blind” Constitution. Concluding the day will be a reception and performance of Constitutional Tales in the House Chamber of the State Capitol, a live reenactment of scenes from the Constitutional Convention of 1868.

Agenda
Archives and History / State Library Building Auditorium

8:30-9:15 - Coffee and sign-in
9:15 - Welcome and introduction
9:30-10:15 - Opening keynote address, Mark Elliott
10:30 -12:15 - Panel 1: A Fool's Errand? Reconstructing the Narrative of Freedom in North Carolina
Focus: Tourgée’s life as lawyer, judge, public servant, and novelist in Reconstruction North Carolina, 1865-79.
Ann McColl, moderator/presenter; John David Smith, Frank Woods, Carolyn Karcher, presenters.

12:15-1:30 - Lunch
1:30-3:15 - Panel 2: Literature Into Law:  Interrogating Democracy in the Post-Reconstruction Nation
Focus: Tourgée as architect of Homer Plessy’s case, as well as the historical reception of his concept of “color-blind” justice.
Al Brophy, moderator/presenter; Brook Thomas, Michael Curtis, Judge Robert N. Hunter Jr., presenters.

3:30-4:15 p.m. - Closing keynote address, Blair Kelley

4:30-5:00 - Sneak preview of “The Story of North Carolina,” Part 2, new permanent exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of History, tracing life in North Carolina from the Civil War through the late twentieth century at the State Capitol Building

5:30-6:30 - Constitutional Tales, in House chamber
6:30 - Light reception in Rotunda

Speaker bios are here (scroll down). Register for the conference here (it's free).

Ventura on Colonialism and the Natural Sciences in the Philippines, 1898-1936

Theresa Ventura, the "Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellow" at the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center, will be presenting Market Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and Natural Resource Management" in Room LJ-119, of the Library's Thomas Jefferson Building at noon on Monday, October 17.  The event is free and open to the public

The importation of tropical products from the Caribbean and the Pacific accompanied the growth of American industrial development in the early twentieth century. While the new demand for tropical fruits, woods, and products dramatically altered tropical ecosystems and contributed to food shortages in what is today called the "global south," it also encouraged the development of an ethic of natural resource management and conservation. By focusing on the work of American agricultural scientists, foresters, and chemists during the U.S. occupation of the Philippines (1898-1936), Theresa Ventura, an assistant professor of history at Concordia University in Montreal, will show how science was integral to the emergence of the United States as a world power; the influence of Philippine knowledge on environmental and nutritional knowledge; and the often devastating impact of conservation and land management programs on indigenous communities

New H-Law reviews: Reid, Watson, Taylor, Weber

H-Law has circulated three new book reviews, covering judicial independence, forensic medicine, and the philosophy of John Rawls:

John Phillip Reid, Legislating the Courts: Judicial Dependence in Early National New Hampshire (Northern Illinois University Press, 2008). Here's a snippet of the review, by Dominic DeBrincat (Southern Connecticut State University):

Reid seeks to dislodge two flawed tropes in early American judicial histories: Americans have always believed that legal success depends on a truly independent judiciary, and federal courts offer the best theater for studying judicial history. Instead, he shows that debates over state courts and judges--in particular, those in New Hampshire--also reveal deep concerns over judicial independence.

In DeBrincat's final assessment, the book is a "magnificently efficient and lucid study of judicial identity crises in the decades following the American Revolution." Read more here.

Katherine D. Watson, Forensic Medicine in Western Society: A History (Routledge, 2010). According to reviewer Lynne Curry (Eastern Illinois University), "Watson has produced a superb synthetic work of medical and legal history that is sweeping in its narrative scope while at the same time attentive to manifold key differences in legal and medical thought and practice, both among nations and over time." Read more here.

Robert S. Taylor, Reconstructing Rawls: The Kantian Foundations of Justice as Fairness (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2011) and Eric Thomas Weber, Rawls, Dewey, and Constructivism: On the Epistemology of Justice (Continuum, 2010). Here's how reviewer Nicholas Tampio (Department of Political Science, Fordham University) fits the two together:

Philosophers for over three decades have been debating whether one can combine Kantian and Deweyan materials to build a sturdy theoretical edifice. Taylor and Weber, in the excellent books under consideration here, answer no, though, intriguingly, from opposite sides of the spectrum on which Rawls tried to place himself in the middle.

The full review is here.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Human Rights

After a month’s delay due to Hurricane Irene, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial will be dedicated on October 16th. As the new date approaches, I've been thinking a lot about precisely what message the memorial conveys to the public and about how historians interpret King's legacy.  In talks and courses related to King, I cover his famous campaigns at Birmingham and Selma. But I am most interested in exposing audiences to the less well-known, later stages of King's life.  I focus on aspects of the minister's work that tested his alliance with President Lyndon B. Johnson and/or generated controversy within the civil rights movement. Examinations of King's opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and of his campaigns in Chicago and Memphis, which spotlighted economic dimensions of racial inequality, greatly enrich understanding of the struggle for civil rights. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006) by Thomas Jackson (UNC/Greensboro--history) is, in my judgment, the single best treatment of  the economic dimensions of Dr. King's life and work. Jackson's book is always on the reading list for my seminars on the legal history of the civil rights movement.

On King's campaign in Memphis, see Michael Honey's meticulous and singular account, Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign (Norton, 2007). Honey (University of Washington--History), a distinguished scholar of labor and civil rights, has written many other works about King that may be of interest; you can learn more about Honey's scholarship here.

Clayborne Carson, professor of history at Stanford University, editor of the papers of Martin Luther King Jr., and author of the Autobiography of  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., spoke about the minister's social gospel foundations and human rights legacy during a 2011 address at the University of Virginia. You'll find a recording of the talk here. Students of King will find a variety of helpful resources about King and the civil rights movement on the website of Stanford's MLK institute.  

Lei Yixin, the sculptor who created the King memorial, used the likeness of King found on the cover of Carson's Autobiography as a guide for his work.  Some, including Carson, have complained that the statue bears little resemblance to the cover photo.  Carson contributed to the initial design of the King Memorial.  The scholar discusses whether the sculptor's work is consistent with the original design concept here.  

Gillespie's three volume History of the Laws of War

A History of the Laws of War: Volume 2: The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Civilians in Times of Conflict, and A History of the Laws of War: Volume 3: The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Arms Control, both by Alexander Gillespie, have just been published by Hart Publishing. The recently published first volume is on The Customs and Laws of War with Regards to Combatants and Captives.

The press describes Vol. 2 this way:

This unique new work of reference traces the origins of the modern laws of warfare from the earliest times to the present day. Relying on written records from as far back as 2400 BCE, and using sources ranging from the Bible to Security Council Resolutions, the author pieces together the history of a subject which is almost as old as civilisation itself. The author shows that as long as humanity has been waging wars it has also been trying to find ways of legitimising different forms of combatants and ascribing rules to them, protecting civilians who are either inadvertently or intentionally caught up between them, and controlling the use of particular classes of weapons that may be used in times of conflict. Thus it is that this work is divided into three substantial parts: Volume 1 on the laws affecting combatants and captives; Volume 2 on civilians; and Volume 3 on the law of arms control.

This second book on civilians examines four different topics. The first topic deals with the targetting of civilians in times of war. This discussion is one which has been largely governed by the developments of technologies which have allowed projectiles to be discharged over ever greater areas, and attempts to prevent their indiscriminate utilisation have struggled to keep pace. The second topic concerns the destruction of the natural environment, with particular regard to the utilisation of starvation as a method of warfare, and unlike the first topic, this one has rarely changed over thousands of years, although contemporary practices are beginning to represent a clear break from tradition. The third topic is concerned with the long standing problems of civilians under the occupation of opposing military forces, where the practices of genocide, collective punishments and/or reprisals, and rape have occurred. The final topic in this volume is about the theft or destruction of the property of the enemy, in terms of either pillage or the intentional devastation of the cultural property of the opposition.

And vol. 3:

This third volume deals with the question of the control of weaponry, from the Bronze Age to the Nuclear Age. In doing so, it divides into two parts: namely, conventional weapons and weapons of mass destruction. The examination of the history of arms control of conventional weapons begins with the control of weaponry so that one side could achieve a military advantage over another. This pattern, which only began to change centuries after the advent of gunpowder, was later supplemented by ideals to control types of conventional weapons because their impacts upon opposing combatants were inhumane. By the late twentieth century, the concerns over inhumane conventional weapons, were being supplemented by concerns over indiscriminate conventional weapons.

The focus on indiscriminate weapons, when applied on a mass scale, is the focus of the second part of the volume. Weapons of Mass Destruction are primarily weapons of the latter half of the twentieth century. Although both chemical and biological warfare have long historical lineages, it was only after the Second World War, that technological developments meant that these weapons could be applied to cause large-scale damage to non-combatants. Nuclear weapons are a truly modern invention. Despite being the newest Weapon of Mass Destruction, they are also the weapon of which most international attention has been applied, although the frameworks by which they were contained in the last century, appear inadequate to address the needs of current times.

And blurbs:

'The law impacts on modern military operations at all levels. The importance of understanding the influence of international law, and the constraints, which it places upon the conduct of armed conflict, is an essential area of study. Dr Alexander Gillespie's three volume work traces the development and scope of this law from the earliest times through the modern day. In doing so he identifies constant themes and common principles in the law, as well, unfortunately, as all too common breaches. Commanders and historians, as well as lawyers, will find this book of great value. It is written in a practical and useful style and brings to light many fascinating examples of the law at work in times of war from which contemporary lessons can be learned'.
Brigadier Kevin Riordan, Director General of Defence Legal Services for the New Zealand Defence Forces.

'The span of scholarship on offer in these volumes is astonishing…an extraordinary gathering of historical and legal materials many of which record the most sombre and tragic events of human history - war in all its terrible forms.'
Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer, Former Prime Minister of New Zealand

'At a time of real challenge, Alexander Gillespie is to be commended for his monumental and significant contribution to our understanding of the context, practice and principles that govern war and armed conflict. This vital book is an indispensable part of any library, and will be a necessary resource for governments, NGOs, international organisers, academics and lawyers involved in the issues.'
Professor Philippe Sands QC, University College London

McCartin's New History of the PATCO Strike

My Georgetown colleague Joseph A. McCartin has published his much-anticipated history of the PATCO strike, Collision Course: Ronald Reagan, the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Strike that Changed America (Oxford University Press).  Here is OUP's description:

In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) called an illegal strike. The new president, Ronald Reagan, fired the strikers, establishing a reputation for both decisiveness and hostility to organized labor. As Joseph A. McCartin writes, the strike was the culmination of two decades of escalating conflict between controllers and the government that stemmed from the high-pressure nature of the job and the controllers' inability to negotiate with their employer over vital issues. PATCO's fall not only ushered in a long period of labor decline; it also served as a harbinger of the campaign against public sector unions that now roils American politics.

Collision Course sets the strike within a vivid panorama of the rise of the world's busiest air-traffic control system. It begins with an arresting account of the 1960 midair collision over New York that cost 134 lives and exposed the weaknesses of an overburdened system. Through the stories of controllers like Mike Rock and Jack Maher, who were galvanized into action by that disaster and went on to found PATCO, it describes the efforts of those who sought to make the airways safer and fought to win a secure place in the American middle class. It climaxes with the story of Reagan and the controllers, who surprisingly endorsed the Republican on the promise that he would address their grievances. That brief, fateful alliance triggered devastating miscalculations that changed America, forging patterns that still govern the nation's labor politics.

Written with an eye for detail and a grasp of the vast consequences of the PATCO conflict for both air travel and America's working class, Collision Course is a stunning achievement.

 McCartin's blog on the book is here.

Recent H-Law reviews: Cahill, O'Brien, Mathieu

H-Law has posted several book reviews of interest over the past few weeks:

Cathleen D. Cahill, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A Social History of the United States Indian Service, 1869-1933 (University of North Carolina Press, 2011). Reviewer Jonathan H. Grandage (Florida State University) praises Cahill for "shed[ding] light on the lives of Indian Service employees, typically overlooked by scholars who take a top-down approach to the historical relationship between the United States government and Native American tribes." In Grandage's view, Cahill also "argues persuasively for the importance of the Indian Service to understanding the emergence of the modern American state." Read more here.

David M. O'Brien, Congress Shall Make No Law: The First Amendment, Unprotected Expression, and the Supreme Court (Lanham  Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). Reviewer Donald Rogers (Central Connecticut State University) stresses "the book's doctrinal and topical arrangement," which has its strengths but "neglects the unfolding sociopolitical context of unprotected speech law." Read more here.

Sarah-Jane Mathieu, North of the Color Line: Migration and Black Resistance in Canada, 1870-1955 (University of North Carolina Press, 2010). According to reviewer Christopher Taylor (University of Western Ontario), the book "explores the compelling relationship between the politics of race and the growth of a new nation, and how black Canadian immigrants navigated and existed within the institutionalized structures of race and legislated xenophobia." Mathieu's "comparative methodology and study of several different black ethnic experiences in Canada" brings something fresh to a topic that other historians have covered. Read more here.

Also reviewed:

Andrew Wolpert, K. A. Kapparis, eds., Legal Speeches of Democratic Athens: Sources for Athenian History (Hackett Pub., 2011). Reviewed here by John Nicols (University of Oregon).

Paul Kens, The Supreme Court under Morrison R. Waite, 1874-1888 (University of South Carolina Press, 2010). (Mentioned in an earlier post here.) Reviewed here by Ian J. Drake. 

Webcast: Ben C. Green Lecture on War Time: an idea, its history, its consequences

Of possible interest, my lecture today at Case Western on my forthcoming book will be webcast at 4:30 pm Eastern time.  Follow the link from here.

CFP: Objectivity in Law

[We have the following announcement via Legal Scholarship Blog.]

The Indiana University School of Law - Indianapolis will host a Junior Faculty Interdisciplinary Scholarship Workshop March 22-23, 2012.  The Workshop will explore "Objectivity in the Law" and is open to non-tenured academics whose research is interdisciplinary in nature. Interested participants must submit a 500 work abstract to Professor Cynthia Adamas at cmadams[at]iupui.edu before Nov. 15, 2011. Submitted papers should focus on a chosen area of law and examine that law's objective purpose and the relationship between its purpose and its actual implementation. The program is also open to other scholars wanting to attend, read, and comment on the papers but not present. There is no registration fee.

Oates on Ralph Bunche as Scholar, Statesman and Activist

Ralph Bunche: Distinguished Scholar, International Statesman and Equal Rights Activist, has just been posted by Charles Harmon Oates, Regent University.  It is a brief overview of Bunche's career, and appeared in the Regent Journal of International law, Vol. 2, p. 74, 2005.  Here's the abstract:

Ralph Bunche

Dr. Ralph J. Bunche was a remarkable American whose legacy is becoming all too distant to our collective memory. During the mid-20th century, he had an illustrious career working to better the conditions of life for the oppressed in America and throughout the world. He was a distinguished scholar, activist and statesman, evidenced by a list of highlights of his achievements. In 1949, he received the Spingarn Medal presented by the NAACP, an award given annually to an African-American for noble achievement. Credited with many accomplishments in diplomacy and political science, he reached a pinnacle in his career in 1950 when he won the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating the armistice between Israel and four separate Arab nations: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In the 1960s, Dr. Bunche received the Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon Baines Johnson, participated in Dr. Martin Luther King’s protest march on Washington, and marched alongside Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma, Alabama. Dr. Bunche dedicated his life and career to the achievement of the noble goals he believed in: a “peaceful and just world,” and a “fully democratic America.”

Though his career was marked with internationally recognized achievements, Dr. Bunche was an unpretentious man who did not seek accolades or desire to be cast into the limelight. His close friend, Sir Brian Urquhart, recalled that when Dr. Bunche was told he was to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he wrote to the committee explaining that he would not be able to accept the award. In Bunche’s view, he did not work in the United Nations Secretariat to win personal honors, and he only accepted the award after he was convinced it would be beneficial to the United Nations. He sought recognition, not for himself, but for the injustice that exists in the world. Although Dr. Bunche did not seek praise, he is a man deserving of it.

The accomplishments of Dr. Bunche’s life and career as a scholar, activist and statesman are the result of a fluid integration throughout his life of intellectual development and practical determination. His triumphs in these various areas cannot be divided on a timeline into categorical periods of allegiance. He saw each as intertwined, and remained dedicated to each throughout his life. This essay highlights the major achievements in his remarkable career by focusing on three major categories, solely as an organizational tool for the reader: academics, international statesmanship, and racial equality activism.

Historians on Wall Street Protests and "Class Warfare" in U.S. Politics: A Comment

With the protests on Wall Street continuing, historians are being called on to provide perspective on the development and related matters. Gary Gerstle (Vanderbilt-history & political science) compared Occupy Wall Street to earlier social movements in a Salon.com interview, available here. Beverly Gage (Yale--history) discussed protests on Wall Street during the Gilded Age and the Great Depression on NPR. At history news network, Jonathan Zimmerman (NYU--history) tied the Wall Street protests to the country's revolutionary founding, Juan Cole (Michigan--history) linked the protests to the Arab Spring, and others provided informed commentary.   In an interview with an NPR affiliate, Steven Reich (Washington & Lee--history), Michelle Drumbl (Washington & Lee--law) and I, along with Chris Saxman (formerly of the Virginia House of Delegates), discussed political leveraging of the concept of "class warfare" in U.S. history.

History shows that American political activism has never been limited to the form that it conventionally takes today--electoral politics--voting for a Democrat or a Republican.  Citizens have employed an array of tools to influence public policy historically; non-electoral forms of political participation have been necessary, given restrictions imposed on so many citizens' right to vote for so much of American history. See Alexander Keyssar's magisterial treatment, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in America (Oxford, 2009), for more on the advent of universal voting rights in the U.S.

Far from signifying social dysfunction ("anarchy," as some commentators suggest), mass political protest is conventional.  It is as old as the nation itself.  Participatory democratic action of the sort seen today on Wall Street exists along a spectrum of political forms that includes boycotts, demonstrations, strikes, and town hall meetings, among other ways that citizens make their voices heard in public policy debates. The country has sometimes even witnessed violent rebellion against titans of industry--real, not figurative, class warfare.

Then there is the question of whether political protest is futile.  History says no, or at least, not necessarily. Mass political action has given rise to monumental changes in law and society. Industrial strife and social unrest during the early twentieth century yielded legislation during the New Deal that fundamentally changed Americans' relationship to the workplace. The right to collectively bargain and the 8-hour workday, among other innovations, grew out of these protest movements. Citizen protest also produced revolutionary socio-legal changes in American race relations. Congress enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 in the wake of widespread social protest. That historical moment is now so acclaimed that the nation has seen fit to memorialize the likeness of the movement's foremost leader, Dr. Martin Luther King, on the national mall.  Of course, citizen mobilization certainly can come to naught.  However, the most striking feature of the American political landscape in recent decades has been the failure of citizens to even attempt to engage in sustained public protest--about anything. 

Bank, Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent Approaches

Steven A. Bank, University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law, has posted the introduction to his new book, Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent Approaches, Cambridge University Press, 2011.  Here's the abstract:

The U.K. and the U.S. have historically represented opposite ends of the spectrum in their approaches to taxing corporate income. Under the British approach, corporate and shareholder income taxes have been integrated under an imputation system, with tax paid at the corporate level imputed to shareholders through a full or partial credit against dividends received. Under the American approach, by contrast, corporate and shareholder income taxes have remained separate under what is called a “classical” system in which shareholders have received, until very recently, little or no relief from a second layer of taxes on dividends.

This excerpt is the introduction from a book entitled Anglo-American Corporate Taxation: Tracing the Common Roots of Divergent Approaches (Cambridge University Press 2011). The book explores the evolution of the corporate income tax systems in each country during the 19th and 20th centuries to understand the common legal, economic, political, and cultural forces that produced such divergent approaches and explains why convergence may be likely in the future as each country grapples with corporate taxation in an era of globalization.

This Week in the Bay Area: Mack, Woeste, Friedman

A few opportunities for Bay Area readers:

• On Monday, October 10, the Center for the Study of Law and Society at the University of California, Berkeley will host Kenneth Mack (Harvard Law School). He'll be talking about "Law, Local Knowledge, and Social Change during the Civil Rights Movement" (drawing in part on Tomiko Brown-Nagin's Courage to Dissent). More information is here. 

• On Tuesday, October 11, at University of California Hastings College of Law, Reuel Schiller will interview Victoria Saker Woeste (American Bar Foundation) on her forthcoming book Henry Ford's War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (Stanford, 2012). More information is here. 

• Professor Woeste will talk more about the book on Wednesday, October 12, at UC Berkeley Law. More information is here.

• On Thursday, October 13, the Stanford Program in Law and Society will host a book launch for Law in Many Societies, a new reader edited by Lawrence M. Friedman, Rogelio Pérez-Perdomo, and Manuel A. Gómez. More information is here.

Action and Reaction: This Week in the Book Pages

You've doubtless seen the September 1957 photo: "Elizabeth [Eckford], a sheltered, scholarly teenager in a homemade dress, walks past Little Rock Central High School while Hazel [Bryan], a student there, marches behind her, spewing racist abuse." So begins the New York Times review of Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock (Yale University Press), by David Margolick. The book chronicles the evolution of their unusual friendship.

Readers may also be interested in the paper's coverage of Corey Robin's The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism From Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin (Oxford University Press), which we mentioned earlier this week (here). The review is here; Robin has published a response on his blog.

Also in the NYT: reviews of Lennon: The Man, the Myth, the Music — The Definitive Life (Hyperion), by Tim Riley (here); Grand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius (Simon and Schuster), by Sylvia Nasar (here) (mentioned in our 9/11/11 round-up); and The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (Viking), by Steven Pinker (here) (mentioned in last week's round-up).

In the New Republic: The Book, Michael Kimmage reviews The Spiritual-Industrial Complex: America’s Religious Battle against Communism in the Early Cold War (Oxford University Press), by Jonathan Herzog. Here's a taste:

In the late 1940s and throughout the ’50s, elites from business, politics, media, and the military—in tandem with their popular audience—blurred the line between a secular and a religious state. If the impulse for constructing this ideological complex was internal and peculiarly American, the complex itself mandated an outward projection of Christian energy. Herzog argues that the United States was “the world’s great champion of religion” in this era, seeking like-minded allies wherever they could be found.

Kimmage finds the book "useful," but also vulnerable to "a variety of critical questions."

Also reviewed in TNR:

The Submerged State: How Invisible Government Policies Undermine American Democracy (University of Chicago Press), by political scientist Suzanne Mettler. By now, readers have likely come across some of the underlying data (on the large percentage of Americans who benefit from government social programs but do not recognize that fact). The book builds on this striking and important finding. According to the review, Mettler (1) "proposes to situate policies that draw out the structure of government at the center of democratic reform efforts," and (2) "seeks to draft Barack Obama as an ally in the fight to reveal the submerged state."

Don’t Shoot: One Man, a Street Fellowship, and the End of Violence in Inner-City America (Bloomsbury USA), by crime theorist David M. Kennedy.  It is a memoir, of sorts (the review notes the book's "almost ideological disinterest in the character of its subject"), of an "outsider genius."

and

Reveille in Washington: 1860-1865 (New York Review of Books Classics), by Margaret Leech. The review praises the book, originally published in 1941, for its "smart and witty" description of "wartime Washington’s transformation from an administrative backwater to the locus of renewed federal power."

A new issue of the New York Review of Books is out.

Enjoy open access to Mary Beard's review of five books on Alexander the Great and Jerome Groopman's review of The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World Since 1700 (Cambridge University Press), by Robert Floud, Robert W. Fogel, Bernard Harris, and Sok Chul Hong.

Subscribers may read reviews of “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Belknap Press/Harvard University Press), by Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, with Alastair Hamilton (here); The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (Metropolitan), by Mohamed ElBaradei (here); Mightier Than the Sword: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Battle for America (Norton), by David S. Reynolds (here) (mentioned in our 9/18/11 round-up); and much more.

This week, the Los Angeles Times covers Eisenhower: The White House Years (Doubleday), by Jim Newton. It is "a rather straightforward accounting of Eisenhower's eight years as president," writes reviewer Richard Reeves, but one that "[w]e need . . .  to judge the vicious and counterproductive politics of these days."

The Wall Street Journal spotlights a different general: William C. Westmoreland.  The title seems to say it all. In Westmoreland: The General Who Lost Vietnam (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), author Lewis Sorley paints "a deeply unflattering portrait of an army careerist who unintentionally did much damage to an institution—and a country—that he loved dearly."

If you're interested in Francis Fukuyama's most recent book, The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), you've probably already read a review (we mentioned several here).  For another perspective, check out Thomas Meaney's review in the Nation.  Meaney characterizes the book as a battle between "the old Fukuyama" (one inclined to "see[] human nature, in the form of the Hegelian quest for recognition, driving all the while toward the liberal democratic state") and "the new" (a "brushed-up scholar of state formation, brilliantly alive to the contingencies of political development").

The Nation also covers Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Cornell University Press), by Michael Barnett. The review is not positive ("diligent and impassioned but also . . . ultimately incoherent and, worse, analytically wrongheaded").

Weekend Round-up

• Jerry Genesio, an independent scholar, has published Portland Neck: The Hanging of Thomas Bird, a study of the trial and, on June 25, 1790, execution of a sailor accused of murdering the master of a slave ship.  Genesio terms this “the first death sentence handed down by a U.S. District Court judge under the authority of the United States Constitution.”  

• The program and and a videorecording of the conference “Context and Consequences: The Hill-Thomas Hearings Twenty Years Later,” held at the Georgetown University Law Center, on Thursday, October 6, is available here.  Anita Hill was a participant.  Charles Ogletree, also a participant, gave an extemporaneous tribute to Derrick Bell, whose death had just been announced.

• On November 11-12, the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin will host the conference "Sexuality and Slavery: Exposing the History of Enslaved People.”  The conveners explain that “leading scholars of slavery in the Americas will explore consensual sexual intimacy and expression within slave communities, as well as sexual relationships across lines of race, status and power.”  They will address “the use of sexuality as a tool of control, exploitation and repression, but also as an expression of autonomy, resistance and defiance.”  More information.  Registration.  Hat tip: H-Law.

• Around the colloquia: In the preceding week, Sai Prakash (Virginia Law) presented “The Appointment of William Marbury” at Illinois Law,  John Q. Barrett (St. Johns Law) presented “From Nuremberg to Buffalo, October 4, 1946, Justice Robert H. Jackson's Enduring Lessons of Morality and Law in a World at War” at Buffalo Law, and Timothy Lytton (Albany Law) presented “Can You Believe It's Kosher? Trust, Reputation, and Non-Governmental Regulation in the Age of Industrial Food.”  Hat tip: Legal Scholarship Blog. 

• This week, as well, Paul Finkelman, Albany Law, discussed "the origins and rationale for the 14th amendment and its relevancy to the discussion of immigration reform" before the Greater Rochester Coalition for Immigration Justice.

• Welcome to the blogosphere, Brazenandtenured. University of Colorado law professors Sarah Krakoff and Pierre Schlag offer "[f]ewer words, more ideas about law, politics, nature and culture," with the overarching aim of "redeem[ing] through example and experimentation the idea that law is part of the liberal arts."

The Weekend Round-Up is a weekly feature compiled by all the Legal History bloggers.

"Voices of the Civil Rights Division"

Via the Newsletter of the DC Circuit Historical Society we have word of a fascinating program of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and the Civil Rights Division Association.

"Voices of the Civil Rights Division: Then and Now" will feature a re-enactment of closing arguments in the federal prosecution of Klan members charged with the killing in 1964 of three young civil rights workers in Neshoba County, Mississippi. Participating, among others, will be Drew Days, historian Taylor Branch, and former SNCC leader Bob Moses.  Other topics include a Conversation with John Doar conducted by Professor Owen Fiss, Enforcement of Civil Rights in the Alabama Black Belt in the 1960s, the Development of the Civil Rights Division's Enforcement Program on Gender Discrimination, and Civil Rights Enforcement Today.

 According to the Newsletter, the program will be held on October 28 in the Great Hall of the Department of Justice and on October 29 at the Sidwell Friends School.  For information, contact Alexander C. (Sandy) Ross at mross161@comcast.net or 703-567-5579.

Update
Thanks to John Q. Barrett, St. John's Law, for directing me to this YouTube clip of Mr. Doar discussing his preparation of his argument.

Q & A with Lawrence Friedman: on writing fiction

Note to readers: This is the last in a series of questions and answers with Lawrence Friedman.

Question:  When did you begin writing novels? What is that kind of writing like for you? Is it an extension into another genre of the things that motivate your scholarship? Or is it a departure – maybe more like a hobby? Do you have any advice for scholars who want to write fiction? I know about Death of a Wannabe, but & how where can readers find more?

Answer from Lawrence:

I've always enjoyed writing; and writing fiction has been a hobby of mine for a long time. Many years ago, I published a couple of stories under a pseudonym-- I don't even have copies of these, believe it or not. Then I tried my hand at mysteries-- a form of literature (if that's the word) that I enjoy reading on airplanes for the most part. I've actually written 13 of these novels, and am currently sketching out the 14th.

Getting fiction published is infinitely harder than getting legal history published. Frankly, for many years, I was quite unsuccessful-- up to now. Death of a Wannabe, which I hope you'll all buy and read, if only via Kindle, is the first to be published with a regular publisher, Quid Pro Books. This is a small press, run by a law professor, Alan Childress. Quid Pro also does law books; it is reprinting my first book, Contract Law in America; and has also published my most recent book, The Human Rights Culture. Quid Pro plans to bring out more of my novels in the near future. I did publish two others, but with a vanity press, and under a pen name (Lawrence Mayer). All of them are told in the first person, by a middle-aged lawyer, Frank May.

I recently talked to a former law student who is trying to switch professions: he wants to be an actor. I hope he makes it; but the odds are very long. Writing fiction, like acting, painting, and playing the piano, is fun; but for most of us, it is about as likely a way of achieving fame and fortune as buying a lottery ticket. In short, many are called but few are chosen. My advice is: enjoy yourself, if you want to write fiction; but don't expect to be the next John Grisham, let alone the next William Faulkner.

Labuda on Mississippi's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Patryk I. Labuda, a doctoral candidate in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia, has posted Racial Reconciliation in Mississippi: An Evaluation of the Proposal to Establish a Mississippi Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” which also appears in the Harvard Journal on Racial and Ethnic Justice 27 (Spring 2011).  Here is the abstract:

In this article, the proposal to create a truth and reconciliation commission (TRC) in Mississippi is examined. Nearly half a century after the dismantlement of legally sanctioned Jim Crow, many aspects of the state’s violent history of racial oppression remain in the shadows. In the state with the highest number of lynchings after Reconstruction and a governmental agency committed to the preservation of segregation during the Civil Rights Movement, the African-American population continues to suffer disproportionately from lower quality education and housing segregation, as well as higher poverty, teen pregnancy and child mortality rates. Confronting the state’s history of racism has proved difficult and unsatisfactory in many regards. Though they provided individual accountability in a handful of cases, the well-publicized trials of Ku-Klux-Klansmen have also produced a skewed and incomplete historical record, while failing entirely to address the legacy of past discrimination in present-day Mississippi. The shortcomings of traditional retributive justice – as epitomized by such trials – are at the root of current attempts to engage with the state’s history from a different perspective.

The TRC, an increasingly popular tool of restorative and transitional justice, is being used in a variety of geo-political contexts across the world. By focusing on the needs of victims and promoting a non-adversarial approach to the notion of justice, truth commissions aim to confront the ghosts of the past and foster societal reconciliation for the future. Drawing on the experiences of truth and reconciliation processes in other countries, the article examines the strengths and weaknesses of truth-seeking in Mississippi and develops normative proposals for the Commission’s future operation. It evaluates the main challenges facing Mississippi’s truth-seeking project, including the state’s history of institutional racism, the complicity of ordinary Mississippians in Jim Crow, as well as the Commission’s mandate in relation to symbolism, reparations, amnesties and traditional criminal justice. The article seeks to contribute to the growing literature on how restorative justice, in particular the TRC model, can be used to deal with America’s history of racial injustice.

In Memoriam: Professor Derrick Bell

Professor Derrick Bell, Visiting Professor at New York University, has passed. Bell's legacy in the law is long and deep. Bell never trained professionally as a historian; yet his scholarship reflected great historical consciousness and insight. It's fair to say, I think, that every historian of the civil rights era and every scholar of race and the law who followed him is indebted to Professor Bell.  Here are some excerpts from Bell's New York Times obit.

Derrick Bell, a legal scholar who worked to expose the persistence of racism in America through his books and articles and his provocative career moves — he gave up a Harvard Law School professorship to protest the school’s hiring practices — died on Wednesday in New York. Mr. Bell was the first tenured black professor at Harvard Law School and later the first black dean of a law school that is not historically black. But he was perhaps better known for resigning from prestigious jobs than for accepting them.

Addressing law students grappling with career decisions, he extolled what he called “a life of meaning and worth,” even though, he wrote, he sometimes alienated associates who saw his actions as “futile and foolish.”  ...

Mr. Bell “set the agenda in many ways for scholarship on race in the academy, not just the legal academy,” said Lani Guinier, the first black woman hired to join the Harvard Law School’s tenured faculty, in an interview on Wednesday.  At a rally while a student at Harvard Law School, Barack Obama compared Professor Bell to the civil rights hero Rosa Parks.

For examples of Bell's scholarship, see The Derrick Bell Reader (2005), Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (2005), And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice (1989), and Ethical Ambition: Living a Life of Meaning and Worth.

Law & Society Conference Proposals

The 2012 International Conference on Law and Society and the Research Committee on Sociology of Law (RCSL) announces its call for participation.  The meeting is co-sponsored by the Canadian Law and Society Association (CLSA), the Japanese Association of Sociology of Law (JASL), and the Socio-Legal Studies Association (SLSA).  The program's theme is Sociolegal Conversations across a Sea of Islands; the conference will be held June 5-8, 2012 in Honolulu, Hawaii.


Individual Paper and/or Session proposals are welcome and need not be centered on the conference theme.   The Call is here. The deadline for proposal submission is December 6, 2011.

CFP: The Question of Rights

[Here's the call for next year's conference on rights at San Francisco State University.]

San Francisco State University hosts a conference every year in September exploring the question and place of rights in history, politics, and society. In 2012 the conference will be held on September 13 and 14.

The year 2012 marks the sesquicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation.  To mark this milestone, we welcome papers on the topic of emancipation, reflections on the legacy of the Civil War, question of the role/nature of the state, the racialized consequences of the war, but also emancipation broadly defined, including claims to freedom involving civil liberties; disability rights; labor and economic rights; feminism and antiracism; immigration; environmental justice; access to healthcare; the prison industrial complex; sexual orientation; the stateless; and human rights.

Our goal is to bring together a wide variety of people from a range of academic, activist, legal, and community spaces to examine the place of rights in American society and in the broader global political community.  To that end, we welcome participation from historians, both senior and junior scholars, graduate students, community advocates, archivists, and lawyers.  We invite panels, or round tables. Though we prefer complete panels, we will consider individual papers. We also welcome workshops with pre-circulated papers, or sessions in which panelists assess the state of debate on a topic. All submissions will be peer reviewed by our program committee.

The deadline for submission of panels, consisting of an abstract of 1000 words for panel and workshop proposals and a one-page CV for each participant, is February 15, 2012.  We must have an email address for all participants.  Send your proposals to Christopher Waldrep, Department of History, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California 94132 or via email to cwaldrep@sfsu.edu