New Books: Legal History

Black thinkers in the antebellum United States grappled with what it meant to inhabit a place, a history, and a violent legal regime. In newspapers and pamphlets, political speeches, and fiction, Black writers persistently imagined alternative and liberatory legal futures. In reading these writers as architects of legal possibility, Faith Barter mobilizes the coincidental intimacy of prose and the legal term pro se, which refers to litigants who represent themselves in court. The book studies multiple literary genres--short stories, novels, freedom narratives, speeches, confessions, periodicals, and pamphlets--alongside legal historical treatises, trial transcripts, judicial opinions, and statutes. Barter juxtaposes nineteenth-century law and literature to show how Black writers counterintuitively used legal forms to reimagine their own relationships to time and place. Organized around four legal forms--appeal, confession, jurisdiction, and precedent--this book demonstrates how Black writers creatively used them to challenge the logics of their oppression. Reading Black writers not merely as witnesses or victims but as visionaries for what the legal system could be, this book excavates the importance of legal thinking in the African American literary tradition.

In a unique and personal exploration of the game and fish laws in Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi from the Progressive Era to the 1930s, Julia Brock offers an innovative history of hunting in the New South. The implementation of conservation laws made significant strides in protecting endangered wildlife species, but it also disrupted traditional hunting practices and livelihoods, particularly among African Americans and poor whites. Closed Seasons highlights how hunting and fishing regulations were relatively rare in the nineteenth century, but the emerging conservation movement and the rise of a regional sportsman identity at the turn of the twentieth century eventually led to the adoption of state-level laws. Once passed, however, these laws, were plagued by obstacles, including insufficient funding and enforcement. Brock traces the dizzying array of factors--propaganda, racial tensions, organizational activism, and federal involvement--that led to effective game and fish laws in the South.

This monograph looks at the various strands of policy and activities which produced the first residential Rent Act in 1915. It looks at the ways in which tenants were removed from the land in Ireland and Scotland leading to a strong aversion to landlords as a group. This is addressed in the way it appears in art, literature, song and poetry. It traces the ways in which actions of women-led tenants' groups before and during the First World War offered an alternative way for housing policy. Precisely how these actions linked with political and industrial forces are explored. The study concludes with how this legislation links with modern day housing policy issues.

This book examines how the Roman, French and English legal systems have each dealt with the issue of unforeseen, supervening events which have rendered the performance of contractual obligations either impossible or fundamentally different in nature, sometimes known as Force Majeure or Acts of God. Although the Roman, French and English laws of contract have each developed legal rules which address this issue, the approach adopted by each system is significantly different from that of the others. The thesis of this book is that the response of a legal system to unforeseen, supervening events derives primarily from the nature and structure of that legal system as a whole, and then, within that broader context, from the salient characteristics of that system's particular law of contract. The work compares the differing nature and structure of the Roman, French and English legal systems, and their respective laws of contract, in order to demonstrate how this is so. The book will be a valuable guide for academics and researchers working in the areas of Comparative Law, Legal History, Legal Theory and Contract Law. As the English approach to unforeseen, supervening events is very different from that of the French, the book will be of benefit both to English and to French practitioners as they seek to understand how supervening events are dealt with across the Channel. It will also appeal to law students as a guide for studying comparative law.

Heroes and villains, idealists and mercenaries, freedom fighters and religious fanatics. Foreign fighters tend to defy easy classification. Good and bad images of the foreign combatant epitomize different conceptions of freedom and are used to characterize the rightness or wrongness of this actor in civil wars. The book traces the history of these figures and their afterlife. It does so through an interdisciplinary methodology employing law, history, and psychoanalytical theory, showing how different images of the foreign combatant are utilized to proscribe or endorse foreign fighters in different historical moments. By linking the Spanish, Angolan, and Syrian civil wars, the book demonstrates how these figures function as a precedent for later periods and how their heritage keeps haunting the imaginary of legal actors in the present.

At the end of WWI, millions of military and civilians were displaced across Europe, the south of the Caucasus, and the Eastern Mediterranean. While the majority made their way home, genocide, revolution, and post-war instabilities complicated the repatriation of prisoners of war from Russia and the Central Powers and pushed Russian and Armenian refugees into exile. In response, an array of international organizations intervened: three of them, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the League of Nations, and the International Labor Organization, implemented humanitarian, political, and legal measures to protect prisoners of war and refugees. This book tells a story of failures and innovations, where humanitarians interacted with the persons assisted in refugee camps, agricultural colonies, trains, and harbors, which were often situated "at the doors of Europe" in order to preserve peace at its heart. Diplomatic negotiations and mundane practices of care concurred in the emergence of a plural, discordant, and partial governance of refugee protection.

How the thirteen colonies deployed the power of taxation to support, promote, and perpetuate the institution of slavery The Human Toll documents how the American colonies used tax law to dehumanize enslaved persons, taxing them alongside valuable commodities upon their forced arrival and then as wealth-generating assets in the hands of slaveholders. Anthony C. Infanti examines how taxation also proved to be an important component for subjugating and controlling enslaved persons, both through its shaping of the composition of new arrivals to the colonies and through its funding of financial compensation to slaveholders for the destruction of their "property" to ensure their cooperation in the administration of capital punishment. The variety of tax mechanisms chosen to fund slaveholder compensation payments conveyed messages about who was thought to benefit from--and, therefore, who should shoulder the burden of--slaveholder compensation while opening a revealing window into these colonial societies. While the story of colonial tax law is intrinsically linked to advancing slavery and racism, Infanti reveals how several colonies used the power of taxation as a means of curtailing the slave trade. Though often self-interested, these efforts show how taxation can be used not only in the service of evil but also to correct societal injustices. Providing a fascinating account of slavery's economic entrenchment through the history of American tax law, The Human Toll urges us to consider the lessons that fiscal history holds for those working in the reparations movement today.

This book offers a new, more critical perspective on the regulation and protection of individuals under international humanitarian law. Providing a historical account of the changing conceptualisation of individuals since 1864, the study draws on social constructivism. This approach casts light on the struggle of making sense of, and agreeing on, the position of individuals in armed conflicts during the law-making process, often hidden by international humanitarian law's conventional narratives. This intriguing study grapples with a difficult and disputed area of the law of armed conflict, making a singular and significant contribution which will be welcomed by all scholars in the field.

Prior to the East India Company's establishment in India in 1661, Islamic law was widely applied by the Mughal Empire. But as the Company's power grew, it established a court system intended to limit Islamic law. Following the Great Rebellion of 1857, the decentralized Islamic legal system was replaced with a new standardized system. Islamic Law on Trial interrogates the project of juridical colonization and demonstrates that alongside--and despite--the violent displacement of Muslim legal sovereignty, Muslims were able to engage with and even champion Islamic law from inside the colonial judiciary. The outcome of their work was a paradoxical legal terrain that appeared legitimate to both Muslim practitioners and English colonizers. Sohaira Siddiqui challenges long-standing assumptions about Islamic law under British rule, the ways in which colonial power displaced preexisting traditions, and how local Muslim elites navigated the new institutions imposed upon them.

Close readings of acclaimed 20th century novels and lesser known but stunning works of popular culture uniquely situate us to understand the clash of religious values that led to genocide in World War II Europe (including Great Britain). The author further engages pre-Shoah writers, such as Shakespeare and Melville, signposts to seismic conflicts in law and religion. Law and Literature methods permit the author to uncover the falsehood and antisemitic violence emerging from longstanding religious differences. Inspired by James Carroll (Constantine's Sword), Harold Bloom (Jesus and Yahweh), and Franklin Littell (The Crucifixion of the Jews), Weisberg provokes readers, through reengagement with a series of superb stories, to see in all of them millennia of atrocities disguised as "Judeo-Christian" affinity. As in his Vichy Law and the Holocaust in France (NYU; Gordon & Breach), the author again utilizes archival materials from the wartime period, integrating them into his close readings of fiction.

This book examines the Punjab river waters controversy in South Asia, a major defining feature of Punjab politics. It also studies the difficult situation relating to the waters at the intersectionality of Punjab, the rural Sikh community, the neighboring state of Haryana, and the Indian central government. Analyzing the history of the dispute dating back to the partition of the country in 1947, the book looks at the constitutional provisions and other laws which govern the allocation of inter-state river waters in India and their application/ departure in the allocation of river waters in case of Punjab. It also assesses the impact of river waters issue on politics of the State. The author investigates how Punjab peasants, an influential segment of society, have played a catalytic role in determining party positions on the subject, resulting in a situation where the SutlejYamuna Link (SYL) canal will not be allowed to be constructed in Punjab territory. An important contribution to the waters dispute in the Punjab, this book will be of interest to academics studying South Asian and Indian politics and rural political economy.

How Americans have weathered constitutional crises throughout our history Since protestors ripped through the Capitol Building in 2021, the threat of constitutional crisis has loomed over our nation. The foundational tenets of American democracy seem to be endangered, and many citizens believe this danger is unprecedented in our history. But Americans have weathered many constitutional crises, often accompanied by the same violence and chaos experienced on January 6. However, these crises occurred on the state level. In Sedition, Marcus Alexander Gadson uncovers these episodes of civil unrest and examines how state governments handled them. Sedition takes readers through six instances of constitutional crisis: The Buckshot War, Dorr?s Rebellion, Bleeding Kansas, the Brooks-Baxter War, a successful terrorist campaign to overthrow South Carolina?s government during Reconstruction, and the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898. He chronicles these turbulent periods of violent anti-government conflict on the state level, explaining what it was like to experience coup d?états, rival governments fighting in the streets, and disputed elections that gave way to violence. As he addresses constitutional breakdown, Gadson urges Americans to pay increased attention to the risk of constitutional instability in their home states. His sweeping historical analysis provides new insights on the fight to protect democracy today. As Americans mobilize to prevent future crises, Sedition reminds us that our constitutional order can fail, that democratic collapse is possible, and offers us advice on how to save our constitutional system.

Does the Qur'an promote the abolition of slavery? If so, why had the slave trade been allowed to operate across the Muslim world for over a millennium? And why had Muslim scholars not attempted to eradicate slavery previously? These were the questions that Islamic abolitionist scholars explored as they sought to challenge the slave trade throughout the nineteenth century. The abolition of slavery remains a relatively new concept in human history and scholars from all religious traditions have attempted to navigate the religious and ethical questions raised by the historical acceptance of slavery. In this book, Haroon Bashir tells the story of how scholars promoting abolition in the name of Islam transformed the debate around Islam and slavery. The book explores how abolitionism became the hegemonic position within contemporary Islamic thought and highlights the journey behind the current consensus. Abolitionist arguments were not simply accepted, with defenders of the slave trade using the weight of historical tradition to emphasise the legitimacy of slavery. The strongly contested debates that ensued had huge ramifications for understandings of authority, tradition, and modernity within Islamic thought that are as present as they are past. Through an exploration of these various discourses and contestations, Slavery, Abolition, and Islam highlights how both slavery and abolition were historically challenged within the Islamic context and demonstrates how those debates continue to impact contemporary discussions. In doing so, the book also explores broader themes of religious traditions, continuity, and transformation.

The Indian National Army (INA) trials of 1945-46 have generally been given short shrift by historians in their cataloguing of the Indian freedom movement. This book examines to what extent the trials had an impact on the final phase of India's quest for independence. In so doing, it unveils that, while the Indian National Congress's extended odyssey to win independence was essentially about a passive push-back, at a critical juncture of its campaign to extinguish British colonialism in India, it applauded and capitalised on the INA's use of force. The central, explosive narrative is about Britain holding a court martial of three officers of the INA - Shah Nawaz Khan, Prem Sahgal and Gurbaksh Dhillon - convicting them, before a dramatic turn in events. The material unearthed by the book throws new light on a decisive juncture leading to the transfer of power in India. It will be indispensable for researchers interested in South Asia, especially the Indian freedom movement. It will be invaluable for students of history, colonialism, military studies, politics in pre-Partition India and law.