Supreme Court opinions involving race and the jury invariably open with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, or landmark cases like Strauder v. West Virginia (1880). Legal scholars and historians unanimously report that free people of color did not serve as jurors, in either the North or South, until 1860. In fact, this Article shows, Black men served as jurors in antebellum America decades earlier than anyone has previously realized. While instances of early Black jury service were rare, campaigns insisting upon Black citizens’ admission to the jury-box were not. From the late 1830s onward, Black activists across the country organized to abolish the all-white jury. They faced, and occasionally overcame, staunch resistance. This Article uses jury lists, court records, convention minutes, diaries, bills of sale, tax rolls, and other overlooked primary sources to recover these forgotten efforts, led by activists who understood the jury-box to be both a marker and maker of citizenship. A broader historical perspective—one that centers Black activists in the decades before the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868—offers a new way of thinking about the relationship between race, rights, citizenship, and the jury.
Societies worldwide are polarized over social justice, with identity-based status hierarchies manifesting inequalities at both individual and...
Prof. Kim Forde-Mazrui of the University of Virginia responds to Sonja Starr’s print Article, The Magnet School Wars and the Future of Colorblindness...
Supreme Court opinions involving race and the jury invariably open with the Fourteenth Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, or landmark cases like...
This book responds to a sea change in federal civil rights law. Its focus is on the recent decisions on affirmative action, almost entirely rejecting...
The role of implicit racial biases in police interactions with people of color has garnered increased public attention and scholarly examination over...
Donald J. Trump appointed 234 federal judges in his first term. Trump, as is his wont, claims, with an inflated number, that he appointed a record...
On January 1, 2022, the most radical change to the American jury in at least thirty-five years occurred in Arizona: peremptory strikes, long a feature...
Legal ethicists, advocacy groups, and politicians have called for greater restrictions on the use of nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) when parties...
In recent years, the federal courts have seen a plethora of lawsuits originated by states challenging federal government actions. As a result, there...
This paper, prepared for the 2023 Clifford Symposium on “New Torts” at DePaul Law School, addresses the tort of offensive battery. This is an ancient...
This casebook aspires to help students understand and think systematically about the techniques of statutory interpretation. It blends exposition with...
This paper describes the response of George Washington's administration to a plea for emergency war financing from French colonists who were trying to...
This Essay reports data on the impact of Bruen and its predecessor, Heller, on gun rights cases. Put mildly, the impact was substantial, not only in...
When Class Competed with Race and Lost: An Origin Story of the Political Marginalization of the Poor
On March 1, 2024, the University of Richmond Law Review hosted a symposium entitled Vestiges of the Confederacy: Reckoning with the Legacy of the...
In this paper we investigate whether gender is associated with the content of judicial opinions in the U.S. courts of appeals. Using a topic model...
Donald J. Trump's presidency broke the mold in many ways, including how to think about judicial appointments. Unlike other recent presidents, Trump...
In DeTreville v. Smalls, an 1879 case from Port Royal, South Carolina, the Supreme Court declared that titles to land that had been sold in...
How should judges decide hard cases involving rights conflicts? Standard debates about this question are usually framed in jurisprudential terms...