Home
Law
Legal History
Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857

Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857

Name: Before Dred Scott: Slavery and Legal Culture in the American Confluence, 1787-1857
Brand: Cambridge University Press
SKU: 9781107112063
Price: 680.94 HKD
Availability: InStock
Author: Anne Twitty
ISBN: 9781107112063

By Anne Twitty

Cambridge University Press December 2016

Specifications

ISBN-13: 9781107112063
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication: December 2016
Format: Hardback
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Countri(es) for reference only

Details

Before Dred Scott draws on the freedom suits filed in the St Louis circuit court to construct a ground-breaking history of slavery and legal culture within the American Confluence, a vast region where the Ohio, Mississippi, and the Missouri rivers converge. Formally divided between slave and free territories and states, the American Confluence was nevertheless a site where the borders between slavery and freedom, like the borders within the region itself, were fluid. Such ambiguity produced a radical indeterminacy of status, which, in turn, gave rise to a distinctive legal culture made manifest by the prosecution of hundreds of freedom suits, including the case that ultimately culminated in the landmark United States Supreme Court decision in Dred Scott vs Sandford. Challenging dominant trends in legal history, Before Dred Scott argues that this distinctive legal culture, above all, was defined by ordinary people's remarkable understanding of and appreciation for formal law.

Introduction

1. A radical indeterminancy of status

2. 'With the ease of a veteran litigant'

3. '[B]y the help of God and a good lawyer'

4. Slavery from liberty to equality

5. '[W]orking his emancipation'

6. Exploiting the uncertainties of federalism

7. Remembering slavery and freedom in the American Confluence

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Appendix.

HKD 680.94 −3%