Books in the Studies in the Legal History of the South series

Uses a captivating narrative to unpack the experiences of slavery and slave law in South Carolina and Massachusetts during the Revolutionary Era. In 1779, thirty-four South Carolina slaves escaped aboard a British privateer and survived several naval battles until the Massachusetts brig Tyrannicide led them to Massachusetts.

This study demonstrates how state courts enabled the mass propulsion of Native Americans from their southern homelands in the 1830s. The author argues that our understanding of this period is too often moulded around the towering personalities of the Indian removal debate.

A study of the law and culture of slavery in the antebellum Deep South that takes readers into local courtrooms where people settled their civil disputes over property. This work sheds light on the law as a dramatic ritual in people's daily lives, and advances critical historical debates about law, honor, and commerce in the American South.

Drawing on the judicial opinions and private correspondence of six chief justices whose careers spanned both the region and the century, the author analyzes their conceptions of their roles and the substance of their opinions related to cases involving homicide, economic development, federalism, and race.

A bold reconceptualization of black freedom during the Civil War that uncovers the political claims made by African American women. By analysing the actions of women in St. Louis and rural Missouri, Romeo uncovers the confluence of military events, policy changes, and black agency that shaped the gendered paths to freedom and citizenship.

Seventeen essays, by both established and rising scholars, that showcase new directions in southern legal history across a wide range of topics, time periods, and locales. Taken together, the essays show us that understanding how law changes over time is essential to understanding the history of the South.

Founded in 1847 in Lebanon, Tennessee, the Cumberland School of Law was the premier law school in the South in the nineteenth century and trained two United States Supreme Court justices, nine senators, a secretary of state, and scores of other federal and state judges, representatives, and governors.

In A Peculiar Humanism, William E. Wiethoff assesses the judicial use of oratory in reviewing slave cases and the struggle to fashion a humanist jurisprudence on slavery despite the customary restraints placed on judicial advocacy.

Cottrol takes the reader on a journey from the origins of New World slavery in colonial Latin America to current debates and litigation over affirmative action in Brazil and the United States, as well as contemporary struggles against racial discrimination and Afro-Latin invisibility in the Spanish-speaking nations of the hemisphere.