A Degraded Caste of Society traces the origins of twenty-first-century cases of interracial violence to the separate and unequal protection principles of the criminal law of enslavement in the southern United States. Andrew T. Fede explains how antebellum appellate court opinions and statutes, when read in a context that includes newspaper articles and trial court and census records, extended this doctrine to the South’s free Black people, consigning them to what South Carolina justice John Belton O’Neall called “a degraded caste of society,” in which they were “in no respect, on a perfect equality with the white man.” This written law either criminalized Black insolence or privileged private white interracial violence, which became a badge of slavery that continued to influence the law in action, contrary to the Constitution’s mandate of equal protection of the criminal law. The U.S. Supreme Court enabled this denial of equal justice, as did Congress, which did not make all private white racially motivated violence a crime until 2009, when it adopted the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Fede’s analysis supports that law’s constitutionality under the Thirteenth Amendment, while suggesting why—during the Jim Crow era and beyond—equal protection of the criminal law was not always realized, and why the curse of interracial violence has been a lingering badge of slavery.

In these original essays, America's leading historians and legal scholars reassess the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment and its relevance to issues of liberty, justice, and equality. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery in the United States, reasserting the radical, egalitarian dimensions of the Constitution. It also laid the foundations for future civil rights and social justice legislation. Yet subsequent reinterpretation and misappropriation have curbed more substantive change. With constitutional jurisprudence undergoing a revival, The Promises of Liberty provides a full portrait of the Thirteenth Amendment and its potential for ensuring liberty. The collection begins with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Brion Davis, who discusses the failure of the Thirteenth Amendment to achieve its framers' objectives. The next piece, by Alexander Tsesis, provides a detailed account of the Amendment's revolutionary character. James M. McPherson, another Pulitzer recipient, recounts the influence of abolitionists on the ratification process, and Paul Finkelman focuses on who freed the slaves and President Lincoln's commitment to ending slavery. Michael Vorenberg revisits the nineteenth century's understanding of freedom and citizenship and the Amendment's surprisingly small role in the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. William M. Wiecek shows how the Supreme Court's narrow interpretation once rendered the guarantee of freedom nearly illusory, and the collection's third Pulitzer Prize winner, David M. Oshinsky, explains how peonage undermined the prohibition against compulsory service. Subsequent essays relate the Thirteenth Amendment to congressional authority, hate crimes legislation, the labor movement, and immigrant rights. These chapters analyze unique features of the amendment along with its elusive meanings and affirm its power to reform criminal and immigration law, affirmative action policies, and the protection of civil liberties.

A landmark work of more than one hundred scholars, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution is a unique line-by-line analysis explaining every clause of America's founding charter and its contemporary meaning. In this fully revised second edition, leading scholars in law, history, and public policy offer more than two hundred updated and incisive essays on every clause of the Constitution. From the stirring words of the Preamble to the Twenty-seventh Amendment, you will gain new insights into the ideas that made America, important debates that continue from our Founding, and the Constitution's true meaning for our nation.

“[A] learned and thoughtful portrayal of the history of race relations in America...authoritative and highly readable...[An] impressive work.” —Randall Kennedy, The Nation “This comprehensive history...reminds us that the fight for justice requires our constant vigilance.” —Ibram X. Kendi “Remarkable for the breadth and depth of its historical and legal analysis...makes an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the US Supreme Court’s role in America’s difficult racial history.” —Tomiko Brown-Nagin, author of Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality From the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Brown v. Board of Education to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act, Orville Vernon Burton and Armand Derfner shine a powerful light on the Supreme Court’s race record—uplifting, distressing, and even disgraceful. Justice Deferred is the first book that comprehensively charts the Supreme Court’s race jurisprudence, detailing the development of legal and constitutional doctrine, the justices’ reasoning, and the impact of individual rulings. In addressing such issues as the changing interpretations of the Reconstruction amendments, Japanese internment in World War II, the exclusion of Mexican Americans from juries, and affirmative action, the authors bring doctrine to life by introducing the people and events at the heart of the story of race in the United States. Much of the fragility of civil rights in America is due to the Supreme Court, but as this sweeping history reminds us, the justices still have the power to make good on the country’s promise of equal rights for all.

Emanuel® Law Outlines for Constitutional Law, Forty-First Edition, by Steve Emanuel focuses on those topics that are important in today’s Constitutional Law courses and includes an abundance of short-answer questions and answers as well as exam tips. New to the Forty-First Edition: Coverage of key 2022-2023 Supreme Court developments, including: Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, holding that universities may no longer take race into account in making admissions decisions and thus nullifying traditional affirmative action in admissions. Biden v. Nebraska, a separation-of-powers decision holding that the Biden administration’s cancellation of up to $400 billion of student loan debt was invalid under the “major question” doctrine. Under that doctrine, a federal agency may act on a major question of economic or political significance only if there is “clear direction” from Congress allowing that action. Nat’l Pork Producers Council v. Ross, a decision reaffirming that even where a state law was not enacted with an intent to discriminate against interstate commerce, the Court will still perform a rough balancing test, under which it will find a dormant Commerce Clause violation if the burden imposed on commerce is clearly excessive compared with the local benefits. Counterman v. Colorado, a free-speech case reaffirming that threats of violence are not protected by the First Amendment but holding that to treat the making of such a threat as a crime, the prosecution must prove that the speaker acted “recklessly,” i.e., that the speaker “consciously disregarded” a substantial risk that the speech would cause harm to another. Moore v. Harper, a decision about the meaning of the “Elections Clause,” which gives each state legislature the power to determine the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections. The Court rejected the “independent state legislature” theory, which contended that a state legislature’s power to regulate federal elections was absolute. The Capsule Summary provides a quick reference summary of the key concepts covered in the full Outline. The detailed course Outline with black letter principles supplements your casebook reading throughout the semester and gives structure to your own outline. The Quiz Yourself feature includes a series of short-answer questions and sample answers to help you test your knowledge of the chapter’s content. Exam Tips alert you to issues and commonly used fact patterns found on exams. The Casebook Correlation Chart correlates each section in the Outline with the pages covering that topic in the major casebooks.