Academic

Student Blogger - #13Amend Live Blog: The Relevance of Reconstruction Today

Professor Alison LaCroix commented on some of the unifying themes of the papers presented in the second panel, on "rights." There is a sense in legal history that Reconstruction is its own special time that does not necessarily have relevance for interpreting themes at other points in time. After experiencing the broad principles enunciated during the Civil War, the Reconstruction was all about coalition building and the dirtiness of politics, giving the sense that those principles have been forgotten. These papers show, however, that Reconstruction is in fact continuous with the surrounding history. One can take three different perspectives. First, a normative claim about the Thirteenth Amendment is that it vindicated the principles of the Declaration of Independence. Second, a descriptive claim is that the Amendment is deeply contextual with the surrounding history and concepts of the time. Third, deeply contextual history can be a source of "subversive" history, where the realities of the past can illuminate normative debates today.

Full post as published by The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog on April 17, 2009 (boomark / email).