Looking forward to visiting Yale’s Early Modern Empires Workshop Feb. 5 for discussion of “‘Our Crown and Glory’: The Jesuits, the Souls of Slaves, and the Struggle for Haiti” — the penultimate chapter of my book on the revolt against the Indies Company in Haiti, 1720-1725.
Boston area friends,
The Black Students’ Union at MIT is hosting a conversation on April 22, from 2-4pm, entitled “What does Black Lives Matter have to do with YOU?” at the Stratton Student Center, Mezzanine Lounge (W20-307). Please attend if you can and share with interested folks.
BSUBLMsmallerThe next meeting of the American Society for Legal History will be held in Las Vegas from Oct. 26-29, 2017. The deadline for panel and paper proposals has been extended to April 3. Please consider submitting a proposal, especially if you have not yet participated in an ASLH meeting. The CFP is here. Some financial assistance is available for participants, especially graduate students, who need funding support in order to attend.
Dear Boston-area friends,
I have been on a social media diet for the past few weeks that will continue into April but want to alert and invite you to our upcoming Newton Family Singers concert on April 9, benefiting the Best Buddies organization. We are seeking sponsors for the concert to support the work of Best Buddies; for more information, please see here, and for the sponsorship form please see here. Thank you very much for your support and hope to see some of you at the concert!
A brief Q&A discussing my current research project and related issues.
Looking forward to discussing “The Jesuits, the Souls of Slaves, and the Battle for Saint-Domingue, 1720-1730” with the Boston College Legal History Roundtable this coming Thursday.
The syllabus for version 2.0 of my MIT course on “Libertarianism in History” can be found here.
Here is the exciting program for the conference in honor of my great teacher Keith Baker at Stanford this coming weekend.
The below request for help comes from a group of lawyers organizing at Boston’s Logan Airport in response to the January 27, 2017 executive order on travel/immigration. Please share with any overseas attorneys you know who may be in a position to help. Thanks!
URGENT: Call for Attorney Volunteers at International Airports Outside the US to Protect Refugees and Travelers
Friday evening President Trump issued an Executive Order that, among other things, bars entry for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries for at least 90 days, suspends the US refugee program for at least 120 days, and indefinitely bans Syrian refugees from resettlement in the US. Over the weekend, a number of federal courts issued temporary restraining orders that block the enforcement of the Executive Order. More legal action is underway.
Attorneys volunteering at US airports need your help: we have been notified that many travelers have been denied boarding for US-bound flights, and others are not aware of the temporary restraining orders upon arrival in the US.
This is where you come in: if you would be willing to volunteer at an airport near you, please sign up using the linked form. We need volunteer attorneys who can distribute updated information to affected travelers, collect contact information for affected travelers departing for the US, coordinate with attorney support teams at US points of entry, and provide US-based attorneys with updates on conditions at departing airports. No immigration experience is necessary, we will connect you with other volunteers in your area, and we will provide you with documents, forms, and instructions on how to get started.
Here is the link to volunteer:
Just out in Law and Literature: “‘No Body to be Kicked’? Monopoly, Financial Crisis, and Popular Revolt in 18th-Century Haiti and America.”
Here’s the abstract:
“Contemporary law and legal theory are resigned to the view that the corporation is a mere nexus of contracts, a legal person lacking both body and soul. This essay explores that commitment to the immateriality of the corporation through a discussion of the 18th-century revolt against the Indies Company in Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and British North America. Opponents of the joint-stock monopoly in these Atlantic settings believed, like critics of transnational corporate power today, that the company form represented a merger of wealth and power operating to subvert the liberties of disenfranchised outsiders. Financial crisis served to destabilize the fiscal and political environment that insulated the Indies Company from its critics, who took advantage of these openings by attacking the material embodiments of the corporation in the name of “free trade.” The 18th-century opposition to monopoly privilege suggests that corporate personality was neither dismissed as fiction nor accepted as reality, and that in some circumstances, at least, the corporate body could indeed be held to account for the sins of a person without conscience.”