National Black Law Journal

This article seeks to remove the shroud of mystery from this overlooked chapter in the annals of the legal profession. Section I of the article looks at Macon Bolling Allen’s humble beginnings. Section II examines standards for bar admission during the first half of the nineteenth century. Section III of the article looks at why Maine seemed to have been the most hospitable site for Macon Bolling Allen’s unprecedented attempt to become a lawyer, including Allen’s fortuitous backing by noted Maine abolitionist attorney Samuel Fessenden. Section IV looks at the historic admission itself, analyzing the setbacks and opposition that Allen had to overcome. Finally, Section V examines the aftermath of Allen’s triumphant achievement. His tenure in Maine rendered short-lived by uncertain financial prospects, and Allen relocated to Massachusetts in search of greener pastures. After gaining admission to the bar there in 1845, Allen carved out a precarious professional existence in the Boston area until 1868, when he moved to Charleston, South Carolina.

The story of Macon Bolling Allen’s quest to become a lawyer is a critical narrative for understanding the challenges that Black lawyers still face today. While nearly fourteen percent of the American population is Black, only about five percent of its lawyers are Black. Beginning with Allen’s admission to the Maine bar in 1844, Black Americans thrust themselves into the fight against racism, and their very presence sent a powerful message. Allen’s journey also illustrates another theme that resonates today—the importance of white allies in working to achieve equality in and under the legal system. At a time in our nation’s history when teaching about Black history and the contributions of hitherto-unnoticed Black pioneers like Macon Bolling Allen is under threat, it is more important than ever to appreciate our “forgotten firsts.”

This paper explores how the Antebellum South’s legal system perpetuated slavery through entrenched societal norms and judicial precedents, contrasting sharply with the principles established in Somerset v. Stewart.

This paper will proceed by examining the various legal perspectives on the necessity of positive law to sustain slavery in the United States used during the Antebellum Period. Section I will explore the legal origins of slavery, highlighting significant court cases in slaveholding states that shaped the institution’s legal framework. Section II will contrast these perspectives with those in non-slaveholding states, which often adhered to the precedent set in Somerset v. Stewart, requiring explicit legal authorization for slavery. Section III will discuss the role of domicile in determining the status of slaves, analyzing cases where the slave owner’s residence influenced the legal standing of enslaved individuals. The conclusion will synthesize these findings, emphasizing the divergent regional interpretations and the critical role of positive law in sustaining or challenging the institution of slavery in Antebellum America.

This paper critically examines the intersection of law, systemic inequality, and social justice, focusing on the structural barriers that marginalized communities face in accessing equitable legal remedies. By analyzing relevant case law, statutory frameworks, and empirical research, the study explores how legalinstitutions both perpetuate and address disparities. It delves into the historical and contemporary factors that contribute to these inequities, highlighting the role of implicit bias, economic constraints, and institutional policies in shaping legal outcomes. Additionally, the paper evaluates proposed reforms and policy interventions aimed at fostering a more just legal system, assessing their effectiveness in practice. Through this analysis, the paper underscores the dual nature of law—as both a mechanism of oppression and a vehicle for social change—while advocating for strategies that enhance equity and accountability within the legal landscape.

This comment argues that the law constructs the education system as a hegemonic device for the inculcation of ideologies that reproduce generational inequality and white supremacy. The Supreme Court created a values paradox wherein education is revered as the most important medium to prepare students for intelligent participation in the democratic process; yet in practice, it actively subverts all students—especially ethnic and racial minorities—from ever actually or intelligently participating in the democratic process. The consequence of this inculcation produces conditions that suppress dissent, exact curriculum violence on racial and ethnic minorities, and reproduce generational insubordination. Adequate remediation of the impacts of this inculcation requires a reparations framework, to achieve the promise of education as an incubator for an intelligent, multi–racial democracy and equitable socioeconomic outcomes. Reparations repair the harms of the education system for everyone, but targeting these reparations is essential to ensuring that groups most impacted by the inequities of the education system can reach parity with others and live more fulfilling, healthy lives as a result.

While most state constitutions include provisions that indicate a commitment to equal access to education within one state, that commitment remains unfulfilled. This Article shines a light on a practice that has been overlooked by those concerned about school district inequality, but that contributes to this incongruity: a phenomenon I call “stealing education.” A parent “steals” education when he falsifies a child’s residence to take advantage of a school district’s schools. Stealing education also refers to the legal infrastructure that allows for criminal or civil punishment.

In this Article, I argue that stealing education laws contribute to the apparatus of race-class opportunity hoarding, where a race-class-privileged community sequesters valuable resources to the exclusion of another race-class-subordinated community. I show how stealing education laws structure and perpetuate stratified school districts between residents and nonresidents and describe how many supporters of the laws use racist master narratives to justify the unequal distribution of rewards. The task of rationalizing the legal apparatus that denies equal educational opportunity to nonresidents is easier when supporters can appeal to “common sense” explicit racist narratives and dog whistles of inferior and undeserving Black people and Black children.

This Article focuses on one suburban-urban school district boundary that separates a majority-White school from a majority-Black school to highlight how some supporters of this structure justify this unequal system. I show how the subordinating effects of the stealing education apparatus mirror Brown-era race and class segregation. Stealing education is a perfectly legal mechanism by which to subordinate poor Black children, their families, and their communities.

In this Article, we employ the terms Health (as a white supremacist mode of being) and social health to demystify how race and health are mobilized by the state and its representative bodies to shift accountability away from their role in crafting an anti-Black world, contain and quell Black protest, and how Black communities have dreamt and practiced alternative definitions of health whereby empowerment was achieved both nutritionally and politically.