Legal Studies recently funded ten graduate students to attend Rivers of Law: The Confluence of Life, Work and Justice, the Law & Society Association Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA (June 5-8, 2003).

The conference was an exciting moment for Legal Studies. In addition to ten NU students and legal scholars from around the country, there was a Plenary Address by Derrick Bell of NYU Law School, an expert on race, law, and justice.

The conference was held at the Omni William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh.

Find out what some NU students contributed below (more information to come soon):

David Brodnax, Sr. (History)

Unless In the Presence of Five Respectable Slaveholders: Black Preachers, White Control, and Alabama's Legal Response to the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion.

As the title suggests, my paper discusses the ways that Alabama's state legislature sought to control and supervise slave preachers after Nat Turner waged his rebellion in Southampton, Virginia during the summer of 1831. Rather than trying to completely suppress slave preaching as the legislatures in Virginia and other eastern slave states did, Alabama lawmakers chose to impose a policy of strict supervision over slave preachers by respectable whites. This alternative path was warranted, I argue, by the strong frontier status of Alabama, which discouraged any policy that (1) could not be effectively implemented and (2) might have led to slave troubles that Alabama was ill equipped to handle. This argument raises larger questions about the ambivalent nature of the slave preachers. They often sought to deliver an uplifting message to their congregants but were also pulled in other directions by slaveholders and overseers, who had their own agenda of using slave preachers and Afro-Christianity in general as a tool of control. It further leads to questions about the intersection between the law, religion, and slave communities.

Law & Society Panel
“Race And Law Entangled: Historical Approaches”

(1) David Brodnax - History, Northwestern University
brodnax@northwestern.edu
"Unless In the Presence of Five Respectable Slaveholders: Black Preachers, White Control and Alabama's Response to the 1831 Nat Turner Rebellion"

(2) Laura Gomez - Law & Sociology, UCLA School of Law
GOMEZ@mail.law.ucla.edu
"Identity and Legitimacy: Mexican Lawmakers' Responses to Pueblo Indian Citizenship and Slavery in the Early Territorial Legislature of New Mexico"

(3) Judge Steve Russell ­ Criminal Justice, Indiana
swrussel@indiana.edu
"A Disease Theory of Race and the Paradox of Indian Identity"

(4) Discussant: Prof. Sarah Gatson - Sociology, Texas A & M
sarahnic46@hotmail.com