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Quo vadis Commercial Contract?: Reflections on Sustainability, Ethics and Technology in the Emerging Law and Practice of Global Commerce (LCF Studies in Commercial and Financial Law #1)
by Mads Andenas Maren HeidemannThis proceedings volume combines chapters derived from papers presented at the 4th and 5th Annual Conferences on the Future of the Commercial Contract in Scholarship and Law Reform. This ongoing research project brings together scholars from all over the world at an annual international conference in London. The book focusses on technology in commercial contract law as well as on sustainability in commercial contracts. The latter theme was inspired by the United Nations' climate conference that was to take place in Glasgow in the United Kingdom that same year. The book combines topical current issues in commercial contract law and practice organized in three parts. The first part contains contributions to the area of law and technology. The second part of the book expands on aspects of sustainability understood as environmental reasonableness in the context of commercial contracts. The third part includes several chapters on the topics of supervening events and contractual ethics. This book is therefore part of a coherent line of contributions to the furthering of modern contract theory. The choice of topics is closely following current issues of legal policy and contract practice.
R. Edward Freeman’s Selected Works on Stakeholder Theory and Business Ethics (Issues in Business Ethics #53)
by Sergiy D. Dmytriyev R. Edward FreemanEd Freeman’s influential ideas on stakeholder theory, business ethics, humanities, and capitalism became foundational in the management field and turned around the mainstream thinking about business. Stakeholder theory developed by Freeman and others posits that business is not as much about profits, but rather about creating value for its stakeholders, including employees, customers, communities, financiers, and suppliers. The relationship between a company and its stakeholders is the essence of business and should be of utmost attention to its managers. Managers should avoid resorting to trade-offs by prioritizing one stakeholder group (e.g., shareholders) over the others and strive to run their companies in the interests of all stakeholders. The idea of pursuing the interests of all stakeholders became revolutionary in management and went far beyond the management field, expanding to Law, Health Care, Education, Public Policy and Administration, and Environmental Policy. This book is a collection of Ed Freeman’s most influential and important works on stakeholder theory as well as business ethics, humanities, and capitalism.
R2P and the US Intervention in Libya
by Paul Tang AbomoThis book argues that the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) the Libyan people played an important role in the U.S.’s decision to act, both in terms of how the language of deliberation was framed and the implementation of the actual intervention once all preventive means had been exhausted. While the initial ethos of the intervention followed international norms, the author argues that as the conflict continued to unfold, the Obama administration’s loss of focus and lack of political will for post-conflict resolution, as well as a wider lack of understanding of ever changing politics on the ground, resulted in Libya’s precipitation into chaos. By examining the cases of Rwanda and Darfur alongside the interventions in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, the book discusses how these cases influenced current decision-making with regards to foreign interventions and offers a triangular framework through which to understand R2P: responsibility to prevent, react and rebuild.
Rabbinic Authority, Volume 2: The Vision and the Reality, Beit Din Decisions in English, Volume 2
by A. Yehuda WarburgVolume 2 of the only English books on rabbinic authority In this second volume of Rabbinic Authority, Rabbi Warburg presents new rabbinical court arbitration decisions in English. He is the first rabbinic arbitrator to publish piskei din (decisions) on cases in Jewish civil law. It is important that those who service the institution of a beit din (a Jewish court) know the inner dynamics and reasoning of those who issue rulings. This volume focuses on a number of topics, such as the halakhic identity of an investment broker, the propriety of a civil will, contemporary issues relating to domestic violence, and the role of a rabbinical advocate in the beit din process.
Rabbinic Authority, Volume 3: The Vision and the Reality, Beit Din Decisions in English - Halakhic Divorce and the Agunah
by A. Yehuda WarburgIn the third volume of his groundbreaking series on rabbinic authority in English, Rabbi Warburg discusses the ramifications of a Jewish divorce. In this well-composed monograph, Rabbi Warburg primarily focuses on the case of the modern day agunah, a wife who is unable to get divorced due to her husband's recalcitrance. He addresses the various techniques, such as obligating the giving of a get (Jewish divorce document), finding relief for an agunah who signed an exploitative agreement, and listing different avenues to void a marriage (bitul kiddushin) used by the rabbinical court. This issue is of some controversy in the Jewish community, and there is heated debate about it.
Race Against Time: The Untold Story of Scipio Jones and the Battle to Save Twelve Innocent Men
by Rich Wallace Sandra Neil WallaceScipio Africanus Jones -- a self-taught attorney who was born enslaved -- leads a momentous series of court cases to save twelve Black men who'd been unjustly sentenced to death.In October 1919, a group of Black sharecroppers met at a church in an Arkansas village to organize a union. Bullets rained down on the meeting from outside. Many were killed by a white mob, and others were rounded up and arrested. Twelve of the sharecroppers were hastily tried and sentenced to death. Up stepped Scipio Africanus Jones, a self-taught lawyer who'd been born enslaved. Could he save the men's lives and set them free? Through their in-depth research and consultation with legal experts, award-winning nonfiction authors Sandra and Rich Wallace examine the complex proceedings and an unsung African American early civil rights hero.
Race and America's Long War
by Nikhil Pal SinghDonald Trump’s election to the U.S. presidency in 2016, which placed control of the government in the hands of the most racially homogenous, far-right political party in the Western world, produced shock and disbelief for liberals, progressives, and leftists globally. Yet most of the immediate analysis neglects longer-term accounting of how the United States arrived here. Race and America’s Long War examines the relationship between war, politics, police power, and the changing contours of race and racism in the contemporary United States. Nikhil Pal Singh argues that the United States’ pursuit of war since the September 11 terrorist attacks has reanimated a longer history of imperial statecraft that segregated and eliminated enemies both within and overseas. America’s territorial expansion and Indian removals, settler in-migration and nativist restriction, and African slavery and its afterlives were formative social and political processes that drove the rise of the United States as a capitalist world power long before the onset of globalization. Spanning the course of U.S. history, these crucial essays show how the return of racism and war as seemingly permanent features of American public and political life is at the heart of our present crisis and collective disorientation.
Race and Drug Trials: The Social Construction of Guilt and Innocence (Routledge Revivals)
by Anita Kalunta-CrumptonFirst published in 1999, this book offers an innovative study of the impact that courts have upon the representation of black people in criminal statistics in the UK. In the past, research in this area has focused on sentencing and upon why black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population. Such studies have, however, overlooked the potential significance of discrimination in the pre-sentence social processes of the courts. Anita Kalunta-Crumpton adopts a new approach which examines the progress of cases prior to sentencing. Her book also locates the courts within a theoretical context of social construction. It thus, unlike earlier quantitative studies, represents the court system as non-mechanical. In this way 'Race and Drug Trials' exposes the vital role that the trial process plays in the apparent racialization of 'justice’. The volume is part of a series which brings together research from a range of disciplines including criminology, cultural studies and applied social sciences, focusing on experiences of ethnic, gender and class relations. In particular, the series examines the treatment of marginalised groups within the social systems for criminal justice, education, health, employment and welfare.
Race and Restoration: Churches of Christ and the Black Freedom Struggle
by Barclay KeyFrom the late nineteenth century to the dawn of the civil rights era, the Churches of Christ operated outside of conventional racial customs. Many of their congregations, even deep in the South, counted whites and blacks among their numbers. As the civil rights movement began to challenge pervasive social views about race, Church of Christ leaders and congregants found themselves in the midst of turmoil. In Race and Restoration: Churches of Christ and the Black Freedom Struggle, Barclay Key focuses on how these churches managed race relations during the Jim Crow era and how they adapted to the dramatic changes of the 1960s.Although most religious organizations grappled with changing attitudes toward race, the Churches of Christ had singular struggles. Fundamentally “restorationist,” these exclusionary churches perceived themselves as the only authentic expression of Christianity, compelling them to embrace peoples of different races, even as they succumbed to prevailing racial attitudes. The Churches of Christ thus offer a unique perspective for observing how Christian fellowship and human equality intersected during the civil rights era. Key reveals how racial attitudes and practices within individual congregations elude the simple categorizations often employed by historians. Public forums, designed by churches to bridge racial divides, offered insight into the minds of members while revealing the limited progress made by individual churches.Although the Churches of Christ did have a more racially diverse composition than many other denominations in the Jim Crow era, Key shows that their members were subject to many of the same aversions, prejudices, and fears of other churches of the time. Ironically, the tentative biracial relationships that had formed within and between congregations prior to World War II began to dissolve as leading voices of the civil rights movement prioritized desegregation.
Race and the Law in South Carolina: From Slavery to Jim Crow
by John WertheimerThis first title in the “Law, Literature & Culture” series uses six legal disputes from the South Carolina courts to illuminate the complex legal history of race in the U.S. South from slavery through Jim Crow. The first two cases—one criminal, one civil—both illuminate the extreme oppressiveness of slavery. The third explores labor relations between newly emancipated Black agricultural workers and white landowners during Reconstruction. The remaining cases investigate three prominent features of the Jim Crow system: segregated schools, racially biased juries, and lynching, respectively. Throughout the century under consideration, South Carolina’s legal system obsessively drew racial lines, always to the detriment of non-white people, but it occasionally provided a public forum within which racial oppression could be challenged. The book emphasizes how dramatically the degree of legal oppressiveness experienced by Black South Carolinians varied during the century under study, based largely on the degree of Black access to political and legal power. “Recent arguments in African American History have emphasized the theme of continuity. . . . Race and Law in South Carolina recovers the theme of change over time by showing just how things have changed, and it does so through patient, thick description.” —H. Robert Baker, Georgia State University “This book and its concomitant student project is an exciting endeavor. . . . The cases are captivating and accessibly written, making this a possible college classroom read.” —Vanessa Blanck, Rowan University
Race, Class, and Affirmative Action
by Sigal AlonNo issue in American higher education is more contentious than that of race-based affirmative action. In light of the ongoing debate around the topic and recent Supreme Court rulings, affirmative action policy may be facing further changes. As an alternative to race-based affirmative action, some analysts suggest affirmative action policies based on class. In Race, Class, and Affirmative Action, sociologist Sigal Alon studies the race-based affirmative action policies in the United States. and the class-based affirmative action policies in Israel. Alon evaluates how these different policies foster campus diversity and socioeconomic mobility by comparing the Israeli policy with a simulated model of race-based affirmative action and the U.S. policy with a simulated model of class-based affirmative action. Alon finds that affirmative action at elite institutions in both countries is a key vehicle of mobility for disenfranchised students, whether they are racial and ethnic minorities or socioeconomically disadvantaged. Affirmative action improves their academic success and graduation rates and leads to better labor market outcomes. The beneficiaries of affirmative action in both countries thrive at elite colleges and in selective fields of study. As Alon demonstrates, they would not be better off attending less selective colleges instead. Alon finds that Israel’s class-based affirmative action programs have provided much-needed entry slots at the elite universities to students from the geographic periphery, from high-poverty high schools, and from poor families. However, this approach has not generated as much ethnic diversity as a race-based policy would. By contrast, affirmative action policies in the United States have fostered racial and ethnic diversity at a level that cannot be matched with class-based policies. Yet, class-based policies would do a better job at boosting the socioeconomic diversity at these bastions of privilege. The findings from both countries suggest that neither race-based nor class-based models by themselves can generate broad diversity. According to Alon, the best route for promoting both racial and socioeconomic diversity is to embed the consideration of race within class-based affirmative action. Such a hybrid model would maximize the mobility benefits for both socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority students. Race, Class, and Affirmative Action moves past political talking points to offer an innovative, evidence-based perspective on the merits and feasibility of different designs of affirmative action.
Race, Crime, and the Law
by Randall KennedyIn this powerfully reasoned, lucidly written work, Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedy takes on the highly complex issues of race, crime, and the legal system, uncovering the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals and revealing difficult truths about these factors in the United States.From the Hardcover edition.
Race Decoded: The Genomic Fight for Social Justice
by Catherine BlissIn 2000, with the success of the Human Genome Project, scientists declared the death of race in biology and medicine. But within five years, many of these same scientists had reversed course and embarked upon a new hunt for the biological meaning of race. Drawing on personal interviews and life stories,Race Decodedtakes us into the world of elite genome scientists-including Francis Collins, director of the NIH; Craig Venter, the first person to create a synthetic genome; and Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer-in-residence, among others-to show how and why they are formulating new ways of thinking about race. In this original exploration, Catherine Bliss reveals a paradigm shift, both at the level of science and society, from colorblindness to racial consciousness. Scientists have been fighting older understandings of race in biology while simultaneously promoting a new grand-scale program of minority inclusion. In selecting research topics or considering research design, scientists routinely draw upon personal experience of race to push the public to think about race as a biosocial entity, and even those of the most privileged racial and social backgrounds incorporate identity politics in the scientific process. Though individual scientists may view their positions differently-whether as a black civil rights activist or a white bench scientist-all stakeholders in the scientific debates are drawing on memories of racial discrimination to fashion a science-based activism to fight for social justice.
Race, Gender, Sexuality, and the Politics of the American Judiciary
by Samantha L. Hernandez Sharon A. NavarroThe judicial system in a liberal democracy is deemed to be an independent branch of government with judges free from political agendas or societal pressures. In reality, judges are often influenced by their economic and social backgrounds, gender, race, religion, and sexuality. This volume explores the representation of different identities in the judiciary in the United States. The contributors investigate the pipeline, ambition, institutional inclusion, retention, and representation of groups previously excluded from federal, state, and local judiciaries. This study demonstrates how diversity on the bench improves the quality of justice, bolsters confidence in the legitimacy of the courts, and provides a vital voice in decision-making power for formerly disenfranchised populations.
Race, Housing and Community: Perspectives on Policy and Practice (Real Estate Issues Ser.)
by Harris BeiderThis book provides an important new contribution to debates around housing policy and its impact on community cohesion. There has never been a more prescient time to discuss these concepts: the book provides an interpretation of housing, race and community cohesion in a highly politicized and fluid policy context. It is designed to initiate discussion and debate but this should not be esoteric and limited to a group of academics. Rather the objective is to bridge academic and policy audiences in the hope that this fusion provides a basis for a new agenda to discuss these topics. Race and community have been key features of social housing policy over the last 20 years with many high-profile interventions, from the proactive approach by the Housing Corporation to support black and minority ethnic housing associations, to the influential Cantle Report documenting segregation in towns and cities following riots, and the National Housing Federation led Race & Housing Inquiry leading to sector wide recommendations to achieve equality. However, volume of policy interventions and reports has not been matched by academic outputs that co-ordinate, integrate and critically analyse 'race', housing and community. Housing, Race & Community Cohesion is the first systematic overview of 'race', housing and community during this tumultuous period. The material presented is robust and research based but also directly engages with issues around policy and delivery. It is designed to reflect the interests both of the academic research community and policy makers on both sides of the Atlantic. It is not rooted to specific policy interventions that could quickly date but instead focuses on developing new ways to analyse difficult issues that will help both students and practitioners now and in the future.
Race in a Bottle: The Story of BiDil and Racialized Medicine in a Post-Genomic Age
by Jonathan KahnAt a ceremony announcing the completion of the first draft of the human genome in 2000, President Bill Clinton declared, "I believe one of the great truths to emerge from this triumphant expedition inside the human genome is that in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more than 99.9 percent the same." Yet despite this declaration of unity, biomedical research has focused increasingly on mapping that.1 percent of difference, particularly as it relates to race.This trend is exemplified by the drug BiDil. Approved by the FDA in 2005 as the first drug with a race-specific indication on its label, BiDil was originally touted as a pathbreaking therapy to treat heart failure in black patients and help underserved populations. Upon closer examination, however, Jonathan Kahn reveals a far more complex story. At the most basic level, BiDil became racial through legal maneuvering and commercial pressure as much as through medical understandings of how the drug worked. Using BiDil as a central case study, Kahn broadly examines the legal and commercial imperatives driving the expanding role of race in biomedicine, even as scientific advances in genomics could render the issue irrelevant. He surveys the distinct politics informing the use of race in medicine and the very real health disparities caused by racism and social injustice that are now being cast as a mere function of genetic difference. Calling for a more reasoned approach to using race in biomedical research and practice, Kahn asks readers to recognize that, just as genetics is a complex field requiring sensitivity and expertise, so too is race, particularly in the field of biomedicine.
Race in the Shadow of Law: State Violence in Contemporary Europe
by Eddie Bruce-JonesRace in the Shadow of Law offers a critical legal analysis of European responses to institutional racism. It draws connections between contemporary legal knowledge practices and colonial systems of thought, arguing that many people of colour experience the law as a part of a racial problem, rather than a solution, to racial injustice. Based on a critical legal ethnography of anti-racism work in Europe, and with an emphasis on the German context, the book positions Black and anti-racist perspectives at the centre, rather than the margins, of critically thinking through the intersection of race and law. Combining this ethnography with comparative legal analysis, discourse analysis and critical race theory, the book develops a critical discussion of the European legal frameworks aimed at regulating racism, and particularly institutional racism, in policy and policing. In linking this critique to the transformative potential of social movements, however, it goes on to examine the strategic and creative possibility of disrupting conventional modes of engaging, and resisting, law.
Race, Incarceration, and American Values
by Glenn C. LouryThe United States, home to five percent of the worlds' population, now houses twenty-five percent of the world's prison inmates. Our incarceration rate--at 714 per 100,000 residents and rising--is almost forty percent greater than our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). More pointedly, it is 6.2 times the Canadian rate and 12.3 times the rate in Japan. Economist Glenn Loury argues that this extraordinary mass incarceration is not a response to rising crime rates or a proud success of social policy. Instead, it is the product of a generation-old collective decision to become a more punitive society. He connects this policy to our history of racial oppression, showing that the punitive turn in American politics and culture emerged in the post-civil rights years and has today become the main vehicle for the reproduction of racial hierarchies. Whatever the explanation, Loury agues, the uncontroversial fact is that changes in our criminal justice system since the 1970s have created a nether class of Americans--vastly disproportionately black and brown--with severely restricted rights and life chances. Moreover, conservatives and liberals agree that the growth in our prison population has long passed the point of diminishing returns. Stigmatizing and confining of a large segment of our population should be unacceptable to Americans. Loury's call to action makes all of us now responsible for ensuring that the policy changes. Praise for The Anatomy of Racial Inequality: "Intellectually rigorous and deeply thoughtful.... The Anatomy of Racial Inequalityis an incisive, erudite book by a major thinker." --Gerald Early, New York Times Book Review A Boston Review Book
Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction Of Social Reality
by Toni MorrisonIt was perhaps the most wretchedly aspersive race and gender scandal of recent times: the dramatic testimony of Anita Hill at the Senate hearings on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas as Supreme Court Justice. Yet even as the televised proceedings shocked and galvanized viewers not only in this country but the world over, they cast a long shadow on essential issues that define America. <p><p>In Race-ing Justice, En-gendering Power, Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison contributes an introduction and brings together eighteen provocative essays, all but one written especially for this book, by prominent and distinguished academicians—Black and white, male and female. These writings powerfully elucidate not only the racial and sexual but also the historical, political, cultural, legal, psychological, and linguistic aspects of a signal and revelatory moment in American history.
Race-ing Moral Formation: African American Perspectives on Care and Justice
by Vanessa Siddle Walker John R. SnareyIn this volume the editors incorporate the experiences of African Americans into the discourse on moral-development theory and moral education. By citing historical developments from the days of slavery to the present, the authors provide a framework through which one can interpret the way morality has been cultivated amongst Black minorities. Presenting intriguing essays of well-known African American scholars, the editors discuss both the psychology of moral formation among African American children, adolescents, and adults, and the practical implications of this knowledge.
Race, Labor, and Civil Rights: Griggs versus Duke Power and the Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity (Making the Modern South)
by Robert Samuel SmithIn 1966, thirteen black employees of the Duke Power Company's Dan River Plant in Draper, North Carolina, filed a lawsuit against the company challenging its requirement of a high school diploma or a passing grade on an intelligence test for internal transfer or promotion. In the groundbreaking decision Griggs v. Duke Power (1971), the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding such employment practices violated Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when they disparately affected minorities. In doing so, the court delivered a significant anti-employment discrimination verdict. Legal scholars rank Griggs v. Duke Power on par with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in terms of its impact on eradicating race discrimination from American institutions. In Race, Labor, and Civil Rights, Robert Samuel Smith offers the first full-length historical examination of this important case and its connection to civil rights activism during the second half of the 1960s. Smith explores all aspects of Griggs, highlighting the sustained energy of the grassroots civil rights community and the critical importance of courtroom activism. Smith shows that after years of nonviolent, direct action protests, African Americans remained vigilant in the 1960s, heading back to the courts to reinvigorate the civil rights acts in an effort to remove the lingering institutional bias left from decades of overt racism. He asserts that alongside the more boisterous expressions of black radicalism of the late sixties, foot soldiers and local leaders of the civil rights community -- many of whom were working-class black southerners -- mustered ongoing legal efforts to mold Title 7 into meaningful law. Smith also highlights the persistent judicial activism of the NAACP-Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ascension of the second generation of civil rights attorneys. By exploring the virtually untold story of Griggs v. Duke Power, Smith's enlightening study connects the case and the campaign for equal employment opportunity to the broader civil rights movement and reveals the civil rights community's continued spirit of legal activism well into the 1970s.
Race, Law, and American Society: 1607-Present (Criminology and Justice Studies)
by Gloria J. Browne-MarshallThis second edition of Gloria Browne-Marshall’s seminal work , tracing the history of racial discrimination in American law from colonial times to the present, is now available with major revisions. Throughout, she advocates for freedom and equality at the center, moving from their struggle for physical freedom in the slavery era to more recent battles for equal rights and economic equality. From the colonial period to the present, this book examines education, property ownership, voting rights, criminal justice, and the military as well as internationalism and civil liberties by analyzing the key court cases that established America’s racial system and demonstrating the impact of these court cases on American society. This edition also includes more on Asians, Native Americans, and Latinos. Race, Law, and American Society is highly accessible and thorough in its depiction of the role race has played, with the sanction of the U.S. Supreme Court, in shaping virtually every major American social institution.
Race, Law, Resistance
by Patricia TuittRace, Law, Resistance is an original and important contribution to current theoretical debates on race and law. The central claims are that racial oppression has profoundly influenced the development of legal doctrine and that the production of subjugated figures like the slave and the refugee has been fundamental to the development of legal categories such as contract and tort. Drawing on examples from the UK and US legal systems in particular, this book employs a wide range of theoretical and disciplinary perspectives to explore resistance to racial dominance in modernity. In particular, it highlights the main tenets and distinctive scholarly forms of critical theories on race and law. Race, Law, Resistance will be of interest to academics and students following courses on critical race theory, law and postcolonialism, discrimination law, legal theory, legal systems, the law of obligations, comparative legal cultures, law and literature, and human rights.
Race on the Brain: What Implicit Bias Gets Wrong About the Struggle for Racial Justice
by Jonathan KahnOf the many obstacles to racial justice in America, none has received more recent attention than the one that lurks in our subconscious. As social movements and policing scandals have shown how far from being “postracial” we are, the concept of implicit bias has taken center stage in the national conversation about race. Millions of Americans have taken online tests purporting to show the deep, invisible roots of their own prejudice. A recent Oxford study that claims to have found a drug that reduces implicit bias is only the starkest example of a pervasive trend. But what do we risk when we seek the simplicity of a technological diagnosis—and solution—for racism? What do we miss when we locate racism in our biology and our brains rather than in our history and our social practices?In Race on the Brain, Jonathan Kahn argues that implicit bias has grown into a master narrative of race relations—one with profound, if unintended, negative consequences for law, science, and society. He emphasizes its limitations, arguing that while useful as a tool to understand particular types of behavior, it is only one among several tools available to policy makers. An uncritical embrace of implicit bias, to the exclusion of power relations and structural racism, undermines wider civic responsibility for addressing the problem by turning it over to experts. Technological interventions, including many tests for implicit bias, are premised on a color-blind ideal and run the risk of erasing history, denying present reality, and obscuring accountability. Kahn recognizes the significance of implicit social cognition but cautions against seeing it as a panacea for addressing America’s longstanding racial problems. A bracing corrective to what has become a common-sense understanding of the power of prejudice, Race on the Brain challenges us all to engage more thoughtfully and more democratically in the difficult task of promoting racial justice.
Race on Trial
by Barrington WalkerWhile slavery in Canada was abolished in 1834, discrimination remained. Race on Trial contrasts formal legal equality with pervasive patterns of social, legal, and attitudinal inequality in Ontario by documenting the history of black Ontarians who appeared before the criminal courts from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries.Using capital case files and the assize records for Kent and Essex counties, areas that had significant black populations because they were termini for the Underground Railroad, Barrington Walker investigates the limits of freedom for Ontario's African Canadians. Through court transcripts, depositions, jail records, Judge's Bench Books, newspapers, and government correspondence, Walker identifies trends in charges and convictions in the Black population. This exploration of the complex and often contradictory web of racial attitudes and the values of white legal elites not only exposes how blackness was articulated in Canadian law but also offers a rare glimpse of black life as experienced in Canada's past.