The War Against Slavery

The "Colored Hero" of Harper's Ferry was recently featured on two websites. The Page 99 Test derives its name from a quote by Ford Maddox Ford:  "Open the book to…
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The Oberlin-Wellington Rescue

I have an article on Slate today about the Oberlin-Wellington fugitive slave rescue of 1858, which you can read here. It is excerpted from my 2010 book, Fugitive Justice: Runaways, Rescuers,…
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Texas Pledge of Allegiance

The always interesting Josh Blackman has posted a rough transcript of Justice Alito's recent appearance at a Federalist Society conference in Texas.  The introductory paragraph caught my eye: After the American…
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Lawyers and Slavery — Part Five

The “Colored Hero” of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War against Slavery will be released by Cambridge on Thursday, September 10.  The book tells the story of John Copeland, ...
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Are There Limits to Medical Advertising?

(cross posted on Legal Ethics Forum) The MD Anderson Cancer Center, at the University of Texas, has been running television commercials in Chicago (and I presume elsewhere) for the past few months.  MD…
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Taking Ethnography Seriously

One of the more disappointing responses to the recent critique of Alice Goffman’s On the Run comes from Prof. Paul Stoller, a highly regarded ethnographer at West Chester University.   Writing ...
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Should We Ever Believe the Police?

In fact checking Alice Goffman’s On the Run, I sometimes referred to police reports and interviews with members of the Philadelphia police department (as did Paul Campos in his recent ...
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