This article sketches the socio-legal creation, use, and regulation of informants in the Black community during slavery and the Black community’s response at that time. Despite potentially creating benefits such as crime control and sentence reduction, some Blacks today are convinced that cooperation with government investigations and prosecutions should be avoided. One factor contributing to this perspective is America’s reliance on Black informants to police and socially control Blacks during slavery, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Wars on Drugs, Crime and Gangs. Notwithstanding this historical justification for non-cooperation, only a few informant law and policy scholars have examined closely the Black community’s relationship with informing. Furthermore, even among this small group of works, noticeably absent are historical explorations of Black America’s experience with informing during slavery. Drawn using a variety of primary and secondary historical and legal sources, this article develops a snapshot of the past revealing many similarities between the Black experience with informing both while enslaved and in contemporary times. Consideration of these resemblances during present debate on the topic may help to facilitate nuanced conversation as to whether and how the modern Black community and government should approach using informants in current times.
Dennis on "Blacks Informing during Slavery"
Andrea Dennis, University of Georgia Law School, has posted A Snitch in Time: An Historical Sketch of Black Informing During Slavery, which is forthcoming in the Marquette Law Review, 97 (2014). Here is the abstract:
Dubber on Ultima Ratio in Criminal Law
Markus D. Dubber, University of Toronto Law, has posted Ultima Ratio as Caveat Dominus: Legal Principles, Police Maxims, and the Critical Analysis of Law. Here is the abstract:
A comparative and historical analysis of the so-called ultima ratio principle reveals that, despite its Latinate veneer, it is neither ancient nor universal, but a recent addition to the German criminal law canon. Upon further inquiry, ultima ratio also turns out to be ill-defined, undermotivated, and toothless, a fundamental legal principle and distinctive feature of criminal law honored in its ubiquitous breach. In the end, the iron legal principle of ultima ratio may appear more like the flexible police maxim of caveat dominus. Its frequent invocation suggests the need to reconceive legal science as a critical analysis of law in general, and of law's supposed principles in particular.
Baskind on a Right to Silence at the Old Bailey
Stephen L. Baskind of the firm Kleiman Lawrence Baskind Fitzgerald LLP, will present "No Man is Bound to Accuse Himself: Establishing a Right of Silence at the Old Bailey" on Tuesday, June 18, 2013, from Noon to 1:00 PM, to the Legal History Discussion Group of the Dallas Bar Association. It will take place at the Bar's headquarters, the Belo Mansion, 2101 Ross Ave., in downtown Dallas, Texas. Attendees will receive one hour of CLE credit at no charge. Lunch is available for a fee beginning at 11:30 AM.
