Introduction: Is America the Paragon of the Rule of Law?
The Methodological Problem: What is the Rule of Law, Anyway?
The Black Liberation Rule of Law
Where We’re Going
1. Madison’s Theory of General Law versus Property and Slavery
The Special Position of Property
The Affinity between Republican Property and Liberal Property
Republican Property and Slavery
Slavery as Lawlessness
Slavery as Property
Internal Tensions in the Law of Slavery as Property
The Impossibility of Holding Slavery within its Bounds
Dred Scott as the Triumph of Property Over Personhood
Slavery, Land, and Territorial Expansion
2. The Fugitive Slave Acts, Judicial Independence, and the Jury
Judicial Independence and the Jury
Juries as Popular Legalism
Fugitive Slave Act of 1850: The Return of the Vice-Admiralty Court
The Rule of Law Debate about Northern Resistance to Slavery
The Inevitability of the State of War
3. Reconstruction and the Black Liberation Rule of Law
Black Authorship of the Reconstruction Amendments
Martin Luther King Jr, Rule of Law Theorist
Due Process and Equal Protection
Due Process: The Protections of Judicial Procedure
Pushing the Bounds of What We Call ‘Property’
The Problem of Substantive Due Process
Equal Protection and General Law
The Anti-Classification Response to the Problem of Generality
Process and Protection Together: The Path Not Taken
4. Turning the Constitution Around: Black Liberation and the Rule of Law in the Last Century
Judge Lynch’s Affront to the Rule of Law
The Second Liberation Movement: From Anti-Lynching to Criminal Justice
From the Black Panthers to the Movement for Black Lives
5. Security and Discretion: The Problem of Executive Power
Police as Executives: The Problem of Discretion in Street-Level Criminal Justice
Ex Ante Police Discretion: Street-Level Arbitrary Power
Ex Post Police Discretion: The Qualified Immunity Doctrine
Segregation and Policing: How Property Rights and Local Quasi-Federalism Can Undermine the Rule of Law
From Policing to National Security
Presidential Power in the National Security State
The Schmittian Dilemma
6. The Gavel and the Fist: The Problem of Sovereignty and Borders
The Plenary Power
The Courts of the Conqueror
Expropriation in the Schmittian Judiciary
The Plenary Power Doctrine is Indefensible
Immigration ‘Court’: Barely Adjudication at All
Expedited Removal: For When Executive Adjudication is Still Too Fair
The Tendency of Arbitrary Power to Metastasize Throughout the Legal System
Immigration Outlawry Harms Citizens Too
Immigration Outlawry Corrupts the System as a Whole
Lawless Racism: The Challenge to Birthright Citizenship
Conclusion: Is there Any Hope for an American Rule of Law?
The Washington Consensus: Here Comes Property Again
The Crisis of the American Rule of Law: Reflections on Donald Trump
The Danger of Legal Alienation