Knowles-Gardner on Arriving as an Answer to the "The Question of Questions": How Lysander Spooner's Legal Education Influenced His (and Frederick Douglass's) Belief That Slavery Was Unconstitutional @KnowlesGardner @InstFreeSpeech @GeorgetownJLPP

Helen J. Knowles-Gardner, Institute for Free Speech, is publishing Arriving at an Answer to the ‘The Question of Questions’: How Lysander Spooner’s Legal Education Influenced His (and Frederick Douglass’s) Belief That Slavery Was Unconstitutional in volume 22 of the Georgetown Journal of Law & Public Policy. Here is the abstract.

Numerous scholars have examined the reasons why Frederick Douglass shifted his position on the relationship between slavery and the Constitution (from embracing the Garrisonian condemnation of the document as a "covenant with death, and an agreement with hell" to embracing the position that slavery was unconstitutional) This article builds on that existing scholarship – including my own previous writings about Lysander Spooner’s interpretive philosophy – by examining Douglass’s “change of opinion,” the influence of Spooner, and why Spooner came to embrace the position that Douglass ultimately found so persuasive. Why did Spooner arrive at (and then write an exceptionally detailed two-part treatise explaining) the conclusion that not only was the Constitution anti-slavery but also that slavery itself was unconstitutional? I argue that a detailed analysis of Spooner’s legal education helps us to answer that question.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.

Knowles on Learning the Law in 1830s Massachusetts: The Contrasting Experiences of Wendell Phillips and Lysander Spooner @KnowlesGardner

Helen J. Knowles, SUNY Oswego, has published Learning the Law in 1830s Massachusetts: The Contrasting Experiences of Wendell Phillips and Lysander Spooner. Here is the abstract.

In the 1840s, Lysander Spooner and Wendell Phillips espoused opposing abolitionist interpretations of the United States Constitution. The former argued that the document did not sanction the enslavement of human beings, the latter denounced the text as a proslavery “covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.” This essay explores the effects of their contrasting legal educations on these theories. In the 1830s, Spooner worked as a legal apprentice under the tutelage of John Davis, Charles Allen, and Emory Washburn, three prominent lawyers (and politicians) working in Worcester, Massachusetts. By contrast, Phillips, consistent with his Boston Brahmin ancestry, attended the then-nascent Harvard Law School. The essay concludes that Spooner’s legal philosophy shows a far greater indebtedness to his legal education than does Phillips’s. This argument is defended by drawing on the voluminous correspondence and papers of both Phillips and Spooner, and the writings of their legal tutors and mentors.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.