CANCELED: The People and their Peace: Legal Culture and the Transformation of Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary South

October 19, 2010 • 12:15 PM • Law School 3041

Professor Laura Edwards, Duke University, will present a lecture showing that following the Revolution, the intensely local legal system favored maintaining the "peace," a concept intended to protect the social order and its patriarchal hierarchies. Those without rights--even slaves-- were central to its workings and had influence within the system because of their positions of subordination, not in spite of them. By the 1830s, however, state leaders had secured support for a more centralized system that excluded people who were not specifically granted individual rights. Edwards concludes that the emphasis on rights affirmed and restructured existing patriarchal inequalities within state law. For more information, please contact Andrei Mamolea at am200@duke.edu.