Besides the foundational and historically anticipated Black American critique of The Nation viz The United States, Black People as evidenced by the sophistication of Frederick Douglas's Fourth of July analysis are the motive force of The Nations aspirations compelling and demanding its maturation and fruition. As Bailey D. Barnes, concisely illustrated in his 2024 work, THE OBVIOUS VIOLATION EXCEPTION TO QUALIFIED IMMUNITY: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY, 99 WASH. L. REV. 725, he tells us under the heading, BRIEF HISTORY OF SECTION 1983 AND QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, "Before the civil war, federal enforcement of civil rights was minimal. After the American Revolution, the purpose of law was to spur economic growth, not to shelter citizens from State abuse. The Federal Government often violated rights rather than protected them.....". Then in, William Enerson's 2004 work, MARBURY V. MADISON, DEMOCRACY, AND THE RULE OF LAW, 71 TENN. L. REV. 217, we find an illuminating anticipatory exposé of this current period of our history, where he writes in the opening text,...."[T]hat Marbury was actually about something larger.The case was about maintaining a balance between the following two concepts: democracy, the idea expressed by Lincoln in the Gettysburg address about government " of the people,by the people [and] for the people" and the rule of law, the idea expressed by John Adams in the Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 that ours is "a Government of Laws and not of men".(unquote) Then Nelson continues with this,which to me correctly encapsulates this specific period of our National history and this current struggle with this grouping of reactionaries and their antipathy towards progress, with this recitation,which is found at the 7th paragraph of his work and I excerpt....." Prior to the American Revolution few colonials imagined that social change was possible and nearly everyone assumed that life would go on essentially as it had for decades.Society was seen as a stable organism that grew and maintained itself of its own accord.It followed from this view of society that.no one in government needed to make choices about the direction that law, government, and the society ought to take. Of course, bad people might threaten the health and stability of the organism: foreign monarchs often threatened its destruction by war, and criminals and other evil people posed menaces to its peace and stability at home. The king had the duty to make the decisions needed to protect the realm from foreign threats, and his courts performed the task of doing justice to malefactors at home. But doing justice did not entail policy choice, it necessitated only the enforcement of traditional, customary values, such as property, stability, community and morality, which were embedded deeply within existing common law". What Nelson describes in the above excerpt are parameters of relations and interactions that The Constitution and Bill of Rights were intended to reform, change and improve on. With this post-civil war, considering the jurisprudential concept of "self-executing", is where we encounter, Black People as motive force compelling and demanding it's fulfillment. So at paragraph 18, Nelson tells us and I excerpt "One final inference must be drawn.We know that eighteenth-century juries mirrored the white, male landowner and taxpaying population. It follows that if jurors shared similar ideas about the substance of the law,then a body of shared ideas about law must have permeated a large segment of the population of every territory over which a court that sat with a jury had jurisdiction. Colonial government may have been able to derive policies from, and otherwise function on the basis of, those shared values". What Nelson is explaining are relationships that these ongoing current machinations by this grouping of reactionaries, neo-royalist and feudalist are intended to return us to. But as Frederick Douglas instructed in his 1852 analysis of The Fourth of July, which, Nelson at the 27th paragraph of his work, reveals its thought and I excerpt," The Revolutionary struggle and the attainment of independence also transformed American society and politics ideologically. In discarding British rule and reconstituting their government, Americans proclaimed that all law springs from popular will as codified in legislation. If the people could remake their government, it followed as the Maryland Journal declared in 1787, that the lawmaking power of the people must be "original inherent and unlimited by Human authority". A change and realignment of Social Contract terms and relationship anticipates and requires fulfillment, which is what Frederick Douglas polemicized with his 1852 Fourth of July critique, which for fulfillment requires, Policy or governmental activity and as Nelson explained in paragraph 18, which I excerpted above requires a medium exposing the inertia of the existing social terms and its suppositions. This has been the activity of Black People as a principle and value demanding a governing function of the Constitution and Bill of Rights in opposition to and in contrast with the anti-progress reaction of the "state rights "supposition. Our call to Joanna C. Schwartz, Michelle Alexander, Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, Michael Eric Dyson and Bailey D. Barnes is to remind us as a Nation what exactly, these building blocks of our Social Contract are. For example the illuminating examples of United States v. Curry 965 F.3d 313, Jamison v. McClendon 476 F. Supp. 3d 386, to name a few exposés and not to gloss over Prof. Schwartz's work on Monroe v. Pape 365 U.S.167 .We currently are going through the consequences of a number of factors of which ignorance is not the least, as such this call.
By William Thorpe
I'm William Thorpe Virginia exiled me to the Texas prison system. I'm solitary confined at the Wainwright Unit and if you feel any kinda way about this work contact me by Securus email using the Texas prison number #2261982
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