Search

This short essay, prepared on the occasion of the conferral of the Distinguished Service Award of the Conference on Latin American History, uses various examples to illustrate the pleasure to be drawn from the day-to-day work of academic history. It opens with reflections on the practice of transcription, the act of bringing recognizable syllables and words out of the often baffling strokes of the pen that have left ink on paper. Although the wave of digitization has increased the sum total of material easily available to us, it is when we do the work of paleography, reducing the continuous lines of manuscript to something close to the discontinuities of type, that we find that our brains can hold on to the words and carry the interpretation forward. After transcription often comes translation, converting the formulas, idioms, and idiosyncrasies of past speech into language intelligible to our readers. As we translate, we are forced to acknowledge our own uncertainties about the meaning of texts, and to make the provisional choices that resolve ambiguity. Across both of these tasks we are nourished by collaboration, the talking and writing together that makes the study of the past into a social activity. Eager collaboration turns the practice of history into a double dialogue, with the documents and with our colleagues, engaging the mind and the spirit and bringing what can only be called joy.

Over two decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as the imposition of “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity with an interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors have obtained hundreds of consent agreements and convictions in the labor courts. This article – co-authored by a legal historian, a staff attorney at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, and a federal judge – draws on a massive archive of work site inspection reports to explore the ways in which inspectors and prosecutors give specific meaning to the analogy with chattel slavery. The authors find that the term “slave labor,” in this context, does not depend upon the international law definition of slavery as the exercise over a person of “any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership.” Instead, it identifies specific behaviors that are no longer permissible as between employer and worker, and which reproduce elements of what was once imposed by masters upon slaves. Intermediate normative terms introduced in the 2003 revision of the penal code – which prohibits the subjection of workers to “degrading conditions” and “debilitating work days” – have through the inspection processes taken on specific meaning. Rather than representing subjective notions in potential conflict with the principal of legality, as critics argue, their interpretation has unfolded through careful processes of documentation, negotiation, and prosecution. In Brazil’s current situation of political polarization and institutional fracture, this remarkable campaign against slave labor is coming under fierce attack from large-scale landholders and from elements within the executive, a development which adds urgency to the task of explicating the campaign’s legal bases and operational practices.

The mountain of modern interpretation to which the language of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution has been subjected tends to overshadow the multiple concepts of antidiscrimination that were actually circulating at the time of its drafting. Moreover, as authors on race and law have pointed out, Congress itself lacked any African American representatives during the 1866–68 moment of transitional justice. The subsequent development of a “state action doctrine” limiting the reach of federal civil rights enforcement, in turn, eclipsed important contemporary understandings of the harms that Reconstruction-era initiatives sought to combat. In contrast to the oblique language of the Fourteenth Amendment, a dignity-based legal theory of affirmative equal rights had by 1867 taken center stage in the cosmopolitan city of New Orleans. Activists formulated the concept of “public rights” as a claim to participation without discrimination in the entire sphere of “common life.” Elections for delegates to Louisiana's Constitutional Convention of 1867–68, held under the broad suffrage mandated by the Military Reconstruction Acts, yielded a convention in which half of the members were men of African descent. Seeking the “impartial treatment of all men” in “[c]hurches, hotels, cars, steamboats, theaters, stores, even schools,” the convention crafted a Bill of Rights that affirmatively guaranteed to all of the state's citizens “the same civil, political, and public rights,” independent of race or color. These innovations in the defense of human rights under law drew from a deep well of anti-caste thinking developed in domestic and transnational discussions conducted in both French and English, with participants from both sides of the Atlantic and the Caribbean. Cosmopolitan progressives such as Edouard Tinchant and Jean-Charles Houzeau worked with Louisiana-born activists including Louis Charles Roudanez, Simeon Belden, and Paul Trévigne to develop and advance the idea of public rights. Legislators crafted and passed state statutes that provided for civil penalties for violation of these rights, along with a private cause of action that could yield both actual and exemplary damages. Throughout the 1870s, however, advocates met a fierce white-supremacist counterattack, one that fused obstructionist litigation, vote suppression, and vigilante violence. A claim to equal treatment under the 1868 constitution was won in the state courts by Josephine Decuir, but was overturned in 1877 at the United States Supreme Court. With the ascent of the Democratic Party, white supremacists–including the lawyer/vigilante Robert Hardin Marr-took their seats on the state Supreme Court. By 1879, the public rights guarantees had been expunged from the state's constitution. Nonetheless, for a crucial decade, the cross-racial politics of Louisiana had overcome many of the deficits of legitimacy that often undercut moments of transitional lawmaking. Delegates to the 1867–68 Constitutional Convention took the opportunity to spell out specific positive rights that they saw as essential to full civil freedom. And at the center, they placed their insistence that the state had an obligation to assure that men and women of color would not be subjected to forced indignity in the public sphere.

This article explores a core question in the law of slavery: how was an individual's status as slave or free socially discerned and formally adjudicated? Under the doctrine of “freedom by prescription,” a person who had in good faith “lived as free” could argue that the absence of exercise of ownership for a specified term of years extinguished a prior owner's title. In the medieval Siete Partidas of Alfonso the Wise, which continued as a legal point of reference in Louisiana well after the end of Spanish rule, both the law of status and the law of property confirmed this path to freedom. From 1808 onward, Louisiana jurists and legislators sought to eliminate the remnants of the doctrine, but it lingered in popular and even judicial consciousness. The 1853 kidnapping of a woman named Eulalie Oliveau, six of her children, and eleven of her grandchildren for sale in the New Orleans slave market brought the question of “freedom by prescription” back into the courts. The awkward resolution of that case, and the uncertain fate of Eulalie Oliveau and her children, foreshadowed Reconstruction-era struggles over the content of legal freedom and the rights that freedom might bring to those who had once been held as property.

A combination of factors pose significant barriers to developing effective and efficient sets of policies to achieve long-run climate policy objectives. Political opposition to particular types of policy mechanisms (for example, GHG pricing) and the global, stock-pollutant nature of the climate problem are among the major factors posing practical policy challenges. Effective and efficient climate policy is needed in the long run to meaningfully address the climate problem, making the design of transitions to such long-run policies from the current portfolio of policies an important task for policymakers.

Le gouvernement bresilien a engage, il y a quelques annees, une ambitieuse campagne de lutte contre l’exploitation de travailleurs dans une condition « analogue » a celle d’esclave. Cette politique repondait a des campagnes de protestation reiterees et a des pressions internationales, mais elle se formula en reference a une histoire nationale dont l’esclavage etait inseparable. Les revelations de la Commission pastorale de la terre, les plaintes deposees aupres de la Cour interamericaine des ...

Over two decades, the Brazilian state has engaged in concerted legal efforts to identify and prosecute cases of what officials refer to as the imposition of “slave labor” (trabalho escravo). At a conceptual level, the campaign has paired the constitutional protection of human dignity with an interpretation of the offense described in Article 149 of the Criminal Code as “the reduction of a person to a condition analogous to that of a slave.” At the operational level, mobile teams of inspectors and prosecutors have intervened in thousands of work sites, and labor prosecutors have obtained hundreds of consent agreements and convictions in the labor courts. This article – co-authored by a legal historian, a staff attorney at the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, and a federal judge – draws on a massive archive of work site inspection reports to explore the ways in which inspectors and prosecutors give specific meaning to the analogy with chattel slavery. The authors find that the term “slave labor,” in this context, does not depend upon the international law definition of slavery as the exercise over a person of “any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership.” Instead, it identifies specific behaviors that are no longer permissible as between employer and worker, and which reproduce elements of what was once imposed by masters upon slaves. Intermediate normative terms introduced in the 2003 revision of the penal code – which prohibits the subjection of workers to “degrading conditions” and “debilitating work days” – have through the inspection processes taken on specific meaning. Rather than representing subjective notions in potential conflict with the principal of legality, as critics argue, their interpretation has unfolded through careful processes of documentation, negotiation, and prosecution. In Brazil’s current situation of political polarization and institutional fracture, this remarkable campaign against slave labor is coming under fierce attack from large-scale landholders and from elements within the executive, a development which adds urgency to the task of explicating the campaign’s legal bases and operational practices.

The four articles in this special issue experiment with an innovative set of questions and a variety of methods in order to push the analysis of slavery and the law into new territory. Their scope is broadly Atlantic, encompass ing Suriname and Saint-Domingue/Haiti, New York and New Orleans, port cities and coffee plantations. Each essay deals with named individuals in complex circumstances, conveying their predicaments as fine-grained microhistories rather than as shocking anecdotes. Each author, moreover, demonstrates that the moments when law engaged slavery not only reflected but also influenced larger dynamics of sovereignty and jurisprudence. Natalie Zemon Davis, exploring criminal justice in colonial Suriname, seeks to unravel the processes by which guilt was determined and punish ment imposed, both through the draconian systems controlled by slave holders, and through alternative systems developed by men and women who were themselves held as slaves. In practice, although not in theory, enslaved African-born diviners and their African and Creole neighbors could deliberate and pronounce sentence upon members of their own

The purpose of this study was to investigate the metabolism and disposition of fluticasone furoate, an enhanced-affinity glucocorticoid receptor agonist, in humans. In a two-part, open-label design study, five healthy male subjects received a p.o. dose of 2 mg of [(14)C]fluticasone furoate, followed 4 weeks later by an i.v. dose of 0.25 mg of [(14)C]fluticasone furoate (as a 30-min infusion). Oral absorption was rapid and estimated at approximately 30%, although the oral bioavailability was markedly lower at 1.6%, limited by extensive first-pass metabolism. Plasma clearance was 58.3 l/h, with a volume of distribution of 642 liters and a terminal elimination half-life of 15.3 h. The major circulating component identified in plasma extracts after i.v. and p.o. dosing was unchanged parent compound, with 17beta-carboxylic acid (GW694301X; M10) also being notable after p.o. administration. Mean recovery of radioactivity was approximately 92 and 102% at 216 and 168 h after i.v. and p.o. administration, respectively, with most (at least 90%) recovered in the feces. Fluticasone furoate was extensively metabolized, with only trace amounts of unchanged parent compound observed in feces following either route of administration. The predominant pathway was removal of the S-fluoromethyl carbothioate group to yield GW694301X (M10). Other pathways included oxidative defluorination to yield a hydroxyl at the C6 position. There was no evidence for metabolic loss of the furoate group from fluticasone furoate or any of its metabolites. Evidence presented suggests that enterocytes have a role in the metabolism of unabsorbed fluticasone furoate.

The Gulf of Mexico has long been open to the movement of individuals and information as well as hurricanes. Throughout the nineteenth century, people circulated around the Caribbean Sea and the gulf in pursuit of work, security, and political alliances. During Reconstruction and its aftermath, some of those migrants helped frame the struggle against caste in the state of Louisiana in an innovative way. Their conceptual language and their experiences are worth recovering?to broaden our picture of southern history and perhaps also to enrich our thinking about constitutional frameworks of antidiscrimi nation.

Tracing the history of a family across three generations, from enslavement in eighteenth‐century West Africa through emancipation during the Haitian Revolution and subsequent resettlement in New Orleans, then France, then Belgium, can shed light on phenomena that are Atlantic in scope. A business letter written in 1899 by the cigar merchant Edouard Tinchant to General Maximo Gomez in Cuba frames an inquiry that opens out onto a family itinerary that spanned the long nineteenth century. Rosalie Vincent’s achievement of freedom in the shadow of slavery in Saint‐Domingue in 1793–1803 can be seen as linked to her grandson Edouard Tinchant’s participation as a delegate in the Louisiana Constitutional Convention of 1867–68. Together, the experiences of the Vincent/Tinchant family illuminate an Atlantic and Caribbean rights‐consciousness that crossed the usual boundaries of language and citizenship. Uncovering these experiences suggests the value of combining the close focus displayed in Sidney Mintz’s Worker in...

RésuméÀ Cuba, l’émancipation progressive permit à un grand nombre d’hommes et de femmes, esclaves ou récemment libérés, d’accéder à certaines formes de la culture juridique. Les revendications, qui, quelques années plus tôt, seraient peut-être restées des défis verbaux ou physiques, prirent la forme d’actions en justice et, dans ce but, les esclaves et les exesclaves se sont alliés avec ceux qui pouvaient les aider dans leur combat juridique. Ces initiatives suggèrent l’émergence d’une conviction du « droit d’avoir des droits », qui allait bien au-delà du simple refus de son propre asservissement. C’est ainsi que les bureaux des notaires et les tribunaux de première instance sont devenus des lieux où la liberté s’affirmait par l’exercice d’actions en justice entraînant la reconnaissance publique de revendications. De fait, faire valoir sa « qualité pour agir », c’est-à-dire son statut de personne susceptible d’être entendue par la justice et d’avoir un « intérêt » pour agir, était parfois aussi important qu’obtenir un résultat positif à l’issu de son procès.

A mass spectrometry based method for the simultaneous determination of an in vivo Greenford-Ware or ‘GW cocktail’ of CYP450 probe substrates and their metabolites in both human plasma and urine is described. The probe substrates, caffeine, diclofenac, mephenytoin, debrisoquine, chlorzoxazone and midazolam, together with their respective metabolites and stable isotope labelled internal standards, are simultaneously extracted from the biological matrix using solid phase extraction in 96-well microtitre plate format, automated by means of a custom built Zymark robotic system. The extracts are analysed by fast gradient high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) with detection by tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) using thermally and pneumatically assisted electrospray ionisation in both positive and negative ion modes and selected reaction monitoring. The methods are specific, accurate and precise with intra- and inter-assay precision (%CV) of less than 15% for all analytes. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Sensitive, mass spectrometry based bioanalytical methods are described for the determination of the R- and S-enantiomers of the beta-agonist salbutamol (albuterol) and its 4-O-sulphate metabolite in human plasma and urine. In both methods samples are prepared by 96 well format solid phase extraction using a custom built robotic system. Extracts are then analysed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) using a teicoplanin-based chiral stationary phase and selected reaction monitoring. The methods are accurate (bias < +/- 10%), precise (%CV < 11%) and sensitive, providing lower limits of quantitation (LLoQ) in plasma of 100 pg/mL and 5 ng/mL for the enantiomers of salbutamol and its 4-O-sulphate metabolite, respectively. By restricting the chiral method for plasma to the enantiomers of salbutamol only, it was possible to revalidate at an improved LLoQ of 25 pg/mL. A high throughout LC-MS/MS method has also been developed for racemic salbutamol only, which uses a similar extraction procedure but a conventional C8 column. The method has a reduced analysis time of three minutes per sample and using a high sensitivity, triple quadrupole mass spectrometer provides an LLoQ of 5 pg/mL based on extraction of 0.5 mL of plasma.

Examining Reconstruction-era campaigns for equal rights and twenty-first-century struggles against contemporary slavery, this essay explores the institution of slavery and the giving of meanings to the concept of dignity. In both instances, activists portray slavery as a paradigmatic violation of human dignity. In Louisiana between 1862 and the 1890s, equal-rights campaigners invoked practices associated with slavery in order to portray racial segregation as an affront to dignity. In Brazil two hundred years later, prosecutors document ‘humiliating and degrading labour’ practices under the rubric of ‘labour analogous to that of slavery’, thus triggering legal protection of workers’ constitutionally-guaranteed right to dignity. The causation goes in opposite directions in the two cases, but the terms ‘slavery’ and ‘dignity’ continue to give meaning to the other, making it possible to characterize the specific wrong in question.

The English version of a related article, containing the source notes, can be found at: ssrn.com/abstract=2292681.O uso da palavra “escravidao” para descrever varias formas contemporâneas de exploracao suscita questoes de definicao legal. A escravidao nas Americas no seculo dezenove estava ancorada na reivindicacao de propriedade sobre pessoas, portanto usar o termo para caracterizar abusos modernos, quando nenhum Estado reconhece mais a propriedade sobre pessoas, pode representar um risco de anacronismo. Em debates parlamentares recentes, tanto na Franca quanto no Brasil, a acusacao de anacronismo foi feita pelos opositores do reconhecimento legal do crime de escravizacao. Evidencias historicas demonstram, entretanto, que o exercicio dos poderes inerentes ao direito de propriedade nao necessariamente derivam de um previo direito legal a propriedade. O controle sobre pessoas, equivalente a posse, podia ocorrer fora da lei e no entanto ser reconhecido como propriedade legal apos o fato. Na justaposicao de um caso de 1810, de Nova Orleans, na Louisiana, com a situacao que deu origem a decisao do caso Siliadin v. Franca pela Corte Europeia de Direitos Humanos, esse artigo analisa os paralelos nas circunstâncias de escravidao urbana e os mecanismos atraves dos quais os “poderes inerentes ao direito de propriedade” foram exercidos, independente de qualquer direito de fato. O argumento apoia tanto a reforma do codigo penal frances para tornar o crime de escravizacao explicito, e a emenda proposta a Constituicao brasileira que elevaria as penas para o uso de trabalho escravo.As fontes documentais e arquivisticas para este ensaio podem ser encontradas no meu artigo “Under Color of Law: Siliadin vs France and the Dynamics of Enslavement in Historical Perspective”. In: Jean Allain (ed.). The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Acesso em: ssrn.com/abstract=2292681.The use of the word “slavery” to describe various contemporary forms of exploitation raises questions of legal definition. Slavery in the 19th century Americas was rooted in the claim of property in persons, so using the term to characterize modern abuses, when no state any longer recognizes the ownership of persons, seems to pose a risk of anachronism. During recent parliamentary debates in both France and Brazil, the charge of anachronism has been levied by opponents of the explicit recognition in law of a criminal offense of enslavement. Historical evidence demonstrates, however, that the exercise of the powers attaching to a right of ownership did not, in fact, necessarily derive from a prior legal right of ownership. Control over persons, tantamount to possession, could occur quite outside the law, though it might be cognized as legal ownership after the fact. Juxtaposing an episode from New Orleans in 1810 with the situation that gave rise to the 2005 European Court of Human Rights decision in Siliadin v. France, the paper analyzes the parallels in the circumstances of urban slavery, and the mechanisms by which “powers attaching to a right of ownership” came to be exercised, quite independent of any actual right. The argument thus supports both the proposed 2013 reforms to the French penal code that would make the crime of enslavement explicit, and the proposed amendment to the Brazilian Constitution that would raise the penalties for the use of slave labor.