CTSJ 212 Conquest by Law: US Imperialism and Slavery
Students in the course will study the legal frameworks and politics of slavery, race, citizenship, and “discovery” in relation to U.S. territorial expansion and foreign intervention. Students in the course will critically examine laws, treaties, court cases, and policies used to establish racial hierarchies between “American” peoples, as well as to justify the dispossession and subordination of one or more of these peoples in order to protect slavery, property rights, and/or financial interests. Students will study the fifteenth-century Doctrine of Discovery as the basis of U.S. jurisdiction, settler colonialism, and trade in lands; the landmark case Johnson v. M’Intosh and its influence on the rights of Indigenous Nations and Peoples domestically and abroad; the lasting effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which doubled the territory of the United States; and the Insular Cases and U.S. imposition of second-class citizen status on inhabited island territories in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, including Guam and Puerto Rico. Contemporary examples of laws and court cases, such as U.S. v. Vaello-Madero, will also illustrate the legacies of the U.S. imperial project’s racial violence, and will further deepen our understanding of what American property is today and how it has been constructed and legitimized by law.