Southern state constitutions of the 1870s are far more complex in their origins and contents than C. Vann Woodward credits them with being in his Origins of the New South 1877-1913. Woodward argues that the eight southern state constitutions written in the 1870's were only one of many products of the short-term political experience of reaction against Reconstruction. Moreover, Woodward claims these eight documents were essentially uniform in placing excessive controls on government. When the contents of all eleven southern state constitutions extant in 1879 are analyzed in terms of their restrictiveness, however, they appear diverse rather than homogeneous. Only five of these documents had the extreme restraints on government described by Woodward. Furthermore, even those southern states that did adopt restrictive constitutions in the 1870s, or at least the three states (Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas) examined in this study, created those documents for reasons that differed considerably from those cited by Woodward. Instead of being primarily the product of the short-term and regional phenomenon of reaction against Reconstruction restrictive southern state constitutions of the 1870s were part of a nationwide and long-term change in American state constitutions. This shift in state constitution-making started in the North with the Illinois Constitution of l870 and the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1873 and spread across the country. The desire for a restrictive constitution evidenced by Alabama, Louisiana, and Texas in the 1870s was influenced by reaction against Reconstruction only to a limited degree. Reconstruction helped spark the initial interest in writing a new constitution after Democrats regained power, but it played only a limited role in shaping expectations about what type of constitution should be written. In postulating that reaction against Reconstruction shaped southern constitution-making in the 1870s, Woodward argues that the Democratic party in the South manipulated the genuine hostility felt by most whites against Republican rule. The Democratic leadership did this, Woodward further maintains, in order to keep their party artificially united despite "issues of economics and self-interest" which otherwise might have divided the dominant party. Whatever was the case for politics in general, the politics of state constitution-making was substantially different from that described by Woodward. . . . (Author's abstract exceeds stipulated maximum length. Discontinued here with permission of author.) UMI

In the first chapter of this dissertation, rates of return derived from the institution of slavery are adjusted for risk and compared with other antebellum investments through the directional distance function. Since multiple investments often occupy the efficient frontier, bootstrap confidence intervals of the directional distances fail to indicate a statistically significant difference between the investments unless one choice dominates in both risk and return or more restrictive assumptions concerning the relationship between risk and rate of return are adopted. Through the use of super-efficiency scores, we find that the institution of slavery outperformed the other investments for the periods 1830-1835 and 1848-1860, but slavery did not perform as well as the other investments during the severe economic downturn following the Panic of 1837. We conclude that the institution of slavery was a superior antebellum investment but was more cyclical than other investments. In the second chapter, the number of bidders in New Orleans slave auctions is estimated by period. Auctions were legally required in New Orleans estate sales during the 1800s. Since records of slave transactions were carefully documented, we are afforded the opportunity to test whether the number of bidders increased or decreased during this period using well-developed empirical methods. Auction theory tells us that the winning bid in a private-value auction will increase if an additional bidder is added. Therefore, if the number of bidders increased between 1840 and 1860, this would suggest that westward expansion was influential in the increase in average price of slaves during the same period. If the number of bidders decreased, the only remaining argument would be that slaves were simply becoming more valuable assets. We find that the number of bidders did not increase over the period, so we can argue that slaves were becoming more valuable and that the increase in price was not merely a frontier effect that could not be sustained. Our results fortify the conclusion that slavery was not going to die due to economic obsolescence, and that the Civil War was a necessity to settle the future of slavery in the United States.

Inaug.-diss.--Bern. / Bibliography: p. 5-9.

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It has been claimed that “The limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modern times. Even steam and electricity are less important than the limited liability company” (N.M. Butler, President of Columbia University). Indeed,there is a near universal consensus that the companies' legislation developed in England and Wales between 1844 and 1856 represented a major change in business organisation with profound – and continuing - social and economic consequences. Despite this there has been relatively little analysis of the origins and effect of that companies legislation. This is surprising, not least in the light of the abundance of recent analysis of the theoretical foundations of the company. It represents a major weakness in both company law and economic scholarship with potentially serious consequences for those who seek to reform company law. This dissertation seeks to redress that weakness by investigating the extent to which the Joint Stock Companies Acts 1844 to 1856 and the values which shaped them were consistent with economic efficiency. The values which shaped the early development of company law were found to be broadly consistent with economic efficiency but contradictory, for example, not only laissez-faire but the desire for state intervention were important. Central appear to have been the minimisation of expense and/ or inconvenience, the fear of fraud and the need for transparency of information. Making an overall assessment of the efficiency of the 1844 to 1856 Acts themselves proved more difficult since there were found to be many provisions that were efficiency-enhancing and many which were not. Perhaps the most interesting single finding was that which contradicted claims noted at the outset that the limited liability corporation was “ ... the greatest single discovery of modern times ....”. Rather, from an economic perspective, the introduction of limited liability appears to have been the inevitable result of the muddled thinking behind the 1844 Act, which required urgent corrective action in the 1855 and 1856 Acts to protect risk-averse investors. Generally, the dissertation provides support for mainstream transaction cost economic analysis whilst casting doubt on the significance of other theories such as jurisdictional competition, regulatory capture and path dependency.

The paper examines the emancipatory potential that resides in the contradictions of late (monopoly) capitalism and offers an alternative, oppositional form of legal discourse in an effort to realize such potential. Grounded in a Neo-Marxist perspective, an examination of commodity-exchange theory is carried out as a first step toward developing an alternative framework for examining the form of law and legal discourse. It is argued that to grasp the structure of legal discourse it is necessary to go beyond a knowledge of commodity exchange relations and to integrate an analysis of semiotics into such research. Knowledge of the sign form is viewed as the key connective mechanism between the commodity form and legal discourse form. The structure of late capitalism is examined and it is contended that a space for transforming legal discourse is located in the increasingly socialized character of production for non-generalized goals. Discussion focuses on how oppositional signs, which, at the present, are latent, can develop into an oppositional legal discourse. A delineation is made of the operational principles that constitute an oppositional legal discourse. Finally, an examination is made of the implications that an oppositional legal discourse portends for criminal justice, and suggestions are given as to what form and direction an oppositional movement might take if it is to be of greatest value in building a movement toward the goal of a more just society. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-04, Section: A, page: 1051. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

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