The Critical Legal Studies Movement

The Critical Legal Studies Movement The Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement came to the fore in the United States (US) in the 1970s. This movement is a body of like-minded thinkers who claim to attack the virtues that they say are proclaimed by the liberal legal system. It is a radical theoretical movement which rejects the distinction between law and politics and the notion that law can be neutral and value free. The movement proposes the integration of law and social theory. Since the Critical Legal Studies movement is relatively new, its value as a theory of law is still being assessed, but despite its continual development it has given much of interest to thinking about the law. Indeed, like other sceptical theories it may undermine the coherent world of law which legal academics and practitioners tend to portray. In Britain, the Critical Legal Conference was formed in 1984.  [1]   Although CLS has been largely a US movement, it was influenced to a great extent by European philosophers, such as nineteenth-century German social theorists Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Max Weber; Max Horkheimer and Harberd Marcuse of the Frankfrut School German social philosophy; the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci; and poststructuralist French thinkers Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, representing respectively fields of history and literary theory. CLS has borrowed heavily from legal realism, the school of legal thought that flourished in the 1920s and 1930s. Like CLS scholars, legal realists rebelled against accepted legal theories of the day and urged more attention to the social context of the law. Among noted CLS scholars Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Robert W. Gordon, Mark Kelman, Peter Gabel, Morton J. Horwitz, Dunkan Kennedy and Katherine A. Mackinnon.  [2]   The founders of CLS found a yawning absence at the level of theory, fundamentally convinced that law and politics could not be separated. How could law be so tilted to favour the powerful, given the prevailing explanations of law as either democratically chosen or the result of impartial judicial reasoning from neutral principles? Yet how could law be a tool for social change, in the face of Marxist explanations of law as mere epiphenomenal outgrowths of the interests of the powerful? CLS scholars have influenced try to explain both why legal principles and doctrines do not yield determinate answers to specific disputes and how legal decisions reflect cultural and political values that shift over time. They focused from the start on the ways that law contributed to illegitimate social hierarchies, producing domination of women by men, nonwhites by whites, and the poor by the wealthy. They claim that apparently neutral language and institutions, operated through law, mask relationship s of power and control. The emphasis on individualism within the law similarly hides patterns of power relationships while making it more difficult to summon up a sense of community and human interconnection. Joining in their assault on these dimensions of law, CLS scholars have differed considerably in their particular methods and views.  [3]   One of the characteristic of CSL is that it has been rejected formalism. Formalism has tended to be the fall back position of liberal legal thinking when forced to confront the question: how can a legal system give the kinds of neutral decisions expected of it. Formalists, as CLS characterise them,  [4]  circumvent this problem by insisting that the judge is not imposing his or anyone elses values but merely interpreting the words of the law. By separating core and penumbra Hart could be taken to admit the problem by his indulgence that the judge had to have recourse to discretion in interpreting the penumbra of legal rules. CLS theorists also share the related view that the law is indeterminate. They have shown that using standard legal arguments, it is possible to reach sharply contrasting conclusions in individual cases. The conclusions reached in any case will have more to do with the social context in which they are argued and decided than with any overarching scheme of legal reasoning. Moreover, CLS scholars argue that the esoteric and convoluted nature of legal reasoning actually screens the laws indeterminacy. They have used the ideas of deconstruction to explore the ways in which legal texts are open to multiple interpretations. The CLS thesis refutes the claim that traditional legal scholarship produces rules and principles of law which guide human behaviour. Both legal formalism and positivism, which look upon law as a system of rules which are rationally made, are repudiated. Traditional legal scholarship treats the law as objective and neutral. The CLS claims that law can not be objective because human and social realities always manifest themselves in the legal discourses. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, who teaches at Harvard Law School and is widely regarded as the intellectual leader of the movement, now offers the public a short manifesto he describes as more a proposal than a description. It is an ambitious and impressive undertaking. It also defies summation. It is a carefully crafted statement with ideas interlocked like a chain-link fence that stretches as far as the eye can see. And the full purport of his message can only be appreciated by an attentive reading. Even so, five themes seem central to his argument. There were two distinct stages in the role of law in western societies before the modern era. First it served to establish and defend social hierarchies and social class divisions. Toward the end of the 18th century, however, it was put to the revolutionary task of protecting rights of individuals irrespective of their social rank or class. In this country the founding fathers relied on democracy (created by our public law, the Constitution) and the market (fostered by private law, notably contract) to give form and limits to those rights.  [5]   By the 20th century the context in which American law operated had drastically changed. Social arrangements sanctioned by law had come to include an array of hierarchies of economic power and pernicious social distinctions protected as rights by the very legal system created to establish individual freedom and equality. The politics of democracy and the blind forces of the market proved woefully inadequate to govern a society increasingly dominated by modern science and technology. Hence there is a compelling need to restructure our social order to make it compatible with freedom and equality. The way to accomplish this reconstruction, according to Roberto M. Unger, is not through classical revolution of the kind Marx advocated, brought about by an alliance between disaffected elites and the downtrodden. Rather law must be reinvented to give it a revolutionary new purpose: to lead the dismantling of the various hierarchies of power and privilege that through perversions of the legal process have come to threaten the higher values of our society.  [6]  Of property law, he says that it has its own inbuilt legal market which is a constitutional interest with its own legal structure in a democracy. According to him, the situation is fraught with ambiguity and indeterminacy, because of the abstract nature of the concept of rights. With respect to contract law, Unger explains that contract law allows freedom to contract, but that this is promptly contradicted by other principles which say that people can only bind themselves in contract for what the law allows. Unger present s an argument on formalism which states that every doctrine relies on some view of human associations which are right and realistic in social life. The lawyer needs a theory as his guiding vision, which prevents him from seeing legal reasoning as a game of analogies. To Unger, reliance on analogies leads to analogy-mongering, and this must stop. He claims that this received wisdom is challengeable as wrong, and to do this one should rely on a normative theory of a branch of law supplied by the CLS. This is Ungers deviation doctrine, which embellishes the CLSs nihilistic view of law. Mark G. Kelman examines the importance to criminal law of the stage that precedes legal analysis. His argument is that legal argument has two phases: interpretive construction and rational rhetoricism, and that the former, a vital step which undercuts the authority of the latter, goes virtually unexamined.  [7]  For example, the result of a case may depend on weather the defendants act is set in a board or narrow time frame. This issue has come to a head with a series of cases where battered women have murdered their husbands and the scope of the provocation defence has been tested.  [8]  If a broad time frame as been used she may have defences of provocation, even self-defence; in a narrow time frame she has committed murder. There is no meta-theory to determine the appropriate time frame; the decision accordingly is unreasonable. There are some techniques which the CLS have deployed in analyzing legal texts, namely Trashing, Deconstruction, Genealogy, etc. Leading CLS scholar Mark G. Kelman defends trashing against mainstream academic critics, claiming that the discrediting of accepted legal argument is good According to him the most frequently recurring theme in the attacks on our technique, the more-or-less hysterical counter-Revolution against Trashing. It is abundantly apparent that the vast preponderance of mainstream American legal academics were told (repeatedly) by their moms and dads, If you dont have anything nice or constructive to say, say nothing at all.  [9]   Again he stated that law-and-economics studies of private law rules have not actually analyzed the concrete implications of rule choices on particular occasions, pretensions of policy relevance to the contrary. Instead, they have again and again simply derived apologies for existing arrangements from a highly general and theoretical economic vision. There are two politically central insights of mainstream private law and economics scholarship: (1) In situations involving strangres (where markets cannot work because of transaction costs), proper legal rules that establish implicit fees for harming others can be applied to concrete cases so that parties who interact to create a joint cost will take all cost-justified, damage-averting precautions; and (2) in situations involving those in contractual relationships, competitive markets function in such a way that buyers inevitably get whatever they desire at the lowest possible price a [*308] price that is the sum of the production cost of the desired good and a normal profit sufficient to prevent industry exit. One goal, if not an inevitable effect, of trashing is to destabilize a variety of theoretical world views (and thus, one would hope, related [*328] commonsense world views) that imply the beneficence or inexorability of social life as we see it. Of course, asserting that there must be a causal connection between the high-level apologetics of the intelligentsia and the everyday mediating political ideals that help us organize and make sense of daily interactions would be patently ridiculous. But one can discern at least a close family resemblance between elaborate, mandarin apologetics and the more ordinary, complacency-inducing, commonsensical bits of wisdom without straining credulity.  [10]   According to Robert Gordon Decontruction is one of the CLS techniques best work is a familiar work kind of left-wing scholarship, unmasking the often unconscious ideological bias behind legal structures and procedures, which regularly makes it easy for business groups to organise collectively to pursue their economic and political interests but which makes it much more difficult for labour, poor people, civil rights groups to pursue theirs.  [11]   CLS claims that mainstream legal thought acts to reify; it does this by translating social practices into things. For example, the relation between employer and employee brings about a range of consequences and expectations for both parties. The terms confirm or foster an implicit hierarchy; both employer and employee will expect the latter to follow instructions and generally defer to the former. Another way to heighten awareness of the transitory, problematic, and manipulable ways legal discourses divide the world is to write their history under the Genealogy technique. Some critics charge that CLS work hampers progressive political movements by challenging the idea of the subject and human agency. Others view CLS work as unimportant or failing because of inadequate development of specific policies, strategies, or constructive direction. CLS is faulted for implying that simply changing how people think about law will change power relationships or constraints on social change, although a fair reading indicates that Crits simply treat changes in thought as a necessary but insufficient step for social change. Feminists and Critical Race Theorists object that conventional critical legal studies employ a critique of rights that neglects the concrete role of rights talk in the mobilization of oppressed and disadvantaged people. Robert Gordon has responded with a warning that even such mobilization efforts must be done with an experimental air and full knowledge that there are no deeper logics of historical necessity that can guarantee that what we do now will be justified later. Total Word Count: 2110.

Reconstruction after the Civil War Essay

Black political activity during the Reconstruction after the Civil War came from the experience of after war slavery or what was called servitude. A strong sense of community grew out of shared racial oppression and contributed to the formation of a political stand for the black freedman. Even though this formation was important it really did not become very strong after the Civil War. Emancipation was confusing to most blacks and the wartime disorder didn’t help the uncertain situation. Freedmen moved very cautiously to explore what changes were happening in their lives. They were more interested in individual measures to enhance their freedom and avoided becoming politically active. One of the freedmen’s first desires was to leave anything having to do with slavery behind. They wanted to define their new status different than the slavery they had known. What many blacks did first after becoming free was to leave the plantation that had enslaved them. Some looked for family and other headed for towns and cities, but most wanted to leave. Autonomy was a key issue that arose out of emancipation. At first the freedmen hoped their needs would be met by the federal government. Inspired by wartime confiscation of planters land, and the promise of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the former slaves waited for their â€Å"forty acres and a mule†. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a temporary agency set up to aid the former slaves by providing relief, education, legal help, and assistance in gaining land or employment and came from the Reconstruction period. The problem of how to reconstruct the Union after the South’s military defeat was won of the most difficult challenges faced by American policymakers. The Constitution didn’t provide any guidelines. The farmers had not anticipated a division of the country into warring sections. Emancipation was a major force for the Northern war aims, but the problem became larger when questions arose on how far the federal government should go to secure freedom and civil rights for former slaves. The debate that followed led to a major political crisis. Advocates of a minimal Reconstruction policy favored quick restoration of the Union with no protection for the freed slaves beyond the prohibition of slavery. Proponents of a more radical policy wanted readmission of the southern states to be dependent on guarantees that loyal men would displace the Confederate higher ups in position of power and that blacks would gain some of the basic rights of American citizenship. The White House wanted the lesser approach and congress endorsed the more radical approach of Reconstruction (Divine, Breen, Fredrickson & Williams, 1987, p. 457). The tension between the President and Congress on how to reconstruct the Union began during the war. Lincoln never had a plan for bringing the states back together, but he did take some initiatives that indicated a more lenient and forgiving policy towards Southerners who gave up the struggle and denounced slavery. Lincoln issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863 that offered a full pardon to all Southerners, except certain classes of Confederate leaders, who would take an oath of allegiance to the union and acknowledge the legality of emancipation (Fitzgerald, 1989, p. 11). This policy was meant to shorten the war. The President hoped that granting pardon and political recognition to oath-taking minorities would weaken the southern cause by making it easy for disillusioned confederates to switch sides. But Congress was unhappy with the President’s reconstruction experiments and in 1864 refused to seat the Unionists elected to the House and Senate from Louisiana and Arkansas. A minority of congressional Republicans, who were strong anti-slavery radicals, wanted protection for black rights as a precondition for the readmission of the southern states. These Republican militants were upset because Lincoln had not insisted that the constitution creators provide for black suffrage. The dominate view in Congress was that the southern states had definitely forfeited their place in the Union and that it was up to Congress to decide when and how they would be readmitted. Congress passed a Reconstruction bill of its own in 1864. The Wade-Davis bill which required that fifty percent of the voters must take an oath of future loyalty before the restoration process could begin (Divine Breen, Fredrickson & Williams, 1987 p. 452). Those who would swear that they had never willingly supported the Confederacy could vote in an election for delegates to a constitutional convention. The bill did not require black suffrage, but it did give federal courts the power to enforce emancipation, but Lincoln used a pocket veto and refused to sign. Congress and the President remained stalled on the Reconstruction issue for the rest of the war. But during the last months in office Lincoln showed some desire to compromise. He showed much interest in getting the governments in Louisiana and Arkansas that he started, with the Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction in 1863, to gaining full recognition but Lincoln was warming up to the ideal of including black suffrage in all of this. Sadly Mr. Lincoln died before anyone knew the outcome of the struggle between congress and this man. Andrew Johnson’s attempt at reconstruction also put him on the defensive with Congress creating the most serious crisis in the history of relations between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government. During the war Johnson endorsed Lincoln’s emancipation policy and carried it into effect. He viewed it primarily as a means of destroying the power of the planter class rather than as recognition of black humanity (Divine Breen, Fredrickson & Williams, 1987). Johnson’s presidency was a huge surprise and really wasn’t suppose to happen considering that he was a southern Democrat and a fervent white supremacist. But the root of the problem was that he disagreed with the majority of Congress on what Reconstruction was supposed to accomplish. A believer of the Democratic states’ rights he wanted to restore the prewar feral system as quickly as possible, with the only changes being that states would no longer have the right to legalize slavery or to secede. Many Republican’s believed that if the old southern ruling class were to gain power they would devise a plan to subjugate blacks. Emancipation had removed the three-fifths clause of the constitution that counted slaves as only three-fifth of a person now they were to be counted in determining representation. Congress favored a Reconstruction policy that would give the federal government authority to limit the role of ex-confederates and provide protection for black citizenship (Fitzgerald, 1989, p. 48). The disagreement between the President and Congress became irreconcilable in early 1866 when Johnson vetoed two bills that had passed with overwhelming Republican support (Fitzgerald, 1989, 81). The first was to extend the life of the Freedmen’s Bureau and the second was a civil rights bill meant to nullify the black codes and guarantee to the freedmen full and equal benefit of all laws and security of self and property as the white had. Johnson was successful at blocking the Freedmen’s bureau bill but later a modified version did pass. The Civil Rights Act won the two-thirds majority needed to override the president’s veto. The main fact was that recovery would not happen or even begin until a new labor system replaced slavery. It was widely assumed in both the North and South that southern prosperity would continue to depend on cotton and that the plantation was the most efficient way for producing the crop. But rebuilding the plantation economy was hindered by lack of capital, the belief of southern whites that blacks would work only if forced, and by the freedmen’s resistance to labor conditions that were still basically slavery (Divine, Breen, Fitzgerald & Williams, 1987). Blacks wanted to be small independent farmers rather than plantation laborers and they believed that the federal government would help them to attain their dreams. General Sherman, who had huge numbers of black fugitives follow his army on a famous march, issued an order in 1865 that set aside the islands and coastal areas of Georgia and South Carolina for only black occupancy on forty acre plots. The Freedmen’s Bureau was given control of hundreds of thousands of acres of abandoned or confiscated land and authorized to make forty acre grants to black settlers for a three year period. After that they would have the option to buy at low prices. Over forty thousand black farmers worked on three hundred thousand acres of land they thought were going to be theirs (Berlin, 1976, p. 141). But the dream of forty acres and a mule the government promised was not going to happen. President Johnson pardoned the owners of most of the land assigned to the ex-slaves by Sherman and the Freedmen’s Bureau and along with the failure of congress to propose an effective program of land confiscation and redistribution the land blacks could not gain title to the land they had been working. The ex-slaves even without land and in poverty still were reluctant to settle down and commit their selves to wage labor for their former masters. They were hoping for something better and some still expecting grants of land while others were just trying to increase their bargaining power. The most common form of agricultural employment in 1866 was contract labor. Under this system workers would commit themselves for a year in return for fixed wages that the bulk of would be paid after harvest. Many planters were inclined to make hard bargains, abuse their workers or cheat them at the end of the year. The Freedmen’s Bureau took the role of reviewing the contracts and enforcing them. Buy the bureau officials had differing notions of what it meant to protect blacks from exploitation. Some stood up strongly for the rights of the freedmen; others served as allies of the planters, rounding up available workers, coercing them to sign contracts for low wages, and keeping them in line (Fitzgerald, 1989, p. 138). After 1867 the bureau’s influence was fading and a new arrangement come from direct negotiations between planters and freedmen. Unhappy with gang labor and constant white supervision, blacks demanded sharecropper’s status. This meant that they wanted the right to work a small piece of land independently in return for a fixed share of the crop produced on it and that was usually half. With the shortage of labor this gave the freedmen enough leverage to force this arrangement on those planters who were unwilling. But many landowners found it to their advantage because it did not require much capital and forced the tenants to share the risks of crop failure or a fall in cotton prices. Blacks at first viewed sharecropping as a step up from wage labor and a direction towards land ownership, but in reality it was just a new kind of slavery (Fitzgerald, 1989, p. 140). Croppers had to live on credit until their cotton was sold, and planters or merchants seized the chance to give them at high prices and huge rates of interest. Creditors were entitled to deduct what was owned to them out of the tenant’s share of the crop and this left most sharecroppers with no net profit at the end of the year, some with debt that had to be worked off the next year (Fitzgerald, 1989, p. 141). Blacks moving to cities and towns found themselves living in an increasingly segregated society. The Black Codes of 1865 attempted to require separation of the races in public places but most of the codes were set aside by federal authorities as violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, but that was defeated by private initiatives and community pressures. In some cities blacks successfully resisted forced separation on streetcars by appealing to the military during the brief period when it exercised authority or by organizing boycotts. But they found it almost impossible to gain admittance to most hotels, restaurants, and other privately owned establishments that catered to whites. When black supported Republican governments came to power in 1868, some of them passed civil rights acts requiring equal access to public facilities, but little efforts were made to enforce the legislation (Berlin, 1976, p. 249). Some forms of racial separation were not openly discriminatory and blacks accepted or even endorsed them. Freedmen who had belonged to white churches as slaves welcomed the chance to join all black denominations which gave freedom from white dominance and a more congenial style of worship. The first schools for ex-slaves were all black institutions established by the Freedmen’s Bureau and various northern missionary societies (Berlin, 1976, p. 285). Blacks had been denied any education at all after the war and blacks viewed separate schooling as an opportunity rather than as a form of discrimination. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a government agency that was to give assistance and protection to the Southern ex-slave after the Civil war. It gave assistance to the relief of the needy of both white and black. Its main job was to improve labor relations, administering justice and developing a black educational system. The Bureau influence though suffered in the North and was mortally damaged in the South by corruption, especially those that were connected with promising Republican control of the black vote. These excesses strengthened resistance to black suffrage and encouraged secret organizations like the Ku Klux Klan (Sehat, 2007). The bureau was established under the War Department and was suppose to exist for one year after the war. It was strengthened and its life extended in 1866 when Johnson attempted to veto. Its Director was a Christian general by the name of Oliver O. Howard and functioned through ten districts. Each had an assistant commissioner with the power to control all individuals that were refugees and freedmen. The Freedmen’s Bureau became the strongest single instrument of Reconstruction. Even though it was ended in 1869 its educational activities were extended to 1872 and its soldiers’ bounty payments till 1872 and had an expenditure of about $20,000,000 (Divine Breen Fredrickson & Williams, 1987). Reconstruction failed because it was inadequately motivated, conceived and enforced. But the causes of this failure remain in shadow. Some explain it in terms of an underlying racism that prevented white Republicans from identifying fully with the cause of the black equality. Others use the clash between the class interests of those in charge of implementing and managing Reconstruction and the poor people of the South who were supposed to benefit. But the basic issue raised by Reconstruction was how to achieve racial equality in America and that was not resolved during that era and is still in conflict even today. Reference: Berlin, I. (1976). Slaves without masters. New York: Vintage Books Divine, R. A. , Breen, T. H. , Fredrickson, G. M. and Williams, R. H. (1987). America past and present, 2nd. Ed. Illinois: Scott , Foresman and Company. Fitzgerald, M. W. (1989). The union league movement in the deep south. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. Gibson, G. J. (1957). Lincoln’s League: The league movement during the Civil War. Ph. D. dissertation, University of Illinois. Sehat, D. ( 2007, May). The civilizing mission of Booker T. Washington. Journal of Southern History, 73(2), 323-362.

Hard Times By Charles Dickens - 1502 Words

The fictional novel, Hard Times by Charles Dickens, concentrates on the Gradgrind family; of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, his daughter Louisa, and son Thomas Jr. A major theme of friendship is portrayed in the books through the character of Mr. Gradgrind as he struggles with the idea of friendship between other characters. According to the Nicomachean Ethics, by Aristotle, it explains a detailed account of friendship and what it is to be a friend to others. In comparing the character Mr. Gradgrind in Hard Times, to the 5 basis of friendship written in the Nicomachean Ethics, Mr. Gradgrind cannot be a friend to others because he does not use emotion but rather factual evidence in his actions toward his children. The novel confirms Aristotle’s view of friendship with Mr. Gradgrind, proving that the standards need to be set up in order to have a proper friendship and relationship with others. The 5 basis set up in Aristotle’s Ethics are explained on page 252 and are as followed; â€Å"A person who wished for and does what is good or what appears to him to be good for his friends sake, a person who wished for the existence and life of his friend for a friends sake, a person who spends his time in our company, whose desires are the same as ours, and a person who shared sorrow and joy with his friend. An overall message of â€Å"one must do well for others in order to be a proper friend†1 can be understood with the five basis of friendship to determine if a person is an ideal friend. In ChapterShow MoreRelatedCharles Dickens Hard Times1494 Words   |  6 Pages May 1, 2015 Mr. Johnson Literature Dickens Calls for Desperate Measures in Hard Times â€Å"I want to change the world.† How many times is that line heard from small children, aspiring to be someone who achieves their maximum potential? If a child is asked how they might go about doing so they might respond with an answer that involves a superhero or princess who helps people for the greater good. As one grows and adapts to their surrounding society, the art of seeing the big picture includingRead MoreCharles Dickens Hard Times Essay1746 Words   |  7 PagesClass systems sadly are an institutional part of society since biblical times and are still prominent in all cultures today. In British society, class systems are still as prevalent as they were in the 19th century, there are seven social classes, ranging from the elite at the top to the extreme poor at the bottom. Typically, in English society social class was always defined by occupation, wealth, and education with an addition of social and cultural classes. Social classes is a prevalent aspectRead MoreCharles Dickens Hard Times Essay1717 Words   |  7 Pagesbecame a common occurrence as society developed and moved forward towards the twentieth century. 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Dickens is certainlyRead MoreHard Times and Charles Dickens1845 Words   |  8 PagesThe novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens is a fictitious glimpse into the lives of various classes of English people that live in a t own named Coketown during the Industrial Revolution. The general culture of Coketown is one of utilitarianism. The school there is run by a man ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature . This man, known as Thomas Gradgrind, is responsible for the extermination of anything fanciful and integration of everything pertinent and factual into the young, pliableRead MoreCharles Dickens Hard Times For These Times1074 Words   |  5 Pageselse, only to constantly find yourself memorizing empty facts over and over again? In Hard Times for these Times, Charles Dickens embodies the consequences of an absolutely factual world: blindness, imbalance, and nonfulfillment. 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The novel shows presents to readers the authors perspective of life during the nineteenth century and makes comments on the central themeRead More Charles Dickens Hard Times Essay1102 Words   |  5 PagesCharles Dickens Hard Times There are a huge variety of characters in Hard Times, ranging from the good to the unnaturally cruel. The novel is full of extremity in its characterisation; cruel, bitter and selfish characters such as Mrs. Sparsit contrast dramatically with characters such as Stephen Blackpool and Rachael, who are benevolent and altruistic. Among the cruellest and most villainous characters in the novel is James Harthouse, who is completely ammoral, and therefore renderedRead MoreAnalysis: Hard Times by Charles Dickens1807 Words   |  7 PagesHard Times as a Social Commentary with Parallels in the Modern Era The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens is clearly an incitement of the economic and social burden associated with economic and social disparity. The work is set in a small fictional mill town, Coketown, where the challenges of the newly emerging industrial revolution were fundamentally being set at the footsteps of the poor, who had little if any opportunity for upward mobility. During this period the alternatives for those withRead MoreEssay on Charles Dickens Hard Times2066 Words   |  9 PagesCharles Dickens Hard Times The book Hard Times was written in 1854. It was written in weekly instalments in a magazine called Household Words. This is like a normal soap but was weekly. The magazine was owned by Charles Dickens as he was a journalist. The book was written at the time of the Industrial Revolution. This was when factories were being built near major towns and cities such as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham. The Industrial Revolution was a time when there were big

Slavery A Necessary Evil - 1838 Words

Slavery: A Necessary Evil â€Å"The fact is, that civilization requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible.† - OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism ! The issue of slavery has been debated for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. It is of undisputed awareness that the act of enslaving another man or women is to strip them of their civil and natural liberties. It is also of uncontested certainty that no man or women would will- ingly chose to be a slave. And although slavery and it’s accompanied hardships are often seen as no less than an ultimate evil, it is also an indisputable fact that humanity has enslaved its brethren since the dawn of mankind1. As rational beings, we must put aside our presumptions, precon- ceived notions, and emotionally biased opinions of slavery and ask ourselves; why? One would think that if enslavement was such an unspeakable evil, it would have no place in our civil soci- ety. Yet, slavery time and time again has appeared as a fundamental part of many of the worlds most powerfull civilizations and societies throughout history. This is because slavery is a power- full tool and a necessary evil. T he Greeks, Romans, Mongols, Ottomans, Egyptians, Ghana’s, Mali’s, Songhai’s, and Kanem-Bornu’s (the former four being powerfull African empires) all 1International Socialist Review. International Socialist Review. N.p.,Show MoreRelatedThe Necessary Evil That United The Colonies. Slavery Is1508 Words   |  7 PagesThe Necessary Evil That United The Colonies Slavery is an important part of the United States history, using White, Native American, and black African American slaves, it helped build this country in its beginning. Ultimately it was one of the worst atrocities in history. The inhumanity of it is still affecting the country today. So why did it take so long to abolish it when a majority of the Founding Fathers, while having slaves themselves, where apposed to it? Why did they not use their power toRead MoreEssay on Slavery in America: From Necessary to Evil 1182 Words   |  5 Pagescolonial period slavery continued to expand across the south, yet northerners, especially New Englanders, never adopted slavery like to their southern neighbors. As migration to the colonies increased and differences arose between the colonies and a Parliament an ocean away, the issue of slavery accompanied the rising thoughts of liberty and equality in the New World. As colonialists, and eventually Americans, attempted to define liberty and equali ty in an evolving state, slavery polarized the societyRead MoreSlavery During The Slave Next Door1616 Words   |  7 PagesOver the past decades, slavery in America has significantly increased and curbed public freedom because American authorities and media have not dealt with the urgency of the issue. This has jeopardized human freedom. This increase is largely due to the import of foreign workers in the form of immigration and also home-bred slaves transported centuries ago from Africa. The increase is astonishing as the writer in The Slave Next Door asserts: â€Å"More than twice as many people are in bondage in the worldRead MoreSlavery in the South Essay680 Words   |  3 PagesSlavery in the South A large majority of whites in the South supported slavery even though fewer of a quarter of them owned slaves because they felt that it was a necessary evil and that it was an important Southern institution. In 1800 the population of the United States included 893,602 slaves, of which only 36,505 were in the northern states. Vermont, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey provided for the emancipation of their slaves beforeRead MoreJohn Brown Was Not Justified in His Raids Essay959 Words   |  4 PagesJohn Brown was a man who lived in the mid eighteen-hundreds and who fought against the evil of slavery. He had a very strong belief that slavery was unjust, and this is true, but he thought that in order to abolish slavery, violence would be the best method. That’s where he went wrong. John Brown led two attacks on slave owners and those who supported slavery, the first at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas on May 24th, 1856, and the second at Harper Ferry, Virginia on October 16th, 1859. 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Mrs.Bird, the senator’s wife, and Mrs.Shelby, the plantation owner’s wife, both condemn their husband’s actions toward slavery because of their faith. For example, Mrs.Shelby explainsRead More The American Civil War was Unavoidable Essay659 Words   |  3 PagesThe American Civil War was unavoidable. Because of regional and political disputes the country would have continued to boil even if the extremists on both sides were kept under control. No matter what was done politically a conflict was necessary to eradicate slavery from this continent.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Anger in the South was becoming a growing trend. The Southerners were angered by the fact that, in their view, the North was trying to dissolve their way of life. Congressman Robert Toombs of Georgia says, â€Å"ifRead MoreSlavery And Its Impact On The United States986 Words   |  4 PagesSlavery dates back to as early as 1760 BC. It is defined as the condition of a slave; in bondage. A slave is a person who is the property of and wholly subject to another; a bond servant. It fiendishly raised its repugnant head amongst many cultures and nations around the world. Many people viewed slavery as immoral and some viewed it as a necessary evil. However evil, it may have been, it did have a tremendous impact on shaping the United States, particularly the South. From the period of 1800 toRead MoreSlavery Of Americ Past And Present1441 Words   |  6 PagesSlavery in America: Past and Present The significance of slavery and the slave trade in the 19th century was an economic engine driving colonial America. The Atlantic slave convey and their labors touched all corners of the world. Its complex existence greatly impacted social views, politics and many industries in colonial America, these effects would transcend that era. Frankly, its shadowy existence is still part of America today. This controversial part of America’s history is often unspoken