CSLS Speaker Series: “Colonizing Liberia: The Constitution of American Empire Before the Insular Cases”

Featuring Jedidiah Kroncke, Associate Professor of Law, University of Hong Kong.

Over the 20^th century, a variety of scholarship has explored aspects of “American imperialism” or “American empire” as the United States progressively spread its influence across the globe. Analysis continues today of the varied territorial regimes through which the U.S. exerted sovereignty, including the many lands that were not incorporated into its body politic. Center to many these examinations were the Insular Cases– a set of early 20^th century U.S. Supreme Court decisions legitimating the inapplicability of constitutional rights to such unincorporated territories. Collectively, the legal infrastructure of American empire enabled an ongoing regime of perpetually deferred and ever-attenuating democratic accountability. 

This traditional focus had unintentionally diminished attention to precursor exercises of American sovereignty abroad during the 19^th-century. One central example from this earlier era in U.S. role in the colonization of the West African lands that would become the nation of Liberia in 1847. The indirect and direct forms of U.S. governmental support for the American Colonization Society in this process was a precursor to the 20^th-century model of American empire which would commonly operate through private institutions under public aegis. In turn, the AC’s actions provoked debates about the legal and moral bounds of an “American” overseas colonial project. These debates invoked a wider range of constitutional and social possibilities than what came to be later enshrined in the Insular Cases. Most broadly, this history is crucial to understanding how the perpetual denial of empire became a foundational element of American internationalism. 

Cosponsored with the Center for Race and Gender

Reception: Lunch 12:15-12:45p.m. in the Kadish Library 
Program: 12:45-2:00p.m. in the Philip Selznick Seminar Room

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If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) to fully participate in this event, please contact csls@law.berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.