Pirate Codes, Ibn Khaldun, and Deleuzian Nomadism: Historical Constitutional Criticism at the End of the World
-          Law review article in progress
This article is about pirates; pirates, who operated under a strict code of law that was remarkably advanced for its time.  These codes made reverberations in the development of the United States Constitution and have marked the direction and nature of the United States democratic experiment.  It is important to understand specifically what pirate code provisions have foreshadowed democratic constitutional foundations and what this indicates about the nature and shape of the democracy we understand.  Lastly, this paper will combine historical analysis with current post-structuralist theories of governance, predominately including ideas of nomadism which can be traced from Ibn Khaldun through Gilles Deleuze, with the hope that a critical history emphasizing the importance of pirate codes to democratic and constitutional understanding might bring about a more thorough understanding of pirate influences on our founders and their most revered document, as well as the impacts of piracy on modern legal criticism. 

 

The U.S. Farm Bill’s Otherizing of Africa: The Postcolonial War on West African Ground Nut Farmers
-          Law review article in progress
This article engages postcolonial theory to better understand the impact that the United States farm bill (Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 and the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008) have placed tremendous economic strain on West African ground nut farmers.  This article continues my previous work on the Farm Bill in which I engaged feminist theory.  West Africa has long been the site of unparalleled tragedy from a vicious history of slavery and colonialism to modern civil wars.  The economic impact of U.S. farm subsidies is serious and threatening the livelihood of a number of West African farmers.  This article will urge decision makers to think carefully about the impact domestic policy has on international populations because too often it is these populations that bear the brunt of seemingly benign U.S. policy

The Ghost in the Global War on Terror: Critical Perspectives and Dangerous Implications for National Security and the Law
-         Law review article submitted August 2010
In this article, I set out to discuss the dangerous implications the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and more generally the attempts of the United States government to address notions of terrorism and its affect on the safety of U.S. and world citizens.  I am primarily concerned with engaging in a poststructuralist critique of the GWOT to strengthen legal discussions of terrorism and national security policy that the current system is lacking.  While many in the legal academy have focused on particular issues relating to terrorism, I will engage on a broader macro-level analysis of the way the legal academy conceptualizes terrorism, not how it discusses acts of terrorism.  While I am concerned with the legal basis for the GWOT, I am more concerned with how our idea of terrorism affects our ability to address it in our legal and political lives and how these decisions affect our national and personal security.  I will utilize the concept of the ghost in the machine, discussed below, to help further the poststructuralist criticism utilized herein.  Next, I will demonstrate the utility of poststructural and postcolonial criticisms to terrorism and the Global War on Terrorism.  Lastly, I will argue that the GWOT has far-reaching implications that threaten to debase our legal system, casting our civil rights regime into the refuse bin of legal history.  The goal is to provide a poststructural and postcolonial legal framework, available in the legal literature, for scholars, students, and practitioners to use in their further work on terrorism.  

Amos Lee’s “Street Corner Preacher” through Michel Foucault’s Critique of Scientific Knowledge: A Critique of Legal Knowledge
-          Law review article submitted August 2010
This article will demonstrate that although students of the law, legal scholars, and practitioners rely on a relatively narrow body of “legal scholarship,” there are in fact sundry diverse sources of legal thought that deserve to be evaluated along with currently accepted legal scholarship.  It will present arguments in favor of appreciating music as a unique and important source of legal commentary through which we might understand how people relate to the law—what I have called “coming to the law.”  It will demonstrate that music can be uniquely transgressive and presents a powerful alternative to what Michel Foucault called “scientific knowledge.”  Ultimately, Foucault’s critique will be the road upon which we travel.  I will also argue that not only is it important to accept different forms of knowledge, but that the rejection of different knowledges is a unique form of violence that acts before the law can take effect serving to strategically debase the law.