Sua Sponte
HIT BULL WIN STEAK
Using law to T understand place, and vice versa by Joseph Blocher
Lanty L. Smith ’67 Professor of Law Joseph Blocher, the only Durham native on the Duke Law faculty, makes the legal issues relating to the city’s political, social, and economic development the focus of his Urban Legal History research seminar. Blocher is serving as co-chair of the Durham Sesquicentennial Honors Commission.
64 Duke Law Magazine • Fall 2019
eaching and lecturing on law and Durham is really a way to explore both concepts: to use law to understand place, and use place to understand the law. Obviously one goal is to explore Durham’s identity and development as a matter of law. Over the past 150 years, this town — my hometown — has been the site of, and a participant in, some truly extraordinary history — the end of the Civil War, the rise and fall of the tobacco industry, the remarkable success of the Duke family and Black Wall Street — and the scene for remarkable moments in civil rights, arts, education, sports, and other areas. But the more subtle goal is to use place to understand law. Partly because of the way the case method and the standard legal curriculum have evolved, it can be easy to get caught up in conceptual labels — like asking whether a case is about “torts” or “property” — and lose sight of the ways in which law both shapes and is shaped by the real world. It’s really important to know the map, but there’s no substitute for knowing the territory itself. So the point is not only to explain how Durham got its borders and what has happened within them, but also to make the law visible. In keeping with that theme, it is probably better to show what I mean than to say it. Here are a few examples.
Illustration: Marc Harkness
HIT GRASS WIN SALAD
