Robert J. Cottrol

Bio: Robert J. Cottrol is an academic researcher from George Washington University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Supreme court & Legal history. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 35 publications receiving 406 citations. Previous affiliations of Robert J. Cottrol include Georgetown University & University of Tulsa.

The Second Amendment: Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration

Abstract: © Copyright Robert J. Cottrol and Raymond T. Diamond, 1991. This article was delivered as a paper at the 1990 annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History, at the Harvard Legal History Forum, at a faculty seminar at Northwestern University Law School, at the 1991 joint annual meeting of the Law and Society Association and the International Law and Society Association, and at the 1991 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association. The authors would like to acknowledge the helpful comments made in those forums. The authors would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Jan McNitt, Boston College Law School, 1991; Richard J. Fraher, Rutgers (Camden) School of Law, 1993; Roderick C. Sanchez, Rutgers (Camden) School of Law, 1992; Adrienne I. Logan, Tulane University School of Law, 1992; and Willie E. Shepard, Tulane University School of Law, 1992. This paper has benefitted from the criticism and helpful comments of Akhil R. Amar, Michael Les Benedict, Barbara Black, Maxwell Bloomfield, Ruth Colker, Michael Curtis, Robert Dowlut, Kermit Hall, Natalie Hull, Don B. Kates, Jr., Barbara K. Kopytoff, Sanford Levinson, Joyce Lee Malcolm, John Stick, and Robert F. Williams. The authors would also like to acknowledge summer research grants from Boston College Law School, Rutgers (Camden) School of Law, and Tulane University School of Law which contributed to the writing of this paper. ** Associate Professor, Rutgers (Camden) School of Law. A.B. 1971, Ph.D. 1978, Yale University; J.D. 1984, Georgetown University Law Center. *** Associate Professor, Tulane University School of Law. A.B. 1973, Yale University; J.D. 1977, Yale Law School. [Copyright © 1991 Georgetown Law Journal, Robert J. Cottrol & Raymond T. Diamond. Originally published as 80 GEO. L.J. 1991, 309-361 (1991). For educational use only. The printed edition remains canonical. For citational use please obtain a back issue from William S. Hein & Co., 1285 Main Street, Buffalo, New York 14209; 716-882-2600 or 800-828-7571.]

The Second Amendment : Toward an Afro-Americanist Reconsideration

Abstract: Many of the issues surrounding the Second Amendment debate are raised in particularly sharp relief from the perspective of African-American history. With the exception of Native Americans, no people in American history have been more influenced by violence than blacks. Private and public violence maintained slavery. The nation's most destructive conflict ended the "peculiar institution." That all too brief experiment in racial egalitarianism, Reconstruction, was ended by private violence and abetted by Supreme Court sanction Jim Crow was sustained by private violence, often with public assistance. If today the memories of past interracial violence are beginning to fade, they are being quickly replaced by the frightening phenomenon of black-on-black violence, making life all too precarious for poor blacks in inner city neighborhoods. Questions raised by the Second Amendment, particularly those concerning self-defense, crime, participation in the security of the community, and the wisdom or utility of relying exclusively on the state for protection, thus take on a peculiar urgency in light of the modern Afro-American experience.

Brown v. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution

Abstract: Before 1954, both law and custom mandated strict racial segregation throughout much of the nation. That began to change with Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark decision that overturned the pernicious "separate but equal" doctrine. In declaring that legally mandated school segregation was unconstitutional, the Supreme Court played a critical role in helping to dismantle America's own version of apartheid, Jim Crow. This new study of Brown the title for a group of cases drawn from Kansas, Virginia, South Carolina, Delaware, and the District of Columbia offers an insightful and original overview designed expressly for students and general readers. It is concise, up-to-date, highly readable, and very teachable. The authors, all recognized authorities on legal history and civil rights law, do an admirable job of examining the fight for legal equality in its broad cultural and historical context. They convincingly show that Brown cannot be understood apart from the history of caste and exclusion in American society. That history antedated the very founding of the country and was supported by the nation's highest institutions, including the Supreme Court whose decision in "Plessy v. Ferguson" (1896) supported the notion of "separate but equal." Their book traces the lengthy court litigations, highlighting the pivotal role of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and including incisive portraits of key players, including co-plaintiff Oliver Brown, newly appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren, NAACP lawyer and future Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Justice Felix Frankfurter, who recognized the crucial importance of a unanimous court decision and helped produce it. The authors simply but powerfully narrate the obstacles these individuals faced and the opportunities they grasped and clearly show that there was much more at stake than educational rights. Brown not only changed the national equation of race and caste it also changed our view of the Court's role in American life. The dramatic story of the road to and from "Brown," despite the retrenchments of recent years, needs to be heard anew. As we prepare to commemorate the decision's fiftieth anniversary in May 2004, this book invites readers to walk that road again and appreciate the lasting importance of what is indisputably a landmark case. "

A New Economic View of American History

Abstract: (1981). A New Economic View of American History. Journal of Economic Issues: Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 821-825.

Religion and Health: Public Health Research and Practice

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Research examining the relationships between religion and the health of individuals and populations has become increasingly visible in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. Systematic programs of research investigate religious phenomena within the context of coherent theoretical and conceptual frameworks that describe the causes and consequences of religious involvement for health outcomes. Recent research has validated the multidimensional aspects of religious involvement and investigated how religious factors operate through various biobehavioral and psychosocial constructs to affect health status through proposed mechanisms that link religion and health. Methodological and analytical advances in the field permit the development of more complex models of religion's effects, in keeping with proposed theoretical explanations. Investigations of religion and health have ethical and practical implications that should be addressed by the lay public, health professionals, the research communi...

Black and white differences in religious participation : A multisample comparison

Abstract: This study investigated race differences in religious involvement across several national probability samples. It employed various measures of religious involvement, and controlled for key sociodemographic variables. The findings reveal that African Americans exhibit higher levels or religious participation than do whites regardless of sample or measures.

in Faith Communities: The Role of Clergy in Black Churches

Abstract: A small bat growing literature recognizes the varied roles that clergy play in identifying and addressing mental health needs in their congregations. Although the role of the clergy in mental health services delivery has not been studied extensively, a few investigations have attempted a systematic examination of this area. This article examines the research, highlighting available information with regard to the process by which mental health needs are identified and addressed by faith communities. Areas and issues where additional information is needed also are discussed. Other topics addressed include client characteristics and factors associated with the use of ministers for personal problems, the role of ministers in mental health services delivery, factors related to the development of church-based programs and service delivery systems, and models that link churches and formal services agencies. A concluding section describes barriers to and constraints against effective partnerships between churches, formal services agencies, and the broader practice of social work.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow

Abstract: Woodward’s argument proceeds along chronological and thematic lines. Chapter one discusses the ante-bellum era (1789-1860) and Reconstruction (1865-1877). Chapter two examines the era of “forgotten alternatives” in Southern race relations between 1870 and 1900. Chapter three examines what Woodward calls the “capitulation to racism” around the turn of the century. And, finally, chapter four examines the “turning point” in race relations that occurred between the 1920s and 1940s in the South.