Du Bois edited and wrote the introductory chapter to the NAACP document An Appeal to the World: A Statement of Denial of Rights to Minorities, submitted to the United Nations in October 1947. In his introduction, he argued that the “color caste system” had been disastrous for American democracy. After the North’s victory in the Civil War, Northern capitalism’s financial stake in cheap slave labor led it to participate in enforcing a racial caste system keeping African Americans in economic and political subjugation. The domination of the American economy by big business and monopolies on land and natural resources explain why democracy has been crippled throughout the country, with mass disenfranchisement of African Americans and many whites, especially in the South. The denial of African Americans’ right to vote means a failure of democracy in the world’s leading democracy and in the world. The disproportionate power granted the most anti-democratic elements in American society perverted American foreign policy in favor of imperialism, against the League of Nations, and against weaker nations. With the UN based in New York, American racial discrimination infringes the rights of all peoples and has become a matter of international concern.

Even if sovereign immunities fail to prevent holdout litigation before a domestic court, bondholder claims may still be effectively forestalled by the operation of collective action clauses. The limits of first-generation CACs have been partially overcome, and their use in sovereign bonds is now common in the United States and is mandatory in the Eurozone. This strengthened protection for debtor sovereigns is accompanied by the introduction of accountability mechanisms that guarantee fairness in the implementation of debt workout processes. This study has concluded that the development of CACs embodies a possible balance between bondholder protection and respect for debt restructuring by sovereigns. Although a more delicate question arises when a defaulting sovereign introduces a CAC mechanism by modifying the relevant domestic law governing sovereign debt instruments, such a measure may fall within the margin of discretion exercised by the debtor sovereign as the governance organ primarily responsible for addressing its sovereign default, provided that its accountability is duly discharged in and out of courts or tribunals.

‘Awaking on Friday morning, June 20, 1913, the South African Native found himself, not actually a slave, but a pariah in the land of his birth.’1 So begins Sol Plaatje’s Native Life in South Africa, a book in which he appeals against one of the most consequential pieces of legislation passed by the new Union of South Africa after its establishment in 1910. The Natives Land Act of 1913 restricted ownership of land by black South Africans to a small fraction of the available agricultural land of the country. It decreed that whites and blacks were not allowed to buy land from each other. And although the Act did not have an immediate impact, as many, including Plaatje, had thought it would, it began a process of legislative segregation that would ultimately culminate in Grand Apartheid – the division of South Africa into white and black territories or ‘homelands’ – half a century later.

Argued January 15, 1974.Decided June 24, 1974.

Justice NELSON delivered the opinion of the Court.1

This case addresses whether it is constitutional to deny the right to vote based on a citizen’s past criminal conviction. For the reasons stated below, we hold that California’s composite legal scheme that denies voting rights to persons who have fully discharged their sentences of incarceration or parole violates both the letter and the spirit of the Fourteenth Amendment.

After his house in Rochester, New York, burned down in 1872, Frederick Douglass moved to Washington, DC. He remained there until his death twenty-three years later. Douglass had moved to the capital city to employ his considerable talents and reputation to influence federal government policies to benefit all African Americans. He initially viewed Washington as a proving ground to demonstrate how rapidly his race could advance once out of slavery. Douglass soon learned the precariousness of gains made during Reconstruction and witnessed his final “home” city become a prototype for southern white resistance to racial and economic equality. In vain, Douglass used his skills as a journalist, orator, and political “lobbyist” to resist the reduction of political rights and economic opportunities in the nation’s capital in the final decades of the nineteenth century.

Mumbai’s industrial character having faded, the city has turned more nativist. Religious riots in the 1990s caused rifts to deepen and Muslims found themselves confined to ghettos. Waes of aggression have also been directed at outsiders, particularly working class labourers from the north referred to as ‘bhaiyya’ or brother. This chapter examines internal migration and the author’s struggle to try and belong to the city as a woman and a female ‘brother’.

We examine the notion of linguistic and other types of diversity that have become an important factor in evaluating economic, political, and societal progress. While most of the existing research on the measurement of diversity has been focused either on the number and size of different groups, this approach fails to take into account the degree of their distinctiveness. It is thus important to incorporate the notion of distances or dissimilarity between groups. We discuss various types of indices and their impact (positive or negative) on economic and political outcomes. We also use linguistic distances to explain economic behavior such as trade, migrations, translations, and acquiring new languages.