Casebeer on the Criminalization of Organized Labor

Kenneth M. Casebeer (University of Miami - School of Law) has posted 'The Law is a Gun Thug in a Big Automobile': Criminalizing Labor in American History (University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 2011-30) on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

As documented in the newly published book - Kenneth Casebeer, American Labor Struggles and Law Histories - criminal law has been continually deployed to discourage or destroy collective action. Prosecuting cartage haulers in the 1760's, criminal conspiracy in early journeymen strikes, Police riot and martyrdom at Haymarket, Debs' contempt incarceration, trespass, murder prosecution in Gastonia, and in Elaine, Arkansas, Vagrancy in Free Speech fights, the Bisbee Deportation, arrests in steel, the Chicago Memorial Day Massacre, arrests and kangaroo trials on the Docks, outlawing the sit-downs and mutiny for sit-downs on ships in ports. Labor organization has always been some kind of crime in America and thus a critical lever of economic inequality and suppressing mobilization against it.