Colonizing Liberia: The Constitution of American Empire before the Insular Cases

Over the 20th century, a variety of scholarship has explored aspects of “American imperialism” or “American empire” as the United States progressively spread its influence across the globe. In doing so, scholars looked to the varied territorial regimes through which the US exerted sovereignty, including the many lands that were not incorporated into its body politic. Furthermore, the Insular Cases—a set of early 20th-century US Supreme Court decisions legitimating the inapplicability of constitutional rights to such unincorporated territories—have been repeatedly criticized as enabling this ongoing regime of perpetually deferred democratic accountability.

This presentation argues that this traditional focus had unintentionally diminished attention to the exercises of American sovereignty abroad during the 19th century. Specifically, it examines the diverse discourses over the justifications and legal rationales for the US role in the colonization of the West African lands that would become the nation of Liberia in 1847. The role of the American Colonization society in this process was a precursor to the 20th-century model of American empire operating through private institutions under public aegis. In turn, its actions provoked debates about the legal and moral bounds of such overseas colonial projects. As contrast with British imperialism was still an important part of post-Revolutionary American identity, controversies over Liberia and other early private/public usurpations of sovereignty abroad rearticulated debates about continental US expansion. They also invoked a wide range of constitutional and social possibilities that came to be later enshrined in the Insular Cases. As with the many unincorporated American territories that later became formally independent, this history is one of ongoing contemporary legacies and was formative in the early internationalization of the American economy, especially in regards to the global circulation of racialized labor.

Jedidiah Kroncke is an associate professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, where he teaches private law and comparative law subjects. He currently serves as Director of Early Career Research, Director of the Global Academic Fellows program, and Director of the JD Program. Previously, he was a professor at FGV Sao Paulo School of Law and Senior Research Fellow at the East Asian Legal Studies program at Harvard Law School. Professor Kroncke’s research centers on international legal history and the comparative law and political economy. His first book, The Futility of Law and Development: China and the Dangers of Exporting American Law (Oxford University Press 2016), explores the role of US-China relations in the formation of modern American legal internationalism. Recent publications have addressed transnational legal history, authoritarian law, comparative legal education, and innovative uses of trust law. He received a BA from the University of California Berkeley, a JD from Yale Law School, and a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from UC Berkeley, and then served as the HLS Berger-Howe Legal History Fellow, NYU Golieb Fellow in Legal History, and Ruebhausen Fellow in Law at Yale Law.