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Legal History Commons

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University at Buffalo School of Law

Contributions to Books

Labor and Employment Law

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Legal History

Freedom Of Contract And Freedom Of Person: A Brief History Of “Involuntary Servitude” In American Fundamental Law, Robert J. Steinfeld Apr 2002

Freedom Of Contract And Freedom Of Person: A Brief History Of “Involuntary Servitude” In American Fundamental Law, Robert J. Steinfeld

Contributions to Books

Published as Chapter 14 in Republicanism and Liberalism in America and the German States, 1750–1850, Jürgen Heideking, James A. Henretta & Peter Becker, eds.

Liberal ideas are normally taken to have played an important role in the development of free markets, and of free labor based on contract in those markets. A closer look at labor regimes in the nineteenth century, however, reveals that liberal commitments to freedom did not straightforwardly produce what we today would think of as free labor. Just as often they produced a form of coerced contractual labor. And this was quite simply because liberal commitments …


Labor – Free Or Coerced? An Historical Reassessment Of Differences And Similarities, Robert J. Steinfeld, Stanley L. Engerman Jan 1997

Labor – Free Or Coerced? An Historical Reassessment Of Differences And Similarities, Robert J. Steinfeld, Stanley L. Engerman

Contributions to Books

Published in Free and Unfree Labour: The Debate Continues, Tom Brass & Marcel van der Linden, eds.