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Social Welfare Law Commons

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Constitutional Law

Journal

2016

America

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social Welfare Law

The Last Legally Beaten Servant In America: From Compulsion To Coercion In The American Workplace, Lea Vandervelde May 2016

The Last Legally Beaten Servant In America: From Compulsion To Coercion In The American Workplace, Lea Vandervelde

Seattle University Law Review

Historically, the law of master-servant allowed corporal punishment. Today it seems strange to contemplate that intentionally inflicted violence was ever an acceptable method of compelling workers to labor in America. Strange as it seems, the practice of striking servants to discipline them was considered a legitimate, implicit part of the relationship between masters and servants. Servants, as well as slaves, could be subjected to cuffings and even severe beatings as means of “correction” and compulsion to labor. Menial servants, apprentices, and domestic servants could be beaten with hands, fists, straps, sticks, and sometimes whips, all in the name of correction …


Class As Caste: The Thirteenth Amendment’S Applicability To Class-Based Subordination, William M. Carter Jr. May 2016

Class As Caste: The Thirteenth Amendment’S Applicability To Class-Based Subordination, William M. Carter Jr.

Seattle University Law Review

The Thirteenth Amendment currently enjoys a robust renaissance among legal scholars who contend that it provides a judicial remedy for and congressional authority to proscribe the “badges and incidents of slavery.” As discussed below, this interpretation, although not self- evident from the Amendment’s bare text, is well supported by the Amendment’s history and context, the Framers’ explicit intentions, the legislative debates in Congress leading to the Amendment’s adoption, and the contemporaneous legal understanding of the ways in which the Slave Power that had come to dominate and distort American society. This Article briefly explores whether the Thirteenth Amendment applies to …