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Legal History

University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law

Faculty Scholarship

Slavery

Publication Year

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Law

From Racial Discrimination To Separate But Equal: The Common Law Impact Of The Thirteenth Amendment, David S. Bogen Jan 2011

From Racial Discrimination To Separate But Equal: The Common Law Impact Of The Thirteenth Amendment, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

Many forces produced the shift in the United States from the acceptance of slavery and racial inequality to the doctrine of separate but equal. The 13th Amendment abolished slavery and authorized legislation to enforce that abolition, but these well-known direct effects are only part of the story. This paper examines the Amendment’s indirect impact on racial discrimination – furthering a standard of equality in public relationships without threatening the existing racial separation. The Amendment is evidence of a change in values that justified overturning prior decisions, and abolition created a new context for legislation and common law decisions. It reinforced …


Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks Jan 2008

Dangerous Woman: Elizabeth Key's Freedom Suit - Subjecthood And Racialized Identity In Seventheenth Century Colonial Virginia, Taunya Lovell Banks

Faculty Scholarship

Elizabeth Key, an African-Anglo woman living in seventeenth century colonial Virginia sued for her freedom after being classified as a negro by the overseers of her late master’s estate. Her lawsuit is one of the earliest freedom suits in the English colonies filed by a person with some African ancestry. Elizabeth’s case also highlights those factors that distinguished indenture from life servitude—slavery in the mid-seventeenth century. She succeeds in securing her freedom by crafting three interlinking legal arguments to demonstrate that she was a member of the colonial society in which she lived. Her evidence was her asserted ancestry—English; her …


Book Review: Slave Law In The Americas, David S. Bogen Jan 1991

Book Review: Slave Law In The Americas, David S. Bogen

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.