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Full-Text Articles in Law
South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell
South Carolina's Largest Slave Auctioneering Firm, Thomas D. Russell
Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship
This article presents the original finding that South Carolina's legal system conducted a majority of the state's slave auctions during the antebellum years.Courts conducted slave auctions in several circumstances. Sheriffs sold the property of debtors; and courts also conducted or supervised sales in order to divide estates. Drawing upon extensive empirical analysis of primary sources in various South Carolina archives, this article compares the total number of slaves sold at court-ordered or court-supervised sales with the best empirical estimates for private slave sales - whether at auction or not. The conclusion is that the courts acted as the state's greatest …
Did The Slaves Author The Thirteenth Amendment? An Essay In Redemptive History, Guyora Binder
Did The Slaves Author The Thirteenth Amendment? An Essay In Redemptive History, Guyora Binder
Journal Articles
American constitutional interpretation is deeply traditionalist, and privileges original intent. The difficulty with thus authorizing the past in interpreting the Thirteenth Amendment is that it purports to abolish custom and tradition as unjust. This essay argues that, given the Amendment’s denunciation of the polity that enacted it as illegitimate, its questionable formal pedigree, and the agency of the slaves in precipitating, defining, and resolving the crisis that enabled it, the slaves have a moral claim to status as its authors. It follows that the original intent guiding interpretation should be that of the slaves themselves.
Thinking Property At Rome, Alan Watson
Thinking Property At Rome, Alan Watson
Scholarly Works
It is a commonplace among writers on slavery that there is an inherent contradiction or a necessary confusion in regarding slaves as both human beings and things. In law there is no such contradiction or confusion. Slaves are both property and human beings. Their humanity is not denied but (in general) they are refused legal personality, a very different matter.
Things as property may be classed in various ways, and the classification may then have an impact on owners' rights and duties. A thing may be corporeal or incorporeal, immoveable or moveable. Some moveables may be classed as res se …
Seventeenth-Century Jurists, Roman Law, And The Law Of Slavery, Alan Watson
Seventeenth-Century Jurists, Roman Law, And The Law Of Slavery, Alan Watson
Scholarly Works
Issues of slavery and slave law were of considerable theoretical interest to continental European jurists in the seventeenth century. They lived in a different world from American colonists of European descent because they had no direct experience of slave holding and no immediate financial involvement. Their interest stemmed from the fact that their education was in Roman law; and not only was Roman law the most revered system, but slaves were prominent in it. For the jurists' attitudes we must remember that, at least in theory, there were no slaves in territories such as the Dutch Republic, Germany, or France. …