The Legal Profession Must Confront Its Role in Slavery

Acknowledging and discussing the modern citation of slave cases is a first step. The Citing Slavery Project provides a database of slave cases and the modern cases that continue to cite them as precedent. American slavery generated thousands of legal disputes. Lawyers legitimized slavery by fitting cases involving enslaved people into standard legal categories. The law of slavery became an important part of American law. Such support from lawyers helped slave commerce function. American courts directly participated in slave commerce, frequently auctioning enslaved people to satisfy debts. These sales even took place on courthouse steps. Courthouse auctions forcibly separated families. They helped enslavers to concentrate economic power. After emancipation, lawyers continued to treat slave cases as good law. They even enforced debts based on contracts for enslaved people. The failure of the legal profession to grapple with its role in the law of slavery is a failure of transitional justice. Lawyers have obscured their role in slavery by never fully acknowledging it. Today, American judges and lawyers continue to cite slave cases for fundamental legal propositions. These citation practices cause serious harm and reveal the legal profession’s ethical limitations.Justin Simard, assistant professor, Michigan State University College of Law, has research that studies the modern citation of slavery and will present on this topic.