$40G tuition and we still have to educate ourselves
Slavery.
This is an obvious place to begin. Was slavery ever so much as mentioned in your 1L Contracts or Property classes? How is it that 300 years of American history can slip through the cracks of our syllabi?
This is an obvious place to begin. Was slavery ever so much as mentioned in your 1L Contracts or Property classes? How is it that 300 years of American history can slip through the cracks of our syllabi?
posted by subcom at 9/23/2004 11:20:00 AM
5 Comments:
Probably because lawb school is not history class and is rather intended on teaching you how to practise law. And slavery is no longer legal in the United States. The extent to which you need to know about it probably is Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson.
Charles Garman
Creighton Law
I agree that history influences the law, especially through stare decisis. I disagree however that an indepth study of slavery beyond Plessy and Dred Scott is necessary. We are members of the legal profession now. We have Amendments XIII-XV and the civil rights act to use as the law of the land. Study that!
Eric,
I disagree that my comments boil down to that. At the beginning the thesis was posted that an indepth study of slavery is important to a law education. I am responding with the thesis that a study of slavery has some minor application in constitutional law, but that to be effective lawyers that study does not need to go beyond Dred Scott or Plessy. I also think that the study of slavery is unnecessary in property law which is better served studying Pearson v. Post and the English Common Law roots of American property law.
Maybe my comments could be reduced to Lawyers need to know legally relevant history but shouldn't go overboard.
That being said, as Americans we should study that period in our history, but law school does not have the task to make us better Americans, but rather to make us effective counselors for our clients.
Fine, explain to me why you think a study of slavery is important to property law.
So, being a 1L, I have not yet taken property, but I find it interesting that this discussion assumes that all slavery is illegal in this country. While I agree with why slavery is relevant to property in the terms that Eric explains, there is also another aspect:
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
As you can see, the Thirteenth Amendment abolishes slavery except as punishment. Essentially this means that prisoners can be slaves. This clause led to the establishment of convict-lease programs immediately after the end of the Civil War. Currently, this clause can be used to justify the use of prison labor for the vast prison industrial complex. One might say that this is not relevant because prisoners lose their freedom through due process and don't do that much labor anyway. In reality, you can probably take a look at your college dorm furniture and find it in a prison industry authority catalogue - the industry is profiting immensely from prison labor. In addition, the conviction rates of people of color are disproportionate to the number of arrests, demonstrating a clear bias. The question then arises is this a new slave labor system? Are prisoners property of the state? Again, I have not yet taken property, so I am not sure about the details, but slavery certainly seems relevant to current law and is at the very least worth discussing.
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