East Lansing, Michigan—A U.S. Supreme Court decision dating back to 1842, which nullified the kidnapping conviction of a white man who took a Black family and sold them into slavery, remains influential in modern American legal systems 160 years after the abolition of slavery in the United States.
Known as Prigg v. Pennsylvania, this ruling has been referenced in 274 subsequent court decisions, according to data from the Citing Slavery Project at Michigan State University. This citation history is part of more than 7,000 references to slavery-law precedents that continue to shape legal arguments and court judgments, as explained by Justin Simard, law professor and director of the project.
The ongoing investigation into how slavery-related legal principles affect current laws serves as a contrast to initiatives led by the Trump administration and officials from Republican-led states that aim to minimize discussions about the history of race in America within educational settings.
Simard argues that despite efforts to erase the history and ongoing impact of slavery, historical legal documents clearly illustrate that slavery had a significant influence on the development of the legal system. By demonstrating this through verified legal sources, the project brings evidence to counter narratives that attempt to diminish or deny the existence of this dark chapter in American history.
Much of the legal precedence established during the slavery period revolves around property rights protected by the U.S. Constitution. This document was crafted by affluent property owners during a time when the young nation’s economy was largely built on the labor of enslaved individuals. The Supreme Court underscored the significance of slavery in America’s origins when it declared that Pennsylvania’s anti-slavery law conflicted with the federal Fugitive Slave Act and ruled in favor of Edward Prigg, an individual responsible for forcing Margaret Morgan and her children into slavery in Maryland.
The court stated that the U.S. Constitution conferred upon citizens of slaveholding states the unchallenged right and ownership title over their slaves as property within any state across the Union. Slavery was such a pivotal consideration for the framers of the Constitution that the Union, as implied by the justices, might not have materialized without its inclusion.
The abolition of slavery came with the adoption of the 13th Amendment in 1865, yet the legal citation of Prigg has frequently occurred in following years, predominantly in property law cases and in determining the delineation between state and federal authority, according to Simard.
The persistence of such citations shows that slavery’s legacy isn’t merely a historical blemish addressed by the 13th Amendment. Instead, these precedents continue to subtly undermine modern jurisprudence, says Leonard Mungo, a civil rights and employment discrimination lawyer based in Michigan. He explains that the historic view of people as property laid the groundwork for property law, which contributes to the tendency of courts to dismiss civil rights violations in various legal contexts.
This issue affects people beyond the minority communities, evidenced by a 1989 Supreme Court ruling that cited Prigg while largely overturning a hefty judgment for a white football coach who claimed racial discrimination led to his career demotion. On some occasions, legal precedents rooted in slavery are used to bolster civil rights arguments. For instance, a 2016 Iowa Supreme Court case saw dissenting justices claim that an accused individual’s right to counsel was grounded in historical legal protections extended even to enslaved persons. Despite the dissent, the majority of the court opted not to acknowledge this historical context.
Simard embarked on his research journey while compiling evidence for a dissertation and soon realized that the citations of slave cases in the North during the 19th century were more prevalent and recent than he initially believed. This discovery revealed a fundamental characteristic of the legal system that continues to surprise him. To date, Simard’s team has identified over 12,000 slavery-related rulings, with ongoing efforts to track their citations.
Many legal professionals remain unaware of these rulings’ origins or undisturbed by the fact that humans were treated as property in these precedents, regarding them merely as typical law. Consequently, Simard’s team has worked with The Bluebook, a legal citation manual, to encourage the inclusion of terms such as “enslaved party” in legal references.
Simard maintains that it is impractical to eradicate these cases entirely from legal proceedings. Instead, he suggests that lawyers and judges carefully consider the relevance and justice of relying on these historical precedents. This perspective aligns with Dylan Penningroth, a scholar in law and history, who asserts that discontinuing the reliance on such cases would diminish their influence in courtrooms.
Adrienne Young, a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals, emphasizes that recognizing and acknowledging the past atrocities associated with these precedents is essential to overcoming the damaging aspects of history. She indicates that ignoring these references does harm in failing to learn from a grim but critical layer of the American legal process.
