Law school project finds slavery citations still being used today

March 1, 2025 Story by: Editor

EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A landmark 1842 U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the kidnapping conviction of a white man who forced a Black family into slavery beyond the Mason-Dixon line remains relevant in American legal discourse more than 160 years after slavery was abolished.

The ruling in Prigg v. Pennsylvania has been cited in 274 subsequent cases, according to the Citing Slavery Project at Michigan State University . This case is one of over 7,000 slavery-era legal precedents that continue to shape judicial decisions today, said Justin Simard, a law professor and the project’s director.

This ongoing legal influence stands in contrast to efforts by the Trump administration and Republican-led state officials to limit discussions about America’s racial history in classrooms.

“Because people are invested in trying to pretend that our history of slavery didn’t happen and that its effects are not still with us,” Simard told The Associated Press, “I thought, what better way to prove that slavery had an influence on our legal system than using official legal sources?”

The Lasting Impact of Slavery in U.S. Legal Precedents

Many of these precedents revolve around property rights, which were safeguarded by the U.S. Constitution—a document drafted by wealthy landowners at a time when slavery was a cornerstone of the nation’s economy.

In Prigg v. Pennsylvania , the Supreme Court ruled that Pennsylvania’s anti-slavery law violated the federal Fugitive Slave Act, siding with Edward Prigg, who had kidnapped Margaret Morgan and her children and taken them to Maryland to be enslaved.

The court justified its decision by stating that the Constitution explicitly granted “to the citizens of the slaveholding states the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every state in the Union, into which they might escape from the state where they were held in servitude.”

The ruling further emphasized that the framers of the Constitution considered the slaveholder’s right to “this species of property” so essential that, without it, “the Union could not have been formed.”

Even after slavery was abolished with the 13th Amendment in 1865, Prigg continued to be cited, particularly in cases dealing with property law and disputes over state versus federal power, Simard noted.

How Slavery-Era Laws Still Shape Modern Jurisprudence

The persistent use of slavery-based precedents underscores how these legal doctrines still influence court rulings today, said Leonard Mungo, a Michigan-based civil rights and employment discrimination attorney.

“The unashamed use of human beings as property and as the foundation for the development of jurisprudence regarding property law is the same reason courts across this country rarely find violations of civil rights in employment and other contexts in its rulings and decisions,” Mungo said.

This legal legacy has also affected white litigants. In a 1989 Supreme Court ruling, Prigg was referenced in a decision that overturned most of an $850,000 judgment awarded to a white Texas football coach. The coach had argued that he was reassigned and demoted from a predominantly Black high school because of his race.

However, in some instances, slavery-era precedents have been used to reinforce civil rights protections. In 2016, dissenting justices on the Iowa Supreme Court cited the Fugitive Slave Act’s influence on the state’s constitution in arguing that people arrested but not yet formally charged should be entitled to private, in-person attorney consultations. They pointed out that even enslaved individuals had been granted the right to legal counsel, suggesting that the same protection should apply to a man accused of driving under the influence. Despite this argument, the dissenting justices were outvoted 4-3.

Uncovering the Depth of Slavery’s Legal Legacy

While researching his dissertation, Simard found that Northern judges in the 19th century frequently referenced slavery-era cases. He was surprised to discover just how widespread and recent these citations remained.

“I kept digging and digging and digging and realizing that this wasn’t something just one judge did or some very racist judge or something,” Simard said. “This was just a basic feature of the legal system and it really shocked me, really surprised me.”

His research team has identified more than 12,000 slavery-related rulings, and they continue to analyze their legal citations.

Many legal professionals remain unaware of these cases' origins or consider them just another part of established legal doctrine, Simard noted. “Not only are we ratifying their treatment as property in the past but also continuing to treat them as property in the present.”

Acknowledging and Addressing the Issue

Simard’s team successfully petitioned the editors of The Bluebook , the legal citation guide, to include notations such as “enslaved party” or “enslaved person at issue” in case of citations.

“I think just eliminating these cases is impossible,” Simard said. “I think the best approach that lawyers and judges can take is to be thoughtful when they find these cases and cite these cases and to consider whether the law that these cases stand for is still good or not.”

Dylan Penningroth , a law and history professor at the University of California-Berkeley , agreed.

“These slavery cases are everywhere,” Penningroth said. “How are we ever going to get them all off the book? One answer is you don’t really have to. If lawyers stop relying on these cases, they lose their power.”

For Michigan Appeals Court Judge Adrienne Young, acknowledging these cases' history is crucial. She remarked, “The real harm is in failing to acknowledge the horrific history.” Source: AP News