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The Legal Understanding of Slavery

The Legal Understanding of Slavery From the Historical to the Contemporary

Author: Jean Allain
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780199660469
Published In: October 2012
Format: Hardback , 464 pages
Jurisdiction: U.K. ? Disclaimer:
Countri(es) stated herein are used as reference only

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Traces the evolution of slavery in the law from Roman times to the modern day, offering a thorough historical understanding of slavery
Analyses modern manifestations of slavery - human trafficking and forced labour, against their historical context, aiding understanding of definitional debates
Concludes with a set of guidelines for the understanding of slavery in international law, offering a framework for consistent interpretation of the legal definition of slavery

"Slavery is the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised."

So reads the legal definition of slavery agreed by the League of Nations in 1926. Further enshrined in law during international negotiations in 1956 and 1998, this definition has been interpreted in different ways by the international courts in the intervening years. What can be considered slavery? Should forced labour be considered slavery? Debt-bondage? Child soldiering? Or forced marriage?

This book explores the limits of how slavery is understood in law. It shows how the definition of slavery in law and the contemporary understanding of slavery has continually evolved and continues to be contentious. It traces the evolution of concepts of slavery, from Roman law through the Middle Ages, the 18th and 19th centuries, up to the modern day manifestations, including manifestations of forced labour and trafficking in persons, and considers how the 1926 definition can distinguish slavery from lesser servitudes.

Together the contributors have put together a set of guidelines intended to clarify the law where slavery is concerned. The Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery, reproduced here for the first time, takes their shared understanding of both the past and present to project a consistent interpretation of the legal definition of slavery for the future.

Readership: Academics, scholars, and advanced students of international human rights law and legal history. Historians and sociologists working on slavery.

Bellagio-Harvard Guidelines on the Legal Parameters of Slavery
Introduction
Section 1: Historical Readings of the Law of Slavery
1: Antony Honoré: The Nature of Slavery
2: Richard Helmholz: The Law of Slavery in European ius commune
3: Bernard Freamon: Definition and Conceptions of Slave Ownership in Islamic Law
4: John Cairns: The Definition of Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Thinking: Not the True Roman Slavery
5: Seymour Drescher: From Consensus to Consensus: Slavery in International Law
Section 2: The American Experience: Blurred Boundaries of Slavery
6: Paul Finkelman: Slavery in the United States: Persons or Property?,
7: Allison Mileo Gorsuch: To Indent Oneself: Ownership, Contracts, and Consent in Antebellum Illinois
8: Rebecca Scott: Under Color of Law: Siliadin v. France and the Dynamics of Enslavement in Historical Perspective
9: Stanley Engerman: The Rise, Persistence, and Slow Decline of Legal Slavery
10: William M. Carter, Jr.: The Abolition of Slavery in the United States: Historical Context and its Contemporary Application
Section 3: The 1926 Definition in Context
11: Jean Allain: The Definition of Slavery into the Twenty-First Century
12: Robin Hickey: Seeking to Understand the Definition of Slavery
13: J. E. Penner: The Concept of Property and the Concept of Slavery
14: Joel Quirk: Defining Slavery in all its Forms: Historical Inquiry as Contemporary Instruction
Section 4: Contemporary Slavery
15: Kevin Bales: Slavery in its Contemporary Manifestations
16: Holly Cullen: Contemporary International Legal Norms on Slavery: Problems of Judicial Interpretation and Application
17: Orlando Patterson: Trafficking, Gender, and Slavery: Past and Present
18: Professor Kevin Bales' Response to Professor Orlando Patterson
19: Professor Patterson Rejoiner: A Response to Professor Kevin Bales
Appendices
1926 Slavery Convention
1956 Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery

Edited by Jean Allain, Professor of Public International Law, Queen's University Belfast

Jean Allain is Professor of Public International Law at Queen's University, Belfast. He is Extraordinary Professor, Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is founding Editor of the Irish Yearbook of International Law and the author of The Slavery Conventions (2008) and Slavery in International Law(2012).

Contributors:
Jean Allain is Professor of Public International Law and Director of the Human Rights Centre, Queen's University, Belfast and Extraordinary Professor at the Centre for Human Rights, Faculty of Law, University of Pretoria
Kevin Bales is Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation (WISE), University of Hull, and the co-founder of Free the Slaves, the American sister-organization of Anti-Slavery International
John W. Cairns is Professor of Legal History in the University of Edinburgh
William M. Carter, Jr. is a Professor of Law at the Temple University Beasley School of Law
Holly Cullen is a Winthrop Professor of Law at the University of Western Australia
Seymour Drescher is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh
Stanley L. Engerman is John H. Munro Professor of Economics and Professor of History at the University of Rochester and a visiting professor of economics at Harvard University
Paul Finkelman is President William McKinley Distinguished Professor of Law and Public Policy at Albany Law School
Bernard K. Freamon is Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School and Director of the Law School's Program for the Study of Law in the Middle East and its Zanzibar Program on Modern Day Slavery and Human Trafficking
Allison Mileo Gorsuch is a PhD Candidate at Yale University in the Department of History
R. H. Helmholz is Ruth Wyatt Rosenson Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago
Robin Hickey is Senior Lecturer in Law at Durham University
Tony Honoré is the emeritus Regius Professor of Civil Law in the University of Oxford
James Penner is Professor of Property Law at the Faculty of Laws, University College London
Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University
Joel Quirk is a Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Studies, at the University of the Witwatersrand
Rebecca J. Scott is Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History and Professor of Law at the University of Michigan