Thursday, September 20, 2007
Did slavery violate the 5th Amendment?
Among the questions we can reasonably ask about slavery in the United States is whether the institution violated basic constitutional freedoms embodied in either the document's spirit and design, or in specific provisions of the bill of rights. In this article, Kaimipono Wenger makes the theoretical argument that slavery was an intrinsic violation of the takings clause of the 5th Amendment. The article does not proceed from historical premises (the argument relies more upon legal reasoning and logic than historical inquiry) but it broaches an important issue about slavery and the construction of the constitution.
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I understand the idea that putting people into slavery is a violation of the taking clause in that the right to self-property was taken. What about people who were not "taken" into slavery, but were born into it? Would they still deserve the right to get reparations for violation of this clause??
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