Title

Under Color of Law: Siliadin v. France and the Dynamics of Enslavement in Historical Perspective

Authors

Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

When is it appropriate to apply the term ‘slavery’—a concept that appears to rest on a property right—to patterns of exploitation in contemporary society, when no state extends formal recognition to the possibility of the ownership of property in a human being? Historians, who generally position themselves as enemies of anachronism, may be particularly resistant to the use of an ancient term to describe a twenty-first century reality. And jurists have often been understandably reluctant to employ a word whose historical meaning was so closely tied to a specific property relationship that has long since been abolished in Europe and the Americas.

Comments

Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press.

Publication Information & Recommended Citation

Scott, Rebecca J. "Under Color of Law: Siliadin v. France and the Dynamics of Enslavement in Historical Perspective." In The Legal Understanding of Slavery: From the Historical to the Contemporary, edited by J. Allain, 152-64. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.