Cardozo Law Review
Abstract
Professor Schafer's study of the procedures and trials of slavery in antebellum Louisiana provides a superb foundation for an understanding of the criminal law of slavery. It is an understanding that we have long missed. This is particularly true in terms of the trials in the special slave courts (especially the trials of serious crimes in the First Judicial District Court in New Orleans) that were not appealed to the state supreme court after 1846, when appeals were allowed in criminal cases. Professor Schafer, our leading student of nineteenth-century Louisiana slave law, has covered the criminal cases that were appealed in her recent book, Slavery, the Civil Law, and the Supreme Court of Louisiana. Anyone who has tried to find the records of slave trials in that state will appreciate the importance of the material she uses from New Orleans. Often, such files are not available outside the city. For instance, I tried to find such files in Nachitoches, Opelousas, and St. Francisville, with little success. In the first place, it was even to the point of clambering about in the attic of an old courthouse that was about to be destroyed. Old papers were scattered on the floor, with no order, and I could find no records of criminal trials of slaves.
Keywords
Criminal Procedure, Criminal Law and Procedure, Trials, Legal Practice and Procedure, Verdicts
Disciplines
Criminal Law | Criminal Procedure | Law
Recommended Citation
Thomas D. Morris,
Comment on Judith Schafer’s “Under the Present Mode of Trial, Improper Verdicts Are Very Often Give”: Criminal Procedure in the Trials of Slaves in Antebellum Louisiana,
18
Cardozo L. Rev.
689
(1996).
Available at:
https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol18/iss2/17