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Cardozo Law Review

Abstract

Cheryl Harris demonstrates how intertwining racial and gender boundaries, whose shadows are long, longstanding, and ominous, were initially constructed around the legal principle of human chattel as personal property. She insightfully argues that slavery inextricably linked the concepts of race and property in the American legal imagination; that property originates from rules that are "racially coded" and determined. Cheryl Harris's contribution to this Symposium is a continuation of her project of illuminating how law ratifies and implements a racialized conception of property. This comment considers the application of Professor Harris's argument, that property, in the context of race-based slavery, is properly understood as both a right and a thing, to a review of postbellum apprenticeship cases treating the property rights of ex-slaves.

Keywords

Legal History, Judges, Slavery, Race and Ethnicity Issues

Disciplines

Judges | Law | Law and Race | Legal History

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