Hegel’s Slaves, Blackstone’s Objects, and Hohfeld’s Ghosts: A Comment on Thomas Russell’s Imagery of Slave Auctions

Authors

Jeanne L. Schroeder, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of LawFollow

Abstract

Thomas Russell's wonderful paper A New Image of the Slave Auction is an example of how the best empirical work can result in conclusions that are so obviously "right" that they risk being mistaken as obvious. His paper serves as an important warning against a recurring problem in legal, as well as other scholarship: Picture thinking-in the sense of an unconscious (and as a result, unquestioning and uncritical) acceptance of familiar, traditional, comfortable imagery-so often blinds us.

Keywords

Legal History, Gender and the Law, Slavery, Race and Ethnicity Issues, Civil Rights

Disciplines

Civil Rights and Discrimination | Law | Law and Gender | Law and Race | Legal History

Recommended Citation

Jeanne L. Schroeder, Hegel’s Slaves, Blackstone’s Objects, and Hohfeld’s Ghosts: A Comment on Thomas Russell’s Imagery of Slave Auctions, 18 Cardozo L. Rev. 525 (1996).
Available at: https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/clr/vol18/iss2/9