Description
Book SynopsisIn this book, Alan Watson argues that the slave laws of North and South America–the written codes defining the relationship of masters to slaves–reflect not so much the culture and society of the various colonies but the legal traditions of England, Europe, and ancient Rome.
Trade ReviewArguing that the slave laws of North and South America reflect more the legal traditions of England, Europe, and ancient Rome than the sociocultural traits of the various colonies, Watson has produced a fine study on the law of slavery. . . . Watson has ably demonstrated the relationship of law, legal rules, and institutions to the society in which they exist. Recommended for libraries with holdings in slavery, comparative slavery, and comparative law.
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Despite the enormous growth of literature on the law of slavery, in this book Alan Watson, a law professor and author of numerous books on Roman law, attends to a neglected aspect of the law of slavery. He cogently summarizes, for an academic audience, the influence of Roman law on the law of slavery in the colonial New World. The author also argues that the formal legal rules maintained by legal elites were an autonomous variable controlling slave societies. Because most contemporary studies of the law of slavery treat formal law and legal traditions as a dependent, or an intervening, variable shaping the law in action, this work returns to the model of change dominating legal historical scholarship before scholars adopted concepts from the legal realist movement.
