Slavery - Constitutional Law I

Slavery

1. The Constitution of the United States provides:

   1. "A person charged in any state with treason, felony or other crime, who shall flee from justice, and be found in another state, shall, on demand of the executive authority of the state from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the state having jurisdiction of the crime." Art. IV, § 2, cl. 2

   2. "No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor; but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due." Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3

      1. BUT, note that this provision of the Constitution was changed by the Thirteenth Amendment.

2. Prigg v Pennsylvania (1842) (pg. 217)

   1. In Prigg, the Court determined that Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3 created a right of self-help for slaveholders of which had run away slaves. Since the Congress had spoken with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, Congress occupied the field of regulation with respect to run away slaves such that the Pennsylvania law, of which prescribed additional requirements to the federal law, was preempted by the federal law. However, the Court goes further than this and holds that based upon the need for uniformity in protecting this right that "the power of legislation on this subject" is "exclusive to congress." (pg. 222)

   2. Regarding interpretation, the Court noted two important things regarding the proper interpretation of Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3:

      1. First, the Court noted that historically, "the object of [Art. IV, § 2, cl. 3] was to secure to the citizens of the slave-holding states the complete right and title of ownership in their slaves, as property, in every state in the Union into which they might escape from the state where they were held in servitude." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 219)

      2. Secondly, the Court stated that "[i]f, by one mode of interpretation, the right must become shadowy and unsubstantial, and without any remedial power adequate to the end, and by another mode, it will attain its just end and secure its manifest purpose, it would seem upon principles of reasoning, absolutely irresistible, that the latter ought to prevail." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 219)

         • "No court of justice can be authorized so to construe any clause of the constitution as to defeat its obvious ends, when another construction, equally accordant with the words and sense thereof, will enforce and protect them." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 219)

   3. The Court therefore determined that the right to self-help must be recognized.

      1. "The clause manifestly contemplates the existence of a positive, unqualified right on the part of the owner of the slave, which no state law or regulation can in any way qualify, regulate, or restrain." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 220)

      2. "[T]he owner of the slave is clothed with entire authority, in every state of the Union, to seize and recapture his slave, whenever he can do it, without any breach of the peace or illegal violence." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 220)

   4. The Court then noted that "[i]f . . . the constitution guarantees the right, and if it requires the delivery upon the claim of the owner . . . , the natural inference certainly is, that the national government is clothed with the appropriate authority and functions to enforce it. . . ." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 220)

      • But, the Court goes even further and states that "the natural, if not necessary, conclusion is, that the national government, in the absence of all positive provisions to the contrary, is bound, through its own proper departments, legislative, judicial or executive, as the case may require, to carry into effect all the rights and duties imposed upon it by the constitution. . . ." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pp. 221)

   5. Field Preemption

      1. "[I]f Congress have a constitutional power to regulate a particular subject, and they do actually regulate it in a given manner, and in a certain form, it cannot be, that the state legislatures have a right to interfere, and as it were, by way of compliment to the legislation of congress, to prescribe additional regulations, and what they may deem auxiliary provisions for the same purpose." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 221)

      2. "In such a case, the legislation of congress, in what it does prescribe, manifestly indicates, that it does not intend that there shall be any further legislation to act upon the subject." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 221)

         • "Its silence as to what it does not do, is as expressive of what its intention is, as the direct provisions made by it. . . ." Prigg v Pennsylvania (pg. 221)

      3. "[W]here congress has exercised a power oner a particular...