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Fugitive Slave Act



  • When Abortion is Criminalized, Can Juries Nullify the Law?

    by Sonali Chakravarti

    Inevitably, a health care provider will be prosecuted under one of the post-Dobbs abortion laws passed by the states. When this happens, will juries be informed by their predecessors who refused to convict defendants charged under the Fugitive Slave Act? 


  • The United States of America v. Robert Morris

    by Jeffrey Amestoy

    The 1851 prosecution of Black attorney Robert Morris for violating the Fugitive Slave Act showed how complicit in the brutality of slavery northern white elites could be. 


  • US v. Sineneng-Smith Echoes the Fugitive Slave Act

    by Alan J. Singer

    A Supreme Court decision in United States v. Sineneng-Smith that broadens the authority of the federal government to suppress the rights of advocates for undocumented immigrants could divide the nation irreparably.



  • There are echoes of the Fugitive Slave Act in today's immigration debate

    by Harold Meyerson

    Just as the slave catchers argued, speciously, that freed Negroes imperiled the antebellum North, today's anti-immigrant forces, beginning with Trump, argue that immigrants pose a threat to public safety, though crime has fallen precipitously during the past quarter-century.