(28 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
East Lansing, Michigan – 22 January 2025
1. Various of Michigan State University law professor Justin Simard looking at a book in the school’s law library
2. SOUNDBITE (English) Justin Simard, Michigan State University law professor:
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“Along with a group of students here at the Michigan State University of College Law, I direct the Citing Slavery Project. We chart the continued citation of cases involving enslaved people by modern judges and lawyers.”
3. Various of Simard in the law library
4. SOUNDBITE (English) Justin Simard, Michigan State University law professor:
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“My team and I have found citations of slave cases in the last 25 years in every single state court except Nebraska and in nearly every federal circuit, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. … I think that kind of very normalized treatment of these cases can be really jarring and shocking. I’ve had some students on my team who say they can’t continue reading the cases. It’s just too emotionally draining for them. It’s just too hard, because the way these cases are treated, the way these people are treated just like property, it’s hard to believe that’s part of our legal system.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Detroit – 18 February 2025
5. Various of a slavery exhibit on display at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Bingham Farms, Michigan – 3 February 2025
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6. SOUNDBITE (English) Leonard Mungo, Michigan-based civil rights attorney:
“And this willingness to continue to use and rely upon a body of law that grew out of this inhumane treatment of human beings — treating them as property. That kind of spirit still prevails in our courts. And that’s troubling to me.”
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Detroit – 18 February 2025
7. Various of the Wright Museum’s slavery exhibit
ASSOCIATED PRESS
East Lansing, Michigan – 22 January 2025
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Justin Simard, Michigan State University law professor:
++PARTIALLY COVERED++
“So, what we think judges need to do is grapple with how the law was established, see how it was applied at the time and determine whether its roots in slavery have shaped it negatively today. There might be some law that was developed in slavery that’s good, that we want to keep. But there’s lots of law we might not want to keep, and we think judges, in order to figure that out, need to analyze that law in its context in slavery.”
9. Various of Simard chatting with a reporter inside the MSU law school’s mock court facility
10. Simard in the law library
STORYLINE:
Students at Michigan State University’s law school have found that slavery is still baked into American jurisprudence.
They’ve found thousands of court cases that cite rulings made when Black people were considered property.
Law professor Justin Simard (seh-MARD’) says his Citing Slavery Project challenges lawyers to confront how slavery still influences court cases today. He says many lawyers and judges treat the rulings receive “very normalized treatment.”
At the heart of many of the cases is how the rights of property owners were protected by the U.S. Constitution, which was written by wealthy property owners at a time when much of the young nation’s economy was powered by the buying and selling and sweat of enslaved people.
Simard’s team has compiled a database of thousands of cases and a broader examination of the legal profession’s treatment of slave cases.
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