Legal History

On May 19, 1884, the yacht Mignonette set sail from England on what should have been an uneventful voyage. When their vessel sank in the Atlantic, Captain Thomas Dudley and his crew found themselves adrift in a tiny lifeboat. As days turned to weeks, they faced an unthinkable choice: starve to death or resort to cannibalism. Their decision to sacrifice the youngest – 17-year-old cabin boy Richard Parker – ignited a firestorm of controversy upon their rescue.

One of the great ironies of the Enlightenment was that various societies produced the notion of the inalienable rights of man, bequeathed by God, alongside the long-established and deeply entrenched institution of slavery. As fate would have it, the refusal of Northern states to strictly apply the new fugitive slave law would be explicitly cited in several of the Southern states’ articles of secession in late 1860 and early 1861. In that regard, the Fugitive Slave Act ended up being one of the main tipping points that finally split the nation in two.

Law has played a central role in American history. From colonial times to the present, law has not just reflected the changing society in which legal decisions have been made - it has played a powerful role in shaping that society, though not always in positive ways. Eminent legal scholar G. Edward White offers a compact overview that sheds light on the impact of law on a number of key social issues.

Taking the Dred Scott case of 1857 as his shocking center, Judge Andrew P. Napolitano tells the story of how it happened and, through it, builds a damning case against American statesmen from Lincoln to Wilson, from FDR to JFK.