Creating Law through Regulating Intimacy: The Case of Slave Marriage in Nineteenth-Century New York and the United States

IF 0.8 3区 社会学 Q1 HISTORY
L. Feldman
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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that American jurists fashioned new understandings about the capacity of states to legislate about marriage through regulating the intimate lives of enslaved and newly freed individuals. This article does so through analyzing the creation and impact of a little-studied 1809 law in New York that legalized the marriages of enslaved people—while individuals were still enslaved—as part of the state's process of gradual emancipation, which occurred from 1799 to 1827. In New York, by legalizing enslaved people's marriages, jurists privatized financial liabilities within soon-to-be freed families. The law stood at odds with national juridical understanding about marital regulation. Jurists in the early republic were uncertain about whether states could legislate about matrimony. Southern states after the Civil War then cited and replicated New York's logic in legislating to legalize the marriages of freedpeople, similarly privatizing financial claims within families. In the cases of both New York and national emancipation, jurists, in choosing privatization, foreclosed possibilities for a different or broader vision of state support for freedpeople, such as reparations. After making marital laws about slavery, both New York and Southern states created and/or tightened their marriage laws, further inscribing understandings of the marital family into American governance. This piece contributes to historiographies of slavery, the American state, and intimacy.
通过规范亲密关系创造法律——以19世纪纽约和美国的奴隶婚姻为例
摘要本文认为,美国法学家通过规范被奴役者和刚获得自由的个人的亲密生活,对各州立法婚姻的能力形成了新的理解。本文通过分析纽约州1809年一项很少被研究的法律的产生和影响来实现这一点,该法律使被奴役的人的婚姻合法化,而个人仍然被奴役,这是该州从1799年到1827年逐渐解放的过程的一部分。在纽约,通过使被奴役者的婚姻合法化,法学家将即将获得自由的家庭的财务负债私有化。这项法律与国家对婚姻管理的司法理解不一致。共和国早期的法学家们不确定各州是否可以就婚姻立法。南北战争结束后,南方各州在立法中引用并复制了纽约的逻辑,使自由人的婚姻合法化,类似地将家庭内部的财务主张私有化。在纽约和全国解放的案例中,法学家们在选择私有化的过程中,排除了国家对自由人的支持的一种不同的或更广泛的可能性,比如赔偿。在制定了关于奴隶制的婚姻法之后,纽约和南方各州都制定和/或加强了他们的婚姻法,进一步将对婚姻家庭的理解铭刻到美国的治理中。这篇文章为奴隶制、美国国家和亲密关系的历史编纂做出了贡献。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
1.10
自引率
12.50%
发文量
42
期刊介绍: Law and History Review (LHR), America"s leading legal history journal, encompasses American, European, and ancient legal history issues. The journal"s purpose is to further research in the fields of the social history of law and the history of legal ideas and institutions. LHR features articles, essays, commentaries by international authorities, and reviews of important books on legal history. American Society for Legal History
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