In this episode, Justin Simard, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Willamette University College of Law, discusses his article "Citing Slavery," which will be published in the Stanford Law Review. Simard begins by observing that courts often cite cases involving slaves as precedent, often without even acknowledging it. He argues that this is a problem, not only because those cases are often bad law, but also because it is wrong to perpetuate the law of slavery. He points out that slave cases were always inflected by the ideology of slavery, and therefore aren't actually reliable precedents. And he reflects on the normative problems with treating slave cases like any other cases. Simard's scholarship is available on SSRN.

This episode was hosted by Brian L. Frye, Spears-Gilbert Associate Professor of Law at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Frye is on Twitter at @brianlfrye.

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