GLC Paper Discussion: “Sex, Antislavery, and Commerce: The Making of American Human Rights”

Professor Stanley will present a chapter from a forthcoming book, “From Slave Emancipation to the Commerce Power: An American History of Human Rights” (Harvard University Press). The paper addresses the wrongs of sex, illuminating the relationship between the limits of the Thirteenth Amendment and the reach of the Commerce Clause and tracing the path of the law that has linked the rights of persons to commercial exchange. It argues that the rules of the market economy have come to penetrate ever more deeply into social existence, and the antislavery distinction between persons and things has eroded—but perversely for ostensibly emancipatory ends. Prof. Stanley welcomes engaged conversation about this work in progress.