During a recent conversation, Harvard Law School Professor Randall Kennedy explained how his book, “Say It Loud!: On Race, Law, History, & Culture,” written in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, jumps across a broad range of controversial topics, from the memorialization of racist historical figures to the limits of Brown v. Board of Education. He also shared hopes that his work will provide a fresh perspective on historical topics such as the Nat Turner slave rebellion and the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1854.
Kennedy was joined by Professor Martha Minow for the latest installment of the regular book talk series hosted by the Harvard Law School Library featuring works by Harvard Law faculty. Prompted by Minow, Kennedy was eager to share his inspiration for several chapters in the book. Kennedy explained how the chapter “Anthony Burns and the Terrible Relevancy of the Fugitive Slave Act,” for example, stemmed from a thought experiment he undertook in years past.
“There used to be a program in which federal judges from all around the country would come here for two or three days and the faculty here would interact with the judges,” Kennedy recalled. “I chose as my subject the Fugitive Slave Act of 1854, which empowers slave masters to recapture their enslaved property all over the United States. The question is — let’s imagine we are in 1856 at Harvard Law School, let’s imagine that somebody bursts in the door, and says, ‘There is a fugitive slave in Boston, and he is jailed. What are we going to do about it?’”
Kennedy said he found the experiment’s results noteworthy.
“I did this at least five times and one thing that I thought was really striking was there was not one judge who brought up the question of nullification or urged lying about it,” he recounted. “None of the judges were willing to do that. I would push them — on one hand, we have the law. And on the other, there’s justice. Are you willing to cross that line? None of them were.”
Read more at
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/at-a-harvard-law-library-book-talk-kennedy-revisits-say-it-loud/
