Intercultural Human Rights Law Review
First Page
211
Abstract
Historian Sir Lewis Namier once remarked that people tend to "imagine the past and remember the future" when conceptualizing historical periods and events.' Author William M. Wiecek applied this Namierism to the fierce debate over slavery in America in the late 1800s when he wrote, "[w]hen they thought and wrote about some historical problem, such as the framers' actual intentions, abolitionists (and defenders of slavery, too) imagined the past in terms of their wishful thinking. When they tried to decry and influence the future, they 'remembered' it along synthetic lines sketched by their historical imagining." Today, the philosophical debate over the socio-political constructs of slavery is over, as the U.S. Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment, numerous federal and state statutes, and international law all serve the purpose of providing unequivocal legal foundations for outlawing slavery in America and in the whole world in all forms. However, when viewed within the contextual confines of 21st century international commerce, the fortuitous words of Namier still ring hauntingly true as the discussion turns to the applied effectiveness of these legal instruments.
Recommended Citation
Kevin Bales & Becky Cornell,
The Next Step in the Fight against Human Trafficking: Outlawing the Trade in Slave-Made Goods,
1
Intercultural Hum. Rts. L. Rev.
211
(2006).
Available at:
https://scholarship.stu.edu/ihrlr/vol1/iss1/18