The Legal Understanding of Slavery by Allain Jean

Author:Allain, Jean
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2012-04-01T16:00:00+00:00

E. Conclusion

Article 1 of the 1926 Convention should be understood as engaging a general property construction, which seeks to describe ownership in terms of its incidental rights, powers and privileges. Applied to the slavery context, this conception of ownership is useful because it focuses the attention of our enquiry on manifestations of ownership rather than on establishing the existence of some abstract, definite legal relation. Just as in the real world we know ownership through the manifestation of the powers incidentally attached to it, if we accept the 1926 definition we will know slavery when we see those powers being exercised to bring about and facilitate the control of human beings. Moreover, inasmuch as it remains possible for such manifestations to occur even in a world where no state recognises a legal slavery relation, the definition aims at a fundamental distinction between the substance of ownership and the formal recognition of private property rights, countenancing the persistence of the former despite the eradication of the latter. Thus the definition impliedly reminds us that the persistence of de facto ownership relations is possible and worth guarding against, even after we have decided not to tolerate de jure property rights in respect of persons.

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