A learned treatise about learned treatises, University, Court, and Slave introduces readers to the professors and jurists who sustained American slavery. Reaching far beyond the standard intellectual histories of pro-slavery thought, Brophy recovers the potent interplay of slaveholding jurisprudence and university curricula in protecting property rights in people and shaping the nature of liberal market society in the nation as a whole. This is a major accomplishment and a significant contribution to the revitalized study of slavery and capitalism.
Alfred L. Brophy is the Judge John J. Parker Distinguished Professor of Law at University of North Carolina and the author of Reparations Pro and Con and Reconstructing the Dreamland.