Comment on Judith Schafer’s <i>“Under the Present Mode of Trial, Improper Verdicts Are Very Often Given”: Criminal Procedure in the Trials of Slaves in Antebellum Louisiana</i>

This Response to Professor Schafer's essay, "Under the Present Mode of Trial, Improper Verdicts are Very Often Given": Criminal Procedure Trials of Slaves in Antebellum Louisiana, is divided into two parts. First, it raises some questions about the three things Professor Schafer attempts to do in her essay. Second, this Response discusses an issue that several commentators have remarked upon over the years-namely, that criminal procedure is the area of Southern slave law that has come closest to according slaves the same protections accorded to free persons.