Struggle over Immigration: Indentured Servants, Slaves, and Articles of Commerce, The

People are articles of commerce, or so the United States Supreme Court held in 1941, emphasizing that the issue was "settled beyond question." At the time, Justice Jackson expressed some discomfort with the theory that "the migrations of a human being... [are] commerce." The Court, however, has not wavered from this analytical position. Indeed, like many legal constructs, it has inspired little reflection. My hope is to search for what Toni Morrison describes as "the shadows of the presence from which the text has fled."" I believe that the Court's nineteenth-century opinions on immigration under the Commerce Clause reveal the shadows of slaves and indentured servants.