THE BONDSMAN BURDEN - AN ECONOMIC-ANALYSIS OF THE JURISPRUDENCE OF SLAVES AND COMMON CARRIERS

Antebellum judges played crucial roles in resolving conflicts between slaveowners and common-carrier owners. Because courts could easily qua ntify the value of a slave's life, they were quicker to compensate sla veowners for slaves injured or killed by a common carrier than to awar d damages to an injured free person or his estate. Yet judges also had to craft rules governing the behavior of the slave property itself. B y the 1860s, Southern courts had established law that encouraged parti es with legal standing to act efficiently. Strikingly, tort doctrines developed in slave cases foreshadowed the evolution of law for free ac cident victims.