Adam A. Davidson

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Volume 92.8
No Exceptions: The New Movement to Abolish Slavery and Involuntary Servitude
Adam A. Davidson
Assistant Professor of Law, The University of Chicago Law School.

Thanks to Laura Appleman, Monica Bell, Tan Boston, Curtis Bradley, Emily Buss, Adam Chilton, Justin Driver, Jessica Eaglin, Sheldon Evans, Lee Fennell, James Forman, Cynthia Godsoe, Nyamagaga Gondwe, Bernard Harcourt, Hajin Kim, Brian Leiter, Aaron Littman, Jamelia Morgan, Renagh O’Leary, Farah Peterson, James Gray Pope, Eric Posner, Judith Resnik, Mara Revkin, Anna Roberts, Cristina Rodríguez, Jocelyn Simonson, Kate Skolnick, Fred Smith, Stephen Smith, David Strauss, I. India Thusi, Christopher Williams, and Quinn Yeargain for thoughtful comments and conversations, and the participants of The University of Chicago Faculty Workshop, Northwestern Faculty Workshop, Yale Public Law Workshop, CrimFest, Decarceration Workshop, and Criminal Justice Roundtable for their helpful engagement. Thanks also to the editors at The University of Chicago Law Review for their excellent editorial support. The author thanks the Paul H. Leffmann Fund for research support.

In recent years, many states passed constitutional amendments prohibiting modern day slavery in the form of forced prison labor allowed by the Thirteenth Amendment. However, the state amendments' text alone has not ended prison slavery in those states. This Article examines why. It grounds its discussion in the history of American slavery after the Civil War as well as the various attempts of legislation, litigation, and constitutional amendments to dismantle forced prison labor. Drawing on this discussion, it suggests how organizers might craft these amendments and how judges and lawyers should interpret them. It argues that, ultimately, amending constitutional text alone is not enough. To achieve their goals amendments must work in tandem with litigation, governmental structural reform, and the inevitable political battles that arise over the shape of the criminal legal system.

Antiracism Constitutional Law State Law
Online
Essay
Personalized Law, Political Power, and the Dangerous Few
Adam A. Davidson
Adam Davidson is a Harry A. Bigelow Teaching Fellow and Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School.

He thanks Omri Ben-Shahar, Ariel Porat, and the participants in the Personalized Law Symposium for their discussion and suggestions. He also thanks Aneil Kovvali and Elizabeth Reese for their suggestions on an earlier draft and the University of Chicago Law Review Online editors for their work on the piece.

Professors Omri Ben-Shahar and Ariel Porat paint a fascinating picture of a potentially very different legal future in Personalized Law: Different Rules for Different People.

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Guido Calabresi’s “Other Justice Reasons”
Adam A. Davidson
Harry A. Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law, The University of Chicago Law School.

Thank you to John Rappaport, Elizabeth Reese, and Ryan Sakoda for your insightful comments. To the Honorable Guido Calabresi, thank you for your inspiration, your advice, and your community.

The Honorable Guido Calabresi (or Guido, as he requests seemingly everyone he meets personally to call him) is among the most-respected and most-cited legal scholars of all time. The reason for this is obvious: his work has reshaped our fundamental understandings of how the law affects our lives.

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