“The influence is really, really extensive.”

Justin Simard, an assistant professor at Michigan State University’s College of Law, regarding the approximately 11,000 legal cases involving enslaved people that lawyers and judges continue to cite as good precedent. Simard’s research has found that 18 percent of all published American cases are within two steps of a slave case; approximately 1 million cases use slave cases to back up their arguments. (NPR — June 14, 2023)