Post-emancipation law structurally stripped descendants of remedies for slavery’s injuries.

Evidence

Although it is easy to point to American chattel slavery as the direct instrument of Renty’s and Delia’s disenfranchisement, repressive legislation such as Black Codes and Jim Crow laws, and the indifference of many white Americans to the plight of Black Americans, systemically perpetuated the deprivation of rights of formerly enslaved individuals and their descendants and led to their continued exclusion from many legal protections, even after slavery was legally abolished…. As a result, the plaintiff now faces a legal system several generations later devoid of a sufficient remedy for the injuries and injustices she has faced as a descendant of enslaved Africans and African-Americans. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 1319

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains the doctrinal trap central to the reader’s purpose: why the property claim fails and the emotional-distress claim is the only door left.