Reported appellate decisions vastly overstate how courts actually handled slave cases

Evidence

Reported cases, appealed cases, however, were quite exceptional. The Louisiana Supreme Court heard only three civil cases on abuse of slaves during the entire antebellum period. They heard no criminal cases at all on this subject until 1846, and very few thereafter. Life and death on the plantation, day by day, however brutal, never got to court. What did get to court often ended with an acquittal. White juries were reluctant to convict for these offenses. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 1358

Categorization

• XREF: The ch19 point that actual court practice was freer than manuals suggest is here inverted — appellate reports understate day-to-day violence. Both warn against reading reported cases as reality. — connects to: State courts adjudicated liability disputes over leased slave property like any other asset — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 237; Appellate courts must accept a fact-finder’s findings even when wrong — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 388; Omitted variables correlated with race make regression estimates of judicial bias unreliable (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• The Supreme Court’s seventy-one annual decisions are systematically unrepresentative of how law works #corroborates (0.92) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 39
• Appellate courts must accept a fact-finder’s findings even when wrong #corroborates (0.82) — Frederick Schauer, Thinking Like a Lawyer, 388
• Trial court fact-finding errors cannot be remedied on appeal #corroborates (0.80) — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 801
• Omitted variables correlated with race make regression estimates of judicial bias unreliable #qualifies (0.75)