@sonofdavid
Assistant Professor at UChicago Law. Researching police, prisons, abolition, and the 13th amendment. Views, for better or worse, are my own. Things I wrote: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=4329951 Background by Oscar Joyo
If you want to learn more about how all this works, you can read my articles Administrative Enslavement, and No Exceptions: The New Movement to Abolish Slavery and Involuntary Servitude.
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www.columbialawreview.org/content/admi...
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The TL;DR here is simple.
If Polis believes his prisons don’t use involuntary servitude, there are lots of ways to give legal effect to that belief.
Of course, much of this was taken out of the governor’s hands by Colorado voters in 2018 when they passed a slavery and involuntary servitude ban without an Except Clause.
My point is that Polis is leaving the creation of a state free of involuntary servitude to the courts, but he doesn’t have to.
And in Colorado, the threat of, and potential deterrent effect of, damages seems particularly acute because it is one of the few states that abolished qualified immunity as a matter of state law.
A skeptic might wonder why any of this would make a difference.
My answer to that is simple: civil rights damages.
If incarcerated people have Thirteenth Amendment rights, or similar rights as a matter of state law, then both federal and state actions provide damages.
Likewise, prosecutors’ offices could make clear that the punishment of involuntary servitude is not one that they seek.
And in the case of plea bargains, they and defense attorneys could negotiate that the punishment of servitude is explicitly excluded as part of the bargain.
The Colorado Department of Corrections could promulgate a regulation that does what I’ve just described: clarifies that incarcerated people retain their constitutional right to be free of involuntary servitude, and adopt the federal laws that protect against servitude.
So Polis could help to draft and pass legislation that says, in effect, that incarcerated people in Colorado *do* have their full Thirteenth Amendment rights, contra what federal courts have assumed.
What else might he push? Regulation and prosecutorial practice.
If incarcerated people had the full suite of Thirteenth Amendment rights that the rest of us do, it would undermine the level of control prison administrators purport to need to control them.
Even giving prisoners the well recognized right to quit would significantly enhance prisoner labor power.
Tellingly, no jurisdiction that I’ve found does this. They almost all just stay quiet on the question and then have some other, separate regulations about prison labor.
And I’ll give you my guess as to why things work this way:
But let’s assume that Polis doesn’t want to rely on that exception. Good!
Here’s how to make sure Colorado doesn’t take advantage of that carve out.
The broadest way would be by statute. Make explicit that Colorado does not include in its criminal punishments slavery or involuntary servitude.
First, the problem with Polis’s claim is the federal courts. For decades now, they have pretty uniformly and bluntly said that prisoners can be forced to work because they fall into the Thirteenth Amendment’s exception for punishment of a crime.
Governor Polis defends against this case by saying that the work incarcerated people do in the state isn’t involuntary servitude.
If he—or other politicians, prosecutors, or administrators—believes that, I’m happy to explain to them how they can put their money where their mouth is. 🧵
Glad to see this case continuing to move forward.
Over 100 years after the Thirteenth Amendment, voters are choosing to end slavery and involuntary servitude without exception. Judges and legislators shouldn’t undermine that choice.
Lil Jon will be so disappointed.
Yep. You’re going to say “fuck tha police” one day and a month later you won’t be able to get through TSA.
Please contribute information to the 2026 law school entry level hiring report. prawfsblawg.com/lawsky-entry...
BREAKING: U.S. Customs and Border Protection detained three U.S. citizens and three Green Card holders, including an Evanston resident, at O'Hare Thrusday afternoon
At least one, an Evanston woman, is currently being held at Broadview's ICE facility, her sister told me
Good try.
Too bad he had Isiah Thomas and Barack Obama come up right after him and let him know we don’t care about no time right now.
Was thrilled to be asked to contribute to this issue. I talk about some interesting parts of the history of slavery and continuing fights to end its modern incarnations, but the thesis of the piece is simple:
In this moment, stand up and fight back. It’s worth it, and you won’t be standing alone.
Professors @sonofdavid.bsky.social and @jocelynsimonson.bsky.social encourage scholars to look to bottom-up sources of knowledge for a richer understanding of the relationships between law, politics, economics, and the material world.
Functionally, yeah probably.
Doctrinally, I’ve been convinced for a couple years that their end goal is to make every type of race-conscious policymaking unconstitutional.
In practice, that means… yeah, what you said.
I’m guessing Alito calling the remedy of a race-conscious redrawn district to prevent dilution of minority votes “unadorned racial discrimination” is a preview of what we’re about to see in the VRA case.
Would also explain the weird procedural reach. They’re just jumping the gun by a few weeks.
Every time I repost it, it's because I've seen posts that can lead to jail time.
Every single time I post it, someone comes out and is like 'FUCK YEAH MAKE THOSE POSTS'
And I think what a fucking wanker, to have *shitposting* being the hill to die on, not actual doing anything, just SHITPOSTING
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“How many of these gentle people have I helped to kill just by paying my taxes?" June Jordan, 1984
Dayum. Just heard a minister say, as perhaps only Black ministers can, “We will fight until hell freezes over, and then we will fight on the ice.”
I’m stealing that!!
Held: IEEPA does not authorize the President to impose tariffs. The judgment in No. 24–1287 is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction; the judgment in No. 25– 250 is affirmed.
Supreme Court: IEEPA does not authorize the president to impose tariffs.
www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
As much as self-promotion still feels incredibly awkward, I talk about this at length in Structural Abolition Constitutionalism, which I’m happy to send a draft of to whoever might like to check it out.
What Toobin is searching for is abolition constitutionalism (or something abolition constitutionalism adjacent). There are a bunch of liberal/Left scholars theorizing it, or theorizing methods related to it (like The Originalism Trap). And both Sotomayor and Jackson have already used its methods.
That’s an Ohio thing. I got the same requirement while I was there.