The Regulations of Robbers

Book excerpt: In The Regulations of Robbers, Christina Accomando examines legal, political, and literary discourses of slavery and resistance through the works of judges, lawmakers, and former slaves. She builds on the words of Harriet Jacobs - I regarded such laws as the regulations of robbers, who had no rights that I was bound to respect - and advocates a methodology of multiple perspectives, exposing the false neutrality of legal discourse and turning attention to stories that have been suppressed. Accomando analyzes Sojourner Truth (who initiated lawsuits and petitioned Congress) and Harriet Jacobs (who shaped her autobiography into legal critique) as legal actors who challenged nineteenth-century legal constructions of African Americans. She argues that laws governing slave behavior, racial identity, miscegenation, rape, reproduction, literacy, and property defined. African Americans as nonhumans, with dangerous sexuality and nonexistent subjectivity. She traces how nineteenth-century constructions of race and gender continue to inform modern policy discussions. Accomando's analysis of slavery and resistance reveals the entrenched racism in U.S. law and also points to concrete opportun