Are Persons Property?: Legal Debates About Property and Personality (Applied Legal Philosophy)

The idea that persons are now all free and equal is supposed to be fundamental to modern liberal legal systems. However, this text questions that ideal. It looks at slavery and the philosophical and legal reasonings as to why it should no longer exist, but reminds us that this is not the case. It appears though that slavery is not the only situation whereby a person could be considered property, and this work seeks to prove the point. In the course of the book the authors suggest that in a number of important respects, persons can still be rendered unfree and effectively reduced to something akin to the property of another in certain situations and under certain conditions. The text also questions the purity of the modern property/personality distinction.