Because it used to be legal to own people.
Do you not think that in the long-run that our law will make all that is universally agreed to be unethical and harmful to others also illegal?
What I'm saying is law marches in the direction of ever improving it's fit to society. You seem to throw that out the window and think of law as some unrelated and untrustable thing.
Right, we're all in agreement here. Law should conform to society, society need not conform to law. When the law is wrong, we can resist it, and when the law is absent, we can replace it.