> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
It may not be chattel slavery.
By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same
We don't force deadbeat dads to work; we force them to make payments. You can sell assets, use savings, beg/borrow/steal, but you're obligated to make the payments.
If we assigned a job to deadbeat dads, that would be involuntary servitude. (Certain levels of avoiding child support payments being a crime, this is currently Constitutionally permissible, but uncommon.)
> By the legal definition of kidnapping, putting someone in jail could be considered to be kidnapping yet everyone knows very well that it just isn't the same
No. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1201
The second word in the definition is unlawfully. Putting someone in jail via due process is not unlawful. I know we all like to think of Congress as entirely feckless, but the interns writing the regs typically aren't idiots.
And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous.
If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that. You're being either daft or disingenuous, or both.
But it is, if unpaid, slavery.
> And I'm not a constitutional lawyer, but it seems to me that "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted" qualifies "involuntary servitude", not "slavery". And in any case, lawyers like to err on the side of ruling out any possible misinterpretation, no matter how ridiculous.
No. The distinction between the two is that involuntary servitude covers being forced to work while being paid or otherwise compensated; a slave, in contrast, doesn't get paid. Both are forced labor, but one is slavery. US prison labor may be one or the other, depending on payment.
(An English teacher would also sigh at you for your parsing of the clauses, I suspect. Your interpretation would require a different arrangement of the commas, i.e. Neither slavery COMMA nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted COMMA shall exist within the United States...)
> If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that.
Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk.
Do you have a citation for this claim?
> > If one was with a child, and the child saw a chain gang working, and the child asked "Are they slaves?", no sane person would say "yes" and leave it at that.
> Correct, because at a glance, you don't know if it's forced labor. Some states do voluntary work gangs; in some scenarios it's even considered a perk.
What if the adult in the scenario happens to know that the prisoners are not being paid? Then you think the correct answer to the child's question is "Yes, those are slaves"? With no further qualification necessary?
> The words involuntary servitude have a "larger meaning than slavery." "It was very well understood that, in the form of apprenticeship for long terms, as it had been practiced in the West India Islands, on the abolition of slavery by the English government, or by reducing the slaves to the condition of serfs attached to the plantation, the purpose of the article might have been evaded if only the word 'slavery' had been used."
If there wasn't a distinction between the two, the Amendment wouldn't need to mention both.
If I see forced unpaid laborers, I'm entirely comfortable deeming them slaves. (They'll probably learn about similar forms of slavery in history class; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_ancient_Rome, for example. In current affairs, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_21st_century)
> If I see forced unpaid laborers, I'm entirely comfortable deeming them slaves.
Yeah, you're comfortable with it because you've redefined "slavery" to mean whatever you want it to mean. But if you did a survey of native English speakers, and asked them if unpaid workers on a chain gang were slaves, how many do you think would say "yes", without qualification? I would be shocked if the answer were more than 20%.
"If you don't work (or someone who loves you doesn't work for you), you don't eat."
The alternative is manifestly unjust: A prisoner who might have killed 20 people gets to just live life, and can't be ordered to even keep the cell doors clean.
To keep them separate from the society they're having trouble safely engaging with.
> We're restricting their right to free movement, which is de-facto slavery.
No; imprisonment and slavery are not the same thing. You can't just redefine words to make your strawman argument work.