Fugitive Slave Clause

Not to be confused with the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 or any of the similarly named fugitive slave laws.

The Fugitive Slave Clause in the United States Constitution, also known as either the Slave Clause or the Fugitives From Labor Clause,[1][2][3][4] is Article IV, Section 2, Clause 3, which requires a "Person held to Service or Labour" (usually a slave, apprentice, or indentured servant) who flees to another state to be returned to his or her master in the state from which that person escaped. The enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which abolished slavery except as a punishment for criminal acts, has made the clause mostly irrelevant.

  1. ^ Hall, Kermit. The Oxford Companion to the Supreme Court of the United States, p. 925 (Oxford U. Press 2005).
  2. ^ Salzman, Jack et al. Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, p. 2469 (Macmillan Library Reference, 1996).
  3. ^ Finkelman, Paul. Slavery & the Law, p. 25 n. 62 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002).
  4. ^ Best, Stephen. The Fugitive's Properties: Law and the Poetics of Possession, p. 80  (U. Chicago Press 2010).