Forward from Kirksey v. Kirksey: slavery, legal education and the doctrine of consideration

Justin Simard

Chapter 17 in Research Handbook on Global Legal Education, 2026, pp 343-354 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines how the law of slavery has been written out of the law school curriculum by examining the treatment of Kirksey v. Kirksey (1845). Kirksey is a classic consideration case, in which the Alabama Supreme Court refused to enforce a brother-in-law's promise to his sister-in-law because it lacked consideration. Although casebooks use the Alabama Supreme Court's decision as a vehicle for discussion of what promises deserve enforcement by courts, they fail to address the broader context in which Kirksey was decided, in which American courts routinely enforced promises to buy and sell people. The lack of engagement with slavery's influence in Kirksey exemplifies a broader failure of legal professionals to see slavery as a relevant category of analysis. This failure has obscured the important role that slavery played in American legal development and hidden its persistent influence on legal decision making today. This approach has also shaped legal education. Integrating the law of slavery into legal training presents an opportunity to address the problems posed by slavery's incorporation into American law and to provide a fuller answer to the questions that Kirksey poses about the judicial enforcement of promises.

Keywords: Slavery and American Legal Development; Curricular Interventions; Integrating Race into Contracts Teaching (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781788117005
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