Race and Domestic International Law in the United States

Abstract

This article explores how the 'Full Faith and Credit' Clause of Article IV affected state laws governing slavery and race before 1865 since states were not obligated to extend comity to laws which prejudiced the rights of their governments and of their citizens. However, the ease of interstate travel made slavery an issue for domestic international law. Two significant fugitive slave cases, Prigg v. Pennsylvania and Jones v. Van Zandt, held that race determined status, setting the law of slave states as the standard for American jurisprudence with fugitive slaves, free blacks in slave states, and slaves travelling through free states.