Slavery and the University of Virginia School of Law is a project of the UVA Law Library that examines UVA Law’s historical connections to the institution of slavery through people, places, and pedagogy.
From UVA's Academical Village, legal education in the antebellum period played out within a landscape of enslavement. In the classroom, faculty lectured on slavery as a social good. Law student notebooks, digitized and available on this site, enable this new research into the inclusion of slavery in UVA’s antebellum legal curriculum.
Profiles of enslaved persons, faculty, and Law buildings.
An essay explaining the materiality and scope of antebellum student notebooks at UVA Law.
An allied project of our forthcoming multi-author volume on the history of the University of Virginia School of Law.
A collection of digitized student notebooks from UVA Law that show how the laws of slavery were taught.
Histories and cultural landscapes of UVA Law buildings and properties before the Civil War.
Profiles of enslaved persons whose life and labor intersect with the history of UVA Law.
Profiles of UVA Law antebellum professors and their participation in Black bondage.