University of Chicago law professor challenges the idea that the 13th Amendment allows forced labor in prisons

“The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude—except as punishment for a crime. This so-called ‘Except Clause’ has long been used to justify forced labor in federal and state prison systems.

“Asst. Prof. of Law Adam A. Davidson, JD’17, challenges this interpretation.

“‘I can recall no sentence hearing, brief or appellate record that has mentioned slavery or involuntary servitude as punishment,’ he said.

Forced labor continues in prisons not as a form of punishment, but as a function of administrative decision-making.

“This absence of direct acknowledgment has resulted in what Davidson calls ‘administrative enslavement,’ a system in which incarcerated people are forced to work under harsh conditions and for meager wages, without any explicit designation that their sentence includes enslavement. Davidson explored this issue in depth in his 2024 paper, ‘Administrative Enslavement,’ published in the Columbia Law Review.

“‘It’s my attempt to understand how this state of the law came to be,’ he said.

“Davidson’s scholarship focuses on the intersection of race and the criminal justice system.

“‘At my core, I’m motivated by the desire to figure out how the systems that create and maintain race, racial hierarchy and our criminal legal systems work, and why those systems operate as they do,’ he said.

“Through his paper, Davidson brought to light an issue that has received little attention and criticism in courts, partly because forced labor has long been tied to incarceration and courts are generally unwilling to question the operation of prisons. His research reveals that in practice, forced labor continues in prisons not as a form of punishment, but as a function of administrative decision-making. …

“In recent years, incarcerated people and reform activists together have increasingly drawn attention to this issue.

“One formerly incarcerated person put it bluntly: ‘It’s not modern-day slavery—it’s slavery.’ Last year, social activists and researchers from New York University published a book called Abolition Labor: The Fight to End Prison Slavery, which documents the lived experiences of prisoners subjected to forced labor.

“Davidson sees this grassroots movement as a key driver of change.

“‘Non-lawyers do have the power to effectuate change—that political power-building is oftentimes what leads to legal change and not the other way around,’ he said. ‘Now, we are at the stage of this anti-slavery movement where the lawyers are coming in to formalize the changes legally.’”

Read the full story at UChicago.edu.

(Photo: Prof. Adam A. Davidson / University of Chicago)