The Slave Trade and the Origins of International Human Rights Law

As Jenny Martinez shows in this groundbreaking new book, the international human rights law that we know today is not solely a post-World War II development, as most scholars claim, but rather has roots in one of the nineteenth century's central moral causes: the movement to ban the international slave trade. Martinez focuses in particular on international courts for the suppression of the slave trade. The courts, which were created by treaties and based in the Caribbean, West Africa, Cape Town, and Brazil, helped free more than 80,000 Africans from captured slave ships between 1807 and 1871. Here then, buried in the dusty archives of admiralty courts, ships' logs, and the British foreign office, Martinez uncovers the foundations of contemporary human rights law: international courts exercising jurisdiction over "crimes against humanity" long before the Nuremberg trials. Fueled by a powerful thesis and drawing on novel evidence, Martinez's work will reshape the fields of human rights history and international human rights law.

Jenny S. Martinez is Professor of Law and Justin M. Roach, Jr., Faculty Scholar at Stanford Law School. A leading expert on international courts and tribunals, international human rights, and the laws of war, she is also an experienced litigator who argued the 2004 case Rumsfeld v. Padilla before the U.S. Supreme Court. Martinez was named to the National Law Journal's list of "Top 40 Lawyers Under 40."