Yes, many people keep calling it that. Article IV Section 2 has no such verbiage in it, and last I checked, what people say is not dispositive of what is the law. It is the text of the law that determines what it's meaning will be, and the text says the slave will be returned per the laws of other states that require it.
Don't talk to me about being obtuse. Intentions and assertions do not matter. What matter are the text of the law.
If that same slave had been brought into Pennsylvania by his master and kept in that state for over six months he would automatically become free by the state laws of Pennsylvania.
The most liberal reading of Article IV Section 2 cannot yield such an interpretation. It only says they will be returned, it says nothing about "six months". It *DOES* say no state law can change the fact that the slave will be returned, so your Law of Pennsylvania is dead on arrival so far as Article IV Section 2 is concerned.
You are welcome to show me where in Article IV it allows another state to pass a law freeing a slave held by the laws of the state where the "labor is due."
Just to be perfectly clear, we are discussing the US Constitution of 1787, Article IV Section 2 clause 3. Also known, more widely and to be historically honest, as the Fugitive Slave Clause. As Abe said, in his first Inaugural, "There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law." A. Lincoln
But of course you DL have to come along and not only question this "scarcely questioned" clause but you must impart a whole new meaning that no else can quite fathom. Why, it is as if you have an agenda.
As for this: DL "The most liberal reading of Article IV Section 2 cannot yield such an interpretation. It only says they will be returned, it says nothing about "six months".
For your information, the Pennsylvania Act of 1780 predates the US Constitution. It is also known as An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery, passed by the Pennsylvania legislature on 1 March 1780, and was one of the first attempts by a government in the USA to begin an abolition of slavery. In 1783 Massachusetts abolished slavery unequivocally with no such gradual easing.
DL: It *DOES* say no state law can change the fact that the slave will be returned, so your Law of Pennsylvania is dead on arrival so far as Article IV Section 2 is concerned.
See above. You are very vague on the concept of a slave arriving in a freestate as a fugitive and a slave being brought into a freestate accompanied by his master. I can not help you with your failure to understand that any more than I have.
DL: You are welcome to show me where in Article IV it allows another state to pass a law freeing a slave held by the laws of the state where the "labor is due."
And you are equally as welcome to show me where it doesn't allow that. That did not need to be included in the narrow meaning of the clause. The clause was written after the Pennsylvania Act of 1780. Everyone who was anyone plainly understood these things at the time.
DiogenesLamp to HandyDandy: "Yes, many people keep calling it that.
Article IV Section 2 has no such verbiage in it...
the text says the slave will be returned per the laws of other states that require it.
Don't talk to me about being obtuse.
Intentions and assertions do not matter.
What matter are the text of the law."
But the text is totally clear, so you remind me of that "so-called judge" in Washington state who ruled against the President without even quoting the law!
Article 4, Section 2:
Nothing, repeat nothing, in the Dred Scott case had anything to do with "escaping" slaves, but rather with one who wished to purchase his own freedom but was denied.
He then sued saying he should have been freed automatically when brought into Illinois and Wisconsin for many years.
Chief Justice Taney ruled that states had no right to abolish slavery for slaves brought by their holders into free states.
Taney's justification for that ruling was not the above Article 4 Section 2, but rather Taney's claim the Federal Government had no constitutional authority to outlaw slavery in the Territories.
The problem with Taney's ruling is that no recognized Founder -- none, zero, nada Founder -- ever claimed such a thing.
So the real question here is why do we now have two posters, DiogenesLamp and Jim 0216 concocting ludicrous legal sounding arguments out of thin air?
I think I know the answer, and it's why I think it important to resist strongly.