Jamaica’s legal approach: Were forced transportation & African enslavement lawful under English law?

Eve Irvine is pleased to welcome Jamaica’s Minister of Culture, Gender, Entertainment and Sport, Olivia Grange. According to Grange, the country’s reparations initiative attempts to shift the debate over British slavery from the terrain of political discretion to that of legal accountability. Rather than beginning with the question of what Britain should pay, Grange insists on a logically prior question: was the capture, transportation and chattel enslavement of Africans in Jamaica ever lawful in the first place? Jamaica’s petition therefore asks King Charles III, in his capacity as King of Jamaica, to refer three questions to the Privy Council concerning English law, international law and Britain’s possible obligation to provide a reparatory remedy.

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