Prigg v Pennsylvania Supreme Court Ruling Protects Slave Catchers and Enables Kidnapping

The Supreme Court issues its decision in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), with Justice Joseph Story writing for an 8-1 majority that strikes down Pennsylvania’s “personal liberty law” and establishes sweeping protections for slave catchers that enable systematic kidnapping of free Black Americans. The case involves Maryland slave catcher Edward Prigg who in 1837 captured Margaret Morgan and her children in Pennsylvania and forcibly removed them to Maryland for sale, violating Pennsylvania’s law requiring slave catchers to appear before state courts and prove their claims. Morgan was likely freed by a previous owner and her children were never enslaved, but Prigg simply “snatched” them without legal process and sold them to a slave trader for shipment to the Deep South. Pennsylvania prosecuted Prigg for kidnapping, but the Supreme Court reverses his conviction and declares Pennsylvania has no authority to regulate fugitive slave captures.

Story’s majority opinion makes four devastating rulings: First, the federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 is constitutional. Second, Pennsylvania’s personal liberty law is unconstitutional because states cannot impede federal fugitive slave enforcement. Third, the Constitution’s Fugitive Slave Clause (Article IV, Section 2) implies slaveholders have a constitutional right to recapture escaped enslaved people. Fourth—most remarkably—Story holds that slave catchers need not go to any court at all if their capture is “peaceful,” effectively authorizing extrajudicial kidnapping anywhere in the United States. The Court refuses to acknowledge the severe problem of free Black Americans being kidnapped in free states and sold into slavery, establishing implicit precedent that Black people are entitled to fewer procedural protections than white people. The ruling declares that fugitive enslaved people are not entitled to due process, and that state officials should cooperate in returning alleged runaways.

Justice John McLean writes a lone dissent arguing that Prigg exceeded any lawful authority by forcibly removing people without court process, and that Pennsylvania’s laws protecting against wrongful enslavement are constitutional and necessary to prevent kidnapping of free Black Americans. McLean emphasizes that without state protections, slave catchers can easily kidnap free Black people and remove them from a state’s jurisdiction before investigation or arrest occurs. The Prigg decision represents judicial institutional corruption at its apex: the Supreme Court prioritizes slaveholder property interests over human rights, due process, and state sovereignty, creating a legal framework where any Black person in America—free or enslaved—can be seized and sold into bondage with minimal evidence and no judicial oversight. The ruling triggers passage of new “personal liberty laws” in northern states directing their officials to refuse assisting slave captures, and contributes directly to the stronger federal Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 which attempts to compel state cooperation. Prigg demonstrates how judicial capture by slaveholding interests transforms courts into enforcement mechanisms for elite economic benefits, establishing precedents for racialized justice and procedural rights denial that persist long after slavery’s abolition.