It’s Expensive to End Slavery: The Need for Forced Labor Laws to Reflect the Value of Human Life

In Pursuit of Virtue and Knowledge, Catholic Law’s Center for Law and the Human Person Hosts Inaugural Conference | Tuesday, March 14, 2023:
Following DeGirolami, Mary Graw Leary, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Catholic Law, contrasted the way in which law teaches human dignity with one way in which law has failed to protect that dignity. Graw Leary’s lecture was entitled, “It’s Expensive to End Slavery: The Need for Forced Labor Laws to Reflect the Value of Human Life.” She addressed the continued exploitation of children through forced labor throughout the world, declaring, “We are in the midst of a social movement-and in my opinion, we are losing it.” She observed that a social movement often achieves its specific goal when it successfully does three things: educates the public on the harm of the target vice, enacts law in furtherance of the movement, and develops a stigma attached to engaging in the target vice. Graw Leary offered as one example of a successful movement the campaign against drunk driving, which evolved from a common occurrence to a disgraceful taboo. She then identified the failure of child labor opponents to adequately develop a stigma against exploitatively placing vulnerable children in brutal jobs. “We are at an inflection point,” Graw Leary remarked. “History will view this period as either a raising up of human dignity, or a continuance of child labor exploitation.”