But rights are not, as Justice Robert Jackson once reminded us, like a limited railroad ticket: good for this train at this day only. They are design… - Alan Dershowitz

Southern intellectuals also invoked economic and political arguments in support of slavery. They pointed to the dreadful situation of the ‘free laborers’ in the North and throughout Europe, and the exploitative nature of industrial capitalism. The slave owner felt a moral obligation toward the slave and had an economic stake in his continues welfare, since the slave was valuable property… As far as the right of every slave to be a free laborer, they mocked this argument as the right to be ‘free to beg, steal and starve.’

We hope that the end result is a just verdict that is also truthful, even though all sides in a trial want to hide at least some of the truth.

The prosecution is perfectly happy to have the truth of guilt come out but it, too, has a truth to hide: it wants to make sure the process by which the evidence was obtained is not truthfully presented, because, as often as not, that process will raise questions.