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Involuntary servitude or involuntary slavery is a legal and
constitution A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organisation or other type of entity and commonly determine how that entity is to be governed. When these princi ...
al term for a person laboring against that person's will to benefit another, under some form of
coercion Coercion () is compelling a party to act in an involuntary manner by the use of threats, including threats to use force against a party. It involves a set of forceful actions which violate the free will of an individual in order to induce a desi ...
, to which it may constitute slavery. While laboring to benefit another occurs also in the condition of slavery, involuntary servitude does not necessarily connote the complete lack of freedom experienced in
chattel slavery Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
; involuntary servitude may also refer to other forms of
unfree labor Forced labour, or unfree labour, is any work relation, especially in modern or early modern history, in which people are employed against their will with the threat of destitution, detention, violence including death, or other forms of e ...
. Involuntary servitude is not dependent upon compensation or its amount.


Jurisdictions


Malaysia

The
Constitution of Malaysia The Federal Constitution of Malaysia ( ms, Perlembagaan Persekutuan Malaysia) which was promulgated on 16 September 1963, is the supreme law of Malaysia and contains a total of 183 articles. It is a written legal document which was preceded ...
, Part II, article 6, states: # No person shall be held in slavery. #All forms of forced labour are prohibited, but Parliament may by law provide for compulsory service for national purposes. #Work incidental to the serving of a sentence of imprisonment imposed by a court of law shall not be taken to be forced labour within the meaning of this Article. #Where by any written law the whole or any part of the functions of any public authority is to be carried on by another public authority, for the purpose of enabling those functions to be performed the employees of the first mentioned public authority shall be bound to serve the second mentioned public authority shall not be taken to be forced labour within the meaning of this Article, and no such employee shall be entitled to demand any right from either the first mentioned or the second mentioned public authority by reason of the transfer of his employment.


Philippines

The
Constitution of the Philippines The Constitution of the Philippines ( Filipino: ''Saligang Batas ng Pilipinas'' or ''Konstitusyon ng Pilipinas'', Spanish: ''Constitución de la República de Filipinas'') is the constitution or the supreme law of the Republic of the Philippin ...
, article III, section 18, states that "No involuntary servitude in any form shall exist except as a punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted."


United States

The
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. The amendment was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, by the House of Representative ...
makes involuntary servitude illegal under any U.S. jurisdiction whether at the hands of the government or in the private sphere, except as punishment for a crime:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
The Supreme Court has held, in ''Butler v. Perry'' (1916), that the Thirteenth Amendment does not prohibit "enforcement of those duties which individuals owe to the state, such as services in the army, militia, on the jury, etc." Onerous long term alimony and spousal support orders, premised on a proprietary interest retained by former marital partners in one another's persons, have also been allowed in many states, though they may in practice embody features of involuntary servitude.


Other interpretations of involuntary servitude


Military conscription

The Libertarian Party of the United States and other libertarians consider military conscription to be involuntary servitude in the sense of the Thirteenth Amendment. The
U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
disagreed with that interpretation in ''
Arver v. United States ''Arver v. United States'', 245 U.S. 366 (1918), also known as the ''Selective Draft Law Cases'', was a United States Supreme Court decision which upheld the Selective Service Act of 1917, and more generally, upheld conscription in the United Stat ...
,'' relying on text of Article I and the prerequisites of sovereignty.


Compulsory schooling

Some libertarians consider compulsory schooling involuntary servitude.
John Taylor Gatto John Taylor Gatto (December 15, 1935 – October 25, 2018) was an American author and school teacher. After teaching for nearly 30 years he authored several books on modern education, criticizing its ideology, history, and consequences. He is b ...
, a retired schoolteacher and libertarian activist critical of compulsory schooling writes of what he terms "The Cult Of Forced Schooling". Many libertarians consider income taxation a form of involuntary servitude. Republican
Congressman A Member of Congress (MOC) is a person who has been appointed or elected and inducted into an official body called a congress, typically to represent a particular constituency in a legislature. The term member of parliament (MP) is an equivalen ...
Ron Paul has described income tax as "a form of involuntary servitude", and has written, "... things like
Selective Service The Selective Service System (SSS) is an independent agency of the United States government that maintains information on U.S. citizens and other U.S. residents potentially subject to military conscription (i.e., the draft) and carries out conti ...
and the income tax make me wonder how serious we really are in defending just basic freedoms.


Abortion rights

Some have also argued that, should '' Roe v. Wade'', 410 U.S. 113 (1973), be overturned by the United States Supreme Court, a constitutional right to abortion could still be sustained on the basis that denying it would subject women to involuntary servitude contrary to the Thirteenth Amendment. In 1975 and 1993, the Supreme Court rejected such an argument. Differing views have been expressed as to whether the argument is so unpersuasive as to be "frivolous". One major difficulty with the argument relates to the claim that pregnancy and child-bearing are within the scope of the term "servitude".


Law and economics

In contract theory, researchers have studied whether workers should be allowed to waive their right to quit work, or whether the right to quit should be inalienable. Suppose that at date 1 a worker ''voluntarily'' signs a labor contract according to which the worker has to perform a task at date 2. At date 2, the worker no longer wants to perform the task (see the English contract law case Lumley v Wagner for a classic example). Would it be a form of ''involuntary'' servitude if the worker were forced by the courts to fulfill the contractual duties? Müller and Schmitz (2021) have shown that from an economic efficiency point-of-view, in a static setting it can indeed be desirable to restrict the freedom of contract by making the right to quit inalienable. However, they also show that in a dynamic setting even the worker can be strictly better off when it is possible to contractually waive the right to quit.


See also

*
Cruel and unusual punishment Cruel and unusual punishment is a phrase in common law describing punishment that is considered unacceptable due to the suffering, pain, or humiliation it inflicts on the person subjected to the sanction. The precise definition varies by jurisdi ...
* Debt bondage * Indentured servitude * Peon *
Person A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of propert ...
* Slavery


References


External links


The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today
– video report by '' Democracy Now!'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Involuntary Servitude American legal terminology Debt bondage Human rights abuses Penal labor in the United States