l'Amistad

The Transcript of the Movie (ed. note: this is from 'Amistad' by Spielberg) It is the opinion of this court that our treaty of 1795 with Spain, upon which the prosecution has primarily based its arguments, is inapplicable. While it is clearly stipulated in Article 9 that, and I quote, 'Seized ships and cargo are to be returned to the proprietary,' it has not been shown to the court's satisfaction that these particular Africans fit that description. We are then left with the alternative: that they are not slaves and therefore cannot be considered merchandise, but are rather, free individuals, with certain legal and moral rights, including the right to engage in insurrection against those who would deny them their freedom, and therefore, over one dissent, it is the court's judgment that the defendants are to be released from custody at once, and if they so choose, to be returned to their home in Africa. Justice John Story's Actual Quote Story ruled in 1840 that the Africans were indeed free and within their rights to take over the ship, adding that is was the 'ultimate right of all human beings in extreme cases to resist oppression to apply force against ruinous injustice.' What does this mean for us? Given that we have Supreme Court rulings clearly establishing the right to engage in insurrection against those who would deny us our freedom, we propose documenting these abuses of power so that we can point out just how civil we are being by not killing them all. We think we have quite a case that they are engaging in 'ruinous injustice'. We think we can present evidence that the norm is now 'extreme.' Of course, by this we are NOT advocating that we 'apply force' but that we show a clear set of evidence that the use of such force has long since been justified (and we are just incredibly patient). We will show this evidence on our 'Essays Page' under the heading, 'l'Amistad Essays.' We would like to offer terms of surrender to the other side in this 'War' which, if accepted now, would mean we would promise that we would not pursue any 'War Crimes' charges against the perpetrators.