What had the federal courts decided in earlier cases involving the foreign slave trade?
Before Amistad, the federal courts had decided only a limited number of cases involving slavery or the slave trade. Two cases, The Antelope and La Jeune Eugenie were the subject of much speculation about how the courts might deal with the questions raised by the Amistad case. The oral arguments presented in each court included frequent references to these cases, and Judson relied in part on these cases to explain his decision in the district court trial. The Antelope In The Antelope case of 1825, the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice John Marshall, held that the federal courts must recognize a nation’s right to engage in the slave trade if the laws of that nation did not prohibit the trade. The Antelope case involved an American ship commander who raided Spanish, Portuguese, and American-owned ships along the West African coast and took possession of the slaves on board of each. Eventually he transferred nearly 300 slaves to the Antelope and headed for the Florida c
