European Law.

English common law did not describe slavery, though it did describe varieties of relations between superiors and inferiors, for example, masters and servants and parents and children. There were, therefore, no specific English legal precedents for slavery in the colonies. Yet slavery did develop in the 1600s, spreading to all the English colonies. The number of slaves grew rapidly in colonies such as Virginia, Maryland, and South Carolina. But a social system like slavery needed legal support in order to survive. Because Spain and Portugal had incorporated Roman law into their legal systems, those countries and their colonies could easily borrow from the ancient statutes to govern the Latin American slavery of the 1600s.

Development.

Britain did not use Roman jurisprudence, and the common law's silence on the subject meant that the English colonies would develop their own law of...