>> next sunday taboos sciences, living in space, the afterlife, and the human digestive system. mary roche will take calls, e-mails, facebook comments, and tweets. three hours live next sunday at noon eastern on book tv on c-span2. >> stanford university law professor jenny martinez talks about efforts and a late 18th-century to ban the international slave trade which she argues laid the foundations for the modern international human rights movement. book tv sat down with professor martinez at stanford university in california. this is about 20 minutes. >> and book tv from stanford university continues. now we are joined by law professor jenny martinez whose book of the slave trade and the origins of international and human rights law is our next topic.

>> the federal congress couldn't te any action against the slave trade until 1808. and the u.s. at the first moment it could, in 1807, president jefferson sent legislation up to congress that banned participation in the slave trade by u.s. ships and u.s. persons, and congress passed that. and so in 1808 the u.s. prohibited the slave trade which was a long time before, of course, slavery itself ended in the united states. but the issues were seen as

different and even southerners were in support of banning the slave trade. >> host: why were southerners in support of that? >> guest: there were a lot of different reasons. one is that it was perceived as the more unjust or inhumane part of the traffic. but also they had an economic self-interest, right? they already owned slaves x the environment in the u.s. was such that slave mortality was not as high in southern plantations as it was in places like cuba or brazil where slaves really didn't work for very long because of the environment and the diseases. here in the u.s. if they were well treated, as well treated as they could be, they would live for, you know, a decent life span. and slave owners perceived that would increase the value of the slaves they already owned because it would limit the influx of slaves and the ability of their neighbors to buy new slaves. so it was an odd coalition really. >> host: jenny martinez, you have a chart in your book that

shows, and i want to use the word importation of slaves, correct? >> guest: yes. >> host: what is this showing here? a real spike. >> guest: yes. there's a real strong spike in the number of slaves right before we ban it, because everyone knew that as soon as that clock turned in 1808, that congress was going to ban the slave trade. >> host: well, the other half of your book is about the international human rights law. >> guest: yeah. >> host: when did human rights laws start becoming part of this discussion on the slave trade? >> guest: well, really around the turn of the 19th century. but what's really interesting is that people think that international human rights law is entirely a product of the 20th century. that is, in most of the conventional accounts people say it was right after world war ii. so the holocaust happened. as news of that came out, a bunch of things happened right after world war ii. there were the nuremberg trials of the nazi war criminals, similar trials in the far east. the u.n. was founded, universal deck that ration of --

declaration of human rights, that's when everyone says this is when international law started to look at human rights issue. in my book i say, no, it was actually earlier, it was in connection with the slave trade that international law was first used for human rights purpose. so in the early 19th century, starting in 1807, 1808 when countries like the u.s., britain was another country that banned the slave trade around then, and it began to spread be throughout the countries that had been engaged in the slave trade that this was no longer a practice that they wanted to participate in. it was perceived as violating natural rights. the same ideas of rights that underpinned the u.s. revolution and the revolution in france, you know? as the declaration of independence says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. obviously, there was a tension between that and the existence of slavery, but those ideas of natural rights were spreading throughout the atlantic world. and be also there were some religious revival movements. the quakers, among other

religious groups, were very active politically, and they perceived slavery and the slave trade to be morally wrong. so as those groups became more active in civil society, they started to put pressure on the governments to say, hey, we've got to stop the slave trade. and because it was an international problem, all the countries of europe that were engaged in travels on the ocean were participating in it, it wasn't something that just one country could stop. so even if the u.s. said we're banning the slave trade or even if britain said we're banning the slave trade, that wasn't going to be enough because spain, portugal, france, the netherlands, these other countries were still going to pick up the slack. they were going to begin picking up the slaves from africa and transporting them to the new world. so it quickly became apparent that in order to eradicate this practice, there was going to have to be some international cooperation. and so abolitionists put pressure on governments and especially the british government was receptive to that

pressure. and they began lobbying other governments to enter into treaties that would prohibit the slave trade. and at first those treaties, like many modern international human rights treaties, were what we might call in international relations cheap talk. that is, they said slavery is wrong, we want to ban the slave trade, but they included no enforcement mechanisms. but pretty quickly the tide turned, and they said this isn't going to be enough. and so the british government began pushing for enforcement measures, so they actually created treaties starting in 1817 that not only banned the slave trade, but created international courts to enforce the ban. more than a century before the nuremberg tribunals. these were courts that were created by treaty to promote these human rights objectives with the slave trade. if a hip were caught engaged -- a ship were caught engaged in the slave trade, it would be brought before one of these international courts, and if they found out that it was

covered by the treaty, it was a spanish ship, for example, and there was a treaty between britain and spain saying we're ending the slave trade, then what would happen is the slaves would be freed, and the ship would be auctioned off, the money would be split between the sea captain who had brought the ship in and the governments that were involved. so these international courts, as i recount in the book, heard some 600 cases, and they freed 80,000 slaves off of captured slave-trading ships. which is a huge number in the scale of -- >> host: all post-18 to 8. >> guest: all post-1808, yes. >> host: what was the name of these international courts, as you called them? >> guest: treaties gave them different names. so there were a bunch of bilateral treaties between britain and other countries, spain, portugal, netherlands, brazil and the u.s. eventually joined during the civil war which i'll tell you about in a minute. but they were called the mixed commissions or sometimes the mixed courts. and the reason they were called "mixed" was because they involved judges from the

different countries. so there would be a british judge and a brazilian judge, for example. and if they couldn't agree, they would toss a coin, and you would pick a third judge from one of those two countries to help decide the case. the u.s. initially was reluctant to participate in the tribunal system for a variety of reasons, some of which had to do with domestic politics. the treaty came before the u.s. senate in 1824 right before a hotly-contested presidential election. the secretary of state at that time, john quincy adams, was running for president, and there was a lot of sort of politics that went around it. and there were also concerns about the british and whether the british were using this abolitionism campaign as a kind of cover to advance their desires to control the oceans. and that had been a long source of tension between the u.s. and britain. one of the causes of the war of 1812 was the way that the british navy would board

american ships, would conscript americans onboard and say, hey, actually we don't think you're really american, you're british, and guess what? we're drafting you into the british navy to fight in the war against france. so this had long been a tension between the u.s. and britain, and it was not politically popular in the u.s. to sign a treaty that would give the british the right to search american ships if they thought they were participating in the slave trade. it did go to, a different version of the treaty went to the senate. the senate attached a bunch of reservations or changes to it including a provision that the cases would be tried in american courts rather than in these international courts, and they changed the geographical scope, and the british weren't willing to go along with that. so the treaty failed in the 1820s. the u.s. and britain cooperated for a while in the 1830s where british ships and american navy ships would patrol off the coast of africa looking for illegal slave ships of either country,

and if the british happened to catch an american slave trade ship, they would bring it over to the american navy and vice versa. that was kind of an unofficial cooperation. the two navies had worked out on their own on the other side of the world. eventually the government said, hey, what are you guys doing? there's not a treaty that covers this, you know, this isn't something that the governments want to do. and so one of the consequences was that because the u.s. wasn't able to consistently invest in sort of naval protection to enforce the ban on slave trading by american ships, there were time periods when there were a lot of ships flying the american flag that were engaged in the illegal slave trade. and so it wasn't until 1862 in the middle of the civil war that president lincoln's administration sent the treaty up to the senate, and it was ratified then, and then the u.s. joined this system of interbe national courts. and -- international courts. and really pretty dramatically

right after the u.s. joined the system there was only one small bit of the slave trade that was very active then which was the trade to cuba, and it was carried on heavily in american ships even though it was against american law, and american law provided the death penalty for engaging in slave trading. and, indeed, even the confederate constitution prohibited the slave trade. but as soon as the u.s. joined this treaty system making it possible for britain and other countries to police it as well, the last remaining branch of the slave trade to cuba dropped precipitously off. so by 1865 the transatlantic slave trade was really over, there were no more slaves being taken from africa to the new world. >> host: jenny martinez, from 1808 on how heavy was the smuggling? >> guest: it depends where you were looking at. so the u.s., there was not a lot of smuggling of new slaves into the u.s. after 1808. there was some. but the measures on shore were

pretty effective. if you were caught, you would be punished in some way. only one person ever received the death penalty for engaging in slave trading. but it was enough of a deterrent that there weren't a huge amount of imports into the u.s. on the other hand, cuba and brazil which the country that they were apartments in the treaty -- participants in the treaties, they had sort of legally banned the slave trade, they didn't have any kind of effective enforce bement on land and, indeed, the governments were pretty corrupt so throughout that time period from 1808 to the 1860s in cuba in the 1850s and brazil, there was a lot of illegal smuggling of new slaves. and some of it wasn't even all that covert. if the government in a particular region was pretty corrupt, they might even advertise in the newspaper, where the slave markets were going to be held. but what's interesting is that the international law played a role in the ending of it. so in brazil, for example, in the 1850s there was a big

debate, and the british were putting strong pressure on them to take stronger measures against the smuggling of new slave into the country even a few british ships fired some shots in the harbor as part of the conflict. and there was a debate in the brazilian parliament. and one of the members of parliament said, look, everyone has joined this system. are we alone to stand outside the civilized world and allow this trade to continue? and they saw themselves as a civilized country, and they wanted to be part of the community of nations. and as a consequence, in the early 1850s brazil passed more effective legislation and started enforcing it. and so there was, basically, an end to the illegal import of slaves to brazil in relation to the international pressure and the international legal regime. >> host: jenny martinez, are these mixed commissions, were they forgotten by history or used as models for later international rights treaties? >> guest: what's interesting is

they remembered for a while. so in the early 1940s during world war ii there was a judge on the permanent court of international justice which is the, was the court, the court of the league of nations and the predecessor to the international court of justice which exists under the u.n. today and sits in the hague to hear international disputes. and that judge was commissioned to write a report about what should be done with the war criminals after world war ii ended. and his report suggested what ultimately became the nuremberg trials. and when he talked about precedents for international courts, he mentions the slave trade tribunals. there were a variety of groups that were active in the 1930s working on human rights issues, proposing forms of international court. and they also mentioned the slave trade tribunals as one of the historic examples of international courts. now, the focus in the 1940s was a lot more on crimes against peace; that is, what was prosecuted at nuremberg for the crime of engaging in aggressive

warfare which the nazi regime had engaged in. now we look back and think nuremberg was all about the human rights violations, about the crimes against humanity and the war crimes, but actually it was that crime of aggression that was more of the focus. and so that is maybe one of the reasons why in the immediate aftermath of world war ii the slave trade tribunals, although they were certainly remembered in the '30s and early '40s, started to fade out of memory as they were replaced by nuremberg which had a slightly different focus, and they really were sort of forgotten by historians of international law by international legal scholars. historians of the slave trade have recognized them as a part of the abolition of the slave trade, but people who study international law have largely forgotten them. >> host: where did you find your interest in this topic? >> guest: you know, it's really interesting, i was looking at the history of international courts and tribunals. i had worked for the former yugoslavia which was created by the security council in the 1990s to deal with war crimes

from boss any and -- bosnia and croatia, and i had worked on the genocide trials, so i was very interested in international courts. and one of the things we did when i was at the court in the hague was we looked at the number burke and post-world war ii precedents. most of the precedents were from nuremberg or the other trials that occurred in europe following world war ii, so i just became interested in nuremberg and the be history of international courts and where the idea came from. and after i'd left practicing law and had come to be a professor at stanford teaching international law, i was doing some research into the history of international courts and looking at things like in the 1790s the u.s. and britain entered into a treaty, the j treaty, settling claims from the revolutionary war that created international tribunals. i was at a conference, and i was talking to a judge on the special court for sierra leone which is the court that tried

charles taylor for his crimes and has tried other human rights crimes and is one of these new international criminal courts that have sprung up in the past decade or so. he asked what i was researching, and i said, well, i'm looking at courts in the 19th century. and be he said, well, of course you know about the slave trade tribunal which sat in sierra leone. and i said, no, i've never heard of that, you know? and i study this. and he knew about it because of the special court for sierra leone sat in freetown which was where one of these courts sat. and be it was part of the local lore that this court had been there and had heard these cases. and it was sort of local common knowledge but not something that people were aware of elsewhere. and i discovered that the british were excellent record keepers, and so the complete archives of the courts are in the british archives in london. and so it was pretty easy the reconstruct from the archives what the courts had done. >> host: and from that spark came this book, "the slave trade and the origins of international human rights law."

it's published by oxford. stanford law professor jenny martinez is the author. you're watching booktv on c-span2. >> host: and on your screen is a new book that is coming out this fall. it's called "the romney family table." ann romney is the author of this book. ann romney, when did you find time to put this together? >> guest: well, oddly enough, i've actually written a cookback before, but nobody would know that. and having a mother that's a fantastic cook, a grandmother that was a fantastic cook and then being so enormously blessed with only boys in my life, when they got time to get married and i thought, oh, you know, all these family traditions, all these family recipes are going to get lost because my boys are boys, and they won't be cooking. and so i made a cookbook of our family favorites and gave it to the daughters-in-law which meant i had five copies of something

similar to this. it's, obviously, a greatly expanded from that time. but the ore amazing thing that happened -- the other amazing thing that happened is that my love of cooking, my love of sharing our love at the family table was passed on to some of my sons, and they actually do cookment some of my boys really actually do cook. so in this cookbook are some recipes from my son josh, from my son craig who likes to cook soups, and so that love of the food and of cooking, fortunately, did even get passed down a little bit into some of my sons. so this is how the whole thing started. and after the campaign was over, my son josh who happens to be one that loves to cook said, mom, you should put together a cookbook. and i thought, well, that'll be fun. but this cookbook is not like a normal cookbook. because it has a lot of family traditions in there, a lot of stories, a lot of written material about our life. and so i think it's going to be

interesting for people to think, well, we know who mitt romney is, or we know who the romney family is. i think they'll be really surprised when they open this up and say, and we give a real peek into life's struggles, you know, the fun of getting together and everything else. because there's a lot of stories in there too. >> host: are you a good cook? >> guest: i actually am a good cook. i am a good cook, and i think people will be surprised to know that i, um, really actually even ran a little cooking school out of my home. i don't talk about that in the cookbook, but i do love to cook. this is a great picture, and this is a great family story right here that i would love for people to even know about, and that's about tradition. on the left-hand side -- well, the viewers, this picture -- >> host: it'd be the left-hand side. >> guest: is george romney who is mitt's father, the greatest guy in the world, and he brought family positiontogether. we had to be there on the fourth

of july, and homemade vanilla ice cream was what we had when we got together. that is him churning the ice cream, and those are my three youngest sons waiting for the taste, that spoonful when it's all ready before it goes to the freezer. and then on the other side, on the right-hand side, is the picture of my husband, mitt, churning the homemade vanilla ice cream, the same recipe, with our grandchildren. some of these boys' children waiting to taste the ice cream. so you can see it's like, you know, these are things that we love to pass on, traditions, bricking families together -- bringing families together, having this joyous time, sharing experiences. >> host: is mitt romney a cook? >> guest: he is fantastic in the kitchen, and he helps me out. on thanksgiving morning he's the one in many there stuffing the bird, sauteeing celery and onions, getting things ready. he's helpful, very, very helpful in the kitchen. he also is one of the most

responsible people i've ever known when it's, when the meal is over, because he shoos anyone that was working hard in the kitchen out of the kitchen and cleans up himself. which is always a great thrill for anyone that has spent a lot of time preparing food. so he's fantastic in the kitchen. >> host: so are people getting as well family photos that have never been published before in this book? >> guest: you will see a lot of family photos that you've never seen before. the one on the cover, actually, makes me laugh every time i see it because we get together in the summer with all of the grandchildren. and this is one of -- you hear about the romney family olympics and about all the competitions we had. well, we had a watermelon-eating competition with the grandchildren. part of the competition was they couldn't use their hands, but you'll notice that they're all using their hands. it just makes me laugh because they're competitive, too, because it all started out with them not using any hands, but it got really evident that they weren't going to eat much

watermelon without their fingers, so especially the little ones are grabbing onto that watermelon. >> host: hopefully you did that outside. >> guest: oh, it was great. >> host: you put this together after the campaign. >> guest: yeah. >> host: how did your life change from after november 6th, your schedule? >> guest: well, i've got to tell you. you can imagine going about 100 miles an hour, intensely flying all over the country, hip-hopping just here and there on, having media following you, buses, busloads of media -- >> host: secret service. >> guest: planeloads of media following you, every word you say, everything you do documented and intense scrutiny, intense activity, huge rallies, political fundraisers, interviews, and you're just going from the earliest moment you wake up until you crash into bed at night, and it goes on for several years like that. and then the next day it's done. it's over. it's, bang, it's done.

and that kind of energy that you're outputting every once in a -- you know, with just such intensity for such a long time ends so suddenly. it's a huge adjustment in so many different ways. and i know, of course, we were so disappointed with the loss and everything else. but i kept feeling for months afterwards, and this was my sentiment, is like, coach, put me in. i'm like, wait a minute, the game's over. no, but that's how i felt. put me in, coach, i'm ready. i've been sitting on the bench now, put me in. and that energy takes a long time to dial it back down again. and it did for me. and, but now it has, and i'm back to normal life and normal life's schedule, my routine is much slower. life is wonderful with. and i've been busy with the book and busy with another part of my life which are horses which i love, and can i've been riding and competing and spending time with the grandchildren. and enjoying our time that mitt

and i have together. we're writing, he and i are, we're thinking, we're thinking about the country, we're thinking about still the problems that face the nation. and, you know, politics is one way to answer some of problems. but i really believe, and this is part of this thing with the family and everything else, is that so many of our problems can be solved with good, strong families and good, strong values and having, take care of each other. so there's not just government that answers a lot of and solves a lot of our problems in our life, but family certainly can as well. >> host: you said you and mr. romney are writing. rid -- >> guest: write. >> host: so we can expect -- >> guest: we've really been doing a lot of thinking and a lot of broad thinking about challenges that face the nation right now. and, you know, i know mitt is thinking and has been writing and thinking and doing a lot of

thinking about energy and about, you know, how our energy needs are going to increase and broadly, globally how the energy demands are going to be much bigger in china and in india than they even are in the united states. and so, you know, there's sort of broad -- he's a broad thinker. i mean, you know in his business life he was a consultant for years, then he was in business, and he was known as sort of the turn around guy for turning around companies. and his ability, his unique talents are in thinking about big problems and looking at it from the more unique, unusual angle of how to solve really big problems. so i don't think you'll hear the end of either one of us, because we love this country, and we, you know, we love our families, and we're concerned about their future. >> host: how incognito can you be today? >> guest: not very much so. [laughter] especially when i put makeup and hair on. i can actually do pretty well with no makeup and putting my hair up in a ponytail, and i can hide better than mitt can.

mitt cannot -- we can't -- it's very difficult to go out in public because everyone has a camera phone, and everyone wants to be on facebook. and if you can imagine, i mean, like every ten seconds someone asking you to stop to take a picture when you're just trying to walk down the street or go into a shop or go to a restaurant, it's hard -- it's sort of hard because, obviously, we don't have any security anymore or anything else. it's just he and i. and so, you know, it's, it's all right, though, because most people are just very appreciative of what we went through and very grateful, and most of them are fans, i will say. and so, you know, it's sort of a testament to what we've been through and how broadly we reached people is to know how many people actually still do recognize us. >> host: well, you know, we've talked a lot about the romney family, but your family also grew up in michigan. >> guest: right, yes. >> host: what is this picture you're looking -- and you talk about the cabin your father built. >> guest: my father built this cabin on lake michigan. i am a gander, and i --

michigander, and i love the great lakes, i love what my family taught me beyond how to cook. they taught me how to be strong. they taught me how to be -- they adored me, how loved i was. they taught me hard work. and my father was a welsh immigrant. we had no money at all as children, but we had a lot of love in our home and a lot of joy and a lot of happiness. my father built this cabin with his hands, bare hands. i would go up on weekendses with him, travel up, and i remember him doing the wiring, doing the plumbing, pouring the cement. i was a very small child so i, obviously, wasn't helping, but the impressions that i got from being independent and just building with your own two hands, coming to this country with nothing and having the opportunities and the great blessings of being in this extraordinary country were taught to me by my father. so those are, that's a picture of my dad as a very young man,

myself, my brother that, you know, we palled around together. we were in the woods. i mean, i grew up catching frogs, catching snakes and a girl in the michigan woods. >> host: are you encouraging or would you encourage your sons to go into politics? >>ing i am a mother of two minds on that, very much a mother of two minds. because i recognize on the one hand that we need honest, decent, good people to run, but i also love my children. and the real, it's very tough to put yourself out in public because you become an instant target for criticism that is often not deserved and it's quite abusive to be able to go true this. so you've got to really be prepared. i would say three of my five would have shul no interest. i would never have to worry about it. but i have two sons that i know

sort of love the game. so -- >> host: which ones? >> guest: my oldest son, tag, and my number three son, josh. so i think i feel pretty safe with my oldest son, tag, because he lives in massachusetts. it's pretty hard as a republican in massachusetts to do anything. but my son, josh, yeah, i could see him doing something down the line. >> host: and finally, shadow mountain is your publisher. what is shadow mountain? >> guest: shadow mountain has been fantastic. they will be representing me and helping me get book out, and and, you know, they are the ones my son went to and said do you, you know, i've got this idea, and thaw jumped on it, thought it was a fantastic idea, and they're helping represent this book for me now. and i think thest going to be -- i hope to think it's going to be a pretty big success. >> host: what's your favorite recipe in there? >> guest: i think it might be, it might be mitt's dinner. i mean, it's not that it's my favorite, it's mitt's favorite, and it's my favorite to cook because i love, obviously, the fact of giving joy and bringing family together. t