l-estate lawyer who bases his argument on property law. Slowly ôBaldwinö comes to view his clients as human beings. As for President Martin Van Buren, he is portrayed as a weak man who would compromise any values in order to appease the South. The film highlights another irony of the era; that of white lawyers in powdered wigs trying to determine the origin of kidnapped Africans while not even knowing how to speak their language.
Howard JonesÆ argument about the debate over natural versus positive law is the main focus of the courtroom drama that unfolds in the film version of Amistad. At one point Cinque questions U.S. law in a manner that many other slaves must have thought when he asks, ôWhat kind of a land is this where you almost mean what you say? Where laws almost work?ö (Spielberg 1997). At one point John Quincy Adams makes a speech that underscores JonesÆ distinction made earlier between natural law and imposed law made of men, ôThe natural state of mankind is instead û and I know this is a controversial
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