Obviously it was a good thing that it was banned, but I’m just wondering if it would technically be considered authoritarian.
As in, is any law that restricts people’s freedom to do something (yes, even if it’s done to also free other people from oppression as in that case, since it technically restricts the slave owner’s freedom to own slaves), considered authoritarian, even if at the time that the law is passed, it’s only a small section of people that are still wanting to do those things and forcibly having their legal ability to do them revoked?
Or would it only be considered authoritarian if a large part of society had their ability to do a particular thing taken away from them forcibly?
Authoritarian doesn’t mean exercising authority. Banning slavery did exercise authority, of the law, over slave owners, but it was anti-authoritarian. It took power, and authority, condensed wrongly in the hands of a few and, in theory, distributed it to the many, however effective it actually was.