1917 lines
120 KiB
Plaintext
1917 lines
120 KiB
Plaintext
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CHAPTER V.
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PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES UNDER THE WAR AMENDMENTS.
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The Thirteenth Amendment
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This amendment simply abolished slavery. Beyond the declaration that
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neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, etc., should exist within the
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United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction, it enacted
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nothing.(1) It did not even affect the validity of a note given for a
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slave when slavery was lawful.(2) The main purpose of the amendment was
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to abolish African slavery, but it equally forbids Mexican peonage or
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Chinese coolly trade, amounting to slavery, and the use of the word
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servitude" prohibits all forms of involuntary slavery of whatever
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class.(3)
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The XIII Amendment was, however, held not to authorize the passage by
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Congress of laws requiring equal accommodation in inns, public
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conveyances, and places of amusement, for it was said that the denial
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of such equal accommodations imposes no badge of slavery or involuntary
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servitude upon either race.(4) Nor does it place any restraint upon the
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States from passing laws requiring railway companies carrying passengers
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in their coaches, within the State, to provide equal but separate
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accommodations for the white and for the colored race, and that the
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races be kept separate on railroads and steamboats; or from separating
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the races in schools.(5) Nor does it authorize federal courts to annul
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sailors' contracts on the plea that they are contracts for involuntary
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servitude; for a sailor's contract necessarily involves, to a certain
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extent, surrender of his personal liberty, during the life of the
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contract, and was not in the contemplation of this amendment.(6)
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And this is all that was enacted by the XIII Amendment, and all that
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has ever been decided concerning it by the court of last resort
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intrusted with its interpretation. It affected no right theretofore
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possessed by any State in the Union, except the right to establish or
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recognize slavery or involuntary servitude. It effected no change in the
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relations of the Union and the States composing it to each other, or in
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the organic structure of the Nation or the States.
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OF THE RIGHTS OF CITIZENS UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.
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When the XIII, XIV, and XV Amendments first came up for interpretation
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before the Supreme Court of the United States in the famous
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Slaughter-House Cases, Mr. Justice Swayne said of them, "Fairly
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construed, they may be said to rise to the dignity of a new Magna
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Charta." In the light of subsequent decisions their enactments must be
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regarded as of much narrower scope.
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The XIV Amendment is broader in language than the XIII, yet no broader
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than the XIII in conferring any power upon the Federal government to
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legislate upon its own initiative. It declared a new law of citizenship,
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but the only power of legislation conferred by it upon Congress was
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power to enact restrictive legislation against any State action which
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might be taken contrary to the amendment itself.
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The language of the amendment is in part:
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Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
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subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States
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and of the State wherein they reside.
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No State shall make or enforce
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(a) Any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
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citizens of the United States.
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(b) Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
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property without due process of law.
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(c) Nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
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protection of the laws.
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Sec. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
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legislation, the provisions of this article.
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Congress has attempted to pass many acts enforcing the provisions of
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that article. Its enactments have given rise to an amount of litigation
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unprecedented in the history of our Constitution. Not even the commerce
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clause of the Constitution, or the contract clause, has proved as
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fertile of controversies as the interpretation of this amendment, and
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laws enacted by Congress, under the supposed authority of this
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amendment, have more frequently been challenged successfully, and rights
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asserted under it have been less frequently recognized, than under any
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other provision of the Constitution.
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The declaration contained in the amendment that citizens of the United
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States shall be deemed citizens of the State wherein they reside is
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merely a reiteration of the law as it existed before the amendment and
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as it had been announced by Chief Justice Marshall in Gassies v.
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Ballon(7) where it is said: "A citizen of the United States, residing
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in any State of the Union, is a citizen of that State." The declaration
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that all persons born in the United States and subject to the
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jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States was the
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announcement of a new law of Federal citizenship, carrying with it a new
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law of State citizenship and altering, as it was intended to alter, the
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rule of citizenship established by the decision of the Supreme Court in
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the case of Dred Scott v. Sandford.(8) To that extent the amendment
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worked a radical change.(9)
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The next clause requires a restatement of its provisions, because
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nearly all the litigation which has arisen upon the XIV Amendment has
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grown out of the prohibitions of this clause. The language is: "No State
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shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or
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immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive
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any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor
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deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
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laws."
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This language is plain enough. It cannot be tortured into anything but
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a prohibition against the enactment by any State of any law abridging
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the privileges or immunities of any citizen of the United States, or
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depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process
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of law, or denying Congress any person within its jurisdiction the equal
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protection of the laws. It relates to the States altogether. It does not
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require them to enact any law. It simply forbids them from enacting the
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laws described as obnoxious. It certainly does not confer upon the
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Federal government any power to enact any kind of laws except laws
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enforcing this prohibition against the States. It adds nothing to and
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takes nothing away from the right of one citizen against another,
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whether he be a citizen of the United States or a citizen of the State.
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It forbids States from encroaching upon existing rights, but, however
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it may have intended, it is equally clear that it does not forbid
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individuals from encroaching upon those rights, The power conferred upon
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Congress is to enforce, by "appropriate legislation," the provisions of
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the article. The provision of the article were directed solely against
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the States. The power of Congress derived from the amendments must
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therefore be confined to the power to legislate against the States to
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enforce those provisions.(10)
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The Supreme Court significantly pointed out this limited power of
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Congress under the amendment when, in the Slaughter-House Cases, it
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declared that the protection given by the amendment was "from the
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hostile legislation of the States." This was in 1872. But Congress had
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already paused an act, called the Enforcement Act in which it had
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undertaken to legislate against individuals for conspiring or acting
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singly against citizens for the purpose of abridging their privileges
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or immunities and depriving them of life, liberty, or property, or,
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preventing their enjoyment of the equal protection of the laws, under
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these constitutional amendments. Certain acts violative of the rights
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of citizens, as defined by the XIV and XV Amendments, committed by
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individuals either singly or in conspiracy with others, were declared
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to be in violation of Federal law, and penalties were denounced against
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the perpetrators, and under these acts arrests were made and
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prosecutions had.
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Congress also passed an act known as the Civil Rights Bill, by which
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it undertook to require innkeepers, carriers, and keepers of places of
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public amusement not to discriminate against any classes of citizens in
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the accommodations which they supplied, and to give to citizens who were
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denied these equal accommodations right of action and damages for such
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denial. The defendants in all these cases, criminal and civil,
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challenged the power of Congress to pass the laws under which they were
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indicted or sued.
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Two criminal cases, involving this defense, were decided by the
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Supreme Court in 1875. One was the case of United States v. Reese,
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arising under the clause of the Enforcement Act which undertook to
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punish an individual for seeking to deprive a citizen of his rights
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under the XV Amendment.(11) The other was the case of United States v.
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Cruikshank(12) arising under the clause of the Enforcement Act which
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undertook to punish an individual for depriving a citizen of his rights
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under the XIV Amendment.
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In the case of Reese it was declared that the XV Amendment conferred
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no right to vote; that it invested United States citizens with the right
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of exemption from discrimination in the exercise of suffrage on account
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of race, color, or previous condition; that the power of Congress to
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legislate at all concerning voting at State elections rested on the XV
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Amendment and could be exercised only by providing punishment when the
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wrongful refusal was because of race, color, or previous condition. In
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the Cruikshank case the court said: "The equality of the rights of
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citizens is a principle of republicanism. Every republican government
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is in duty bound to protect all its citizens in the enjoyment of this
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principle, if it is within its power." But the court further proceeded
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to say that this duty was originally assumed by the States, and it still
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remains there. The only obligation resting upon the United States is to
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see that the States do not deny the right. This the amendment
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guarantees, but no more. The power of the national government is limited
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to the enforcement of that guarantee. The court, however, found
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technical difficulties in the indictment which enabled it to set aside
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the conviction without going further. It was plain to see that the
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Supreme Court doubted the power of Congress to enact laws directed
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against individuals for violating the rights of citizens guaranteed
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against State legislation by the XIV and XV Amendments.
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In the case of U.S. v. Harris,(13) the Supreme Court declared the
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Enforcement Act void in the following language: "When an Act of Congress
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is directed exclusively against the action of private persons, without
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reference to the laws of the State, or their administration by her
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officers, it is not warranted by any clause in this amendment," and this
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language has been reiterated by the court on many occasions.(14)
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In the case In re Kemmler,(15)the Supreme Court said: "The XIV
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Amendment did not radically change the whole theory of the relations of
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the State and Federal government to each other and of both governments
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to the people. . . . Protection of life, liberty, and property rests
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primarily with the States;" and the opinion goes on to declare that the
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amendment guarantees only that the State shall not encroach upon the
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fundamental rights of her citizens or discriminate between them. And
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when in 1883 the measure of Congress known as the Civil Rights Bill came
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up for adjudication it was declared unconstitutional.(16) In that case
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it was held that the XIV Amendment does not justify establishing a code
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of municipal law regulative of all private rights between man and man
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in society, or make Congress take the place of State legislatures, and
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that the legislation which Congress was authorized to adopt was not
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general legislation upon the rights of citizens, but corrective
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legislation necessary to counteract State legislation prohibited by the
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amendment. "Individual invasion of individual rights is not the subject
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matter of the amendment," was the language used.(17)
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The last and one of the most emphatic expressions of the Supreme Court
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against the power of Congress to enact a statute punishing purely
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individual action, as an appropriate exercise of power conferred by
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either the XIV or XV Amendments will be found in a case decided in
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1903.(18) In that case Bowman was indicted under Section 5507 of the
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Revised Statutes, which was a part of the same Act under which Reese and
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Cruikshank were indicted. The Act attempted to punish by fine and
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imprisonment every person who would prevent, hinder, control, or
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intimidate in the exercise of the right of suffrage, by certain means
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described, any one to whom that right is guaranteed by the XV Amendment.
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The court held that the Act was beyond the power of Congress, and
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discharged -the prisoner on a writ of habeas corpus. It reviewed the
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authorities above referred to, and declared that a Federal statute which
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purported to punish purely individual action in the particulars named
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was unconstitutional.
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So that, at the present time, it may be truly said that the statutes,
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both of criminal and of, civil nature, which the Congress has attempted
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to enact, directed against individuals, and purporting to punish them
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or subject them to damages for violating the rights of citizens under
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the XIV and XV Amendments, have been nullified by the decisions of the
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Supreme Court. But while the power granted to the courts by the
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amendments has been thus restricted by interpretation, the power to
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legislate against State action has been sustained, and, in sundry
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instances, State action has been nullified.
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In the first group of cases, decided by the Supreme Court in 1879, the
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following decisions illustrate what the amendment did effect. The law
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of West Virginia which singled out and denied to colored citizens the
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right and privilege of participating in the administration of the laws
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by serving on juries, because of their color, was held to be void for
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the discrimination. (19) In another case it appeared that the jury law
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of Virginia did not forbid the summoning of negroes to act on the panel,
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and that if there were none on the jury which tried the accused it was
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either by chance or by the negligence or wilful misconduct of a
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subordinate officer. In that case it was held that this did not
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constitute a denial by the State.(20)
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In the third case which came up from Virginia,(21) where the jury law
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was as stated above, the court refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus
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in favor of a judge who had been indicted for refusing to summon negroes
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on the jury. His release had been demanded by the State. It is difficult
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to see how the ruling in this case can be justified, for the Supreme
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Court had, at the same term, said that the XIV Amendment was directed
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at State action, and had declared in the Reese and Cruikshank cases, in
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effect, that Federal legislation against individuals was not
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contemplated or authorized by the XIV or XIV Amendments; and in an
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opinion delivered on the same day it declared that if an executive or
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a judicial officer in Virginia exercised unwarranted power or did
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unauthorized acts, prejudicial to the rights of a citizen of the United
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States, the remedy was by appeal. It had allowed an appeal and had
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granted relief in a similar case in West Virginia; and subsequently, in
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the case of U.S. v. Harris,(22) in the Civil Rights Cases,(23) in
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Baldwin v. Frank,(24) and in James v. Bowman,(25) it nullified the
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Enforcement Act and the Civil Rights Bill on the ground that individual
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invasion of individual rights was not the subject matter of the
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amendment.
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It is impossible to reconcile the decision in Ex p. Virginia with the
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others. Perhaps the court did not at that time understand as fully as
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it came to understand later the real scope of the amendments.
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As they stand, the two cases of Virginia v. Rives and Ex p. Virginia
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present an amusing line of judicial demarcation. In Virginia v. Rives,
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the misconduct of a sheriff in the method of summoning a jury was
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declared not to be the action of the State and to be remediable on
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appeal. In the case of Ex p. Virginia, decided the same day, the
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misconduct of a judge in not summoning a proper jury was held to be the
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action of the State, remediable by the indictment of the judge, although
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the State had done no wrong.(26) The only legal principle to be deduced
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from the two decisions is that the boundary between an officer who is
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the State and an officer who is not the State lies somewhere between a
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sheriff and a judge.
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State action discriminating between citizens has been frequently
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nullified by Federal decisions since. In most cases the discrimination
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was in regard to the constitution of juries.(27) These cases will be
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considered in discussing the decisions under the clauses of the
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amendments to which they refer.
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Having now discussed the general features of the first and fifth
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sections of the XIV Amendment, we come to a consideration of the
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decisions rendered upon it by the Supreme Court of the United States
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during the forty years since its passage. Three hundred cases, involving
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its construction, have been decided by that court, scrutinizing it from
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nearly every point of view in which it may possibly be considered, and
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we need cite no other authority on the questions, because the decisions
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of the Supreme Court are the supreme law of the land, anything in
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conflict with them in inferior courts, Federal or State, to the contrary
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notwithstanding.(28)
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After laborious effort, it has been found impossible to separate the
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decisions under the three headings - cases in which it was claimed that
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the rights and privileges of the complainant were abridged; cases in
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which it was claimed that the complainant had been deprived of life,
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liberty, or property without due process of law; and cases in which it
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was claimed that the citizen had been denied the equal protection of the
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law - for in almost every instance the right to the relief asked was
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placed on all three grounds. Where the decision was adverse relief was
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of course denied upon all three of the grounds specified, but where
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relief was granted it was sometimes upon one ground, sometimes upon two,
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sometimes upon all three, and in some cases the court failed to specify
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upon which of the grounds the decision rested.
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The student interested in the further pursuit of this inquiry may
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easily satisfy himself, for, surprising us it may be, out of the three
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hundred cases decided, only about thirty decisions have sustained the
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right or claim asserted under the XIV Amendment. These favorable
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decisions relate to discriminations against negroes in State laws or
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proceedings relating to the constitution of juries; to discriminations
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against Chinamen; to discriminating State laws concerning taxation,
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assessment, rates, or regulation of corporations; to discriminations in
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State procedure; and to a few particular rights. (29) This is the
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pitiful array of results from forty years of litigation upon amendments
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which, at the time of their enactment, were claimed to revolutionize the
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relations of the Nation and the States.
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In the great mass of rejected claims will be found the full
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interpretation placed by the court upon these amendments. A list of
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authorities is hereto appended showing what has been claimed under the
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clause which provides:
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"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
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privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."
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Out of all the eases decided by the Supreme Court in which the
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abridgment of rights has been asserted, the claim has been sustained in
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but a few cases and of the cases favorably decided seven relate to the
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rights of negroes in the constitution of juries. The rights established
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in other cases were. The right of a lawyer to practice law; the right
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of a Chinaman to conduct a laundry without discrimination; the right of
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railroads and other corporations to equal protection against
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discriminating State taxes or other requirements, and the right of a
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litigant to have due notice of a suit. Yet the whole range of the rights
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of citizens have been traversed to attain this result.
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We have already had occasion to point out that, in the earliest
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construction placed upon these amendments, it was declared that their
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main purpose was to give definitions of citizenship of the United States
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and of the States and to protect the newly enfranchised race against
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discriminating legislation by the States. At the risk of endless
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reiteration, we must again recur to the language of the court in the
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Slaughter-House Cases, declaring that the amendments did not bring
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within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights
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theretofore belonging exclusively to the States, or transfer the
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security and protection of all civil rights from the States to the
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Federal government. Their whole function was to bestow on Congress power
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to protect United States citizens from hostile legislation by the
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States.
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With this as the keynote we come to a consideration of the decisions
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|||
|
above referred to. The States have been held to possess very large
|
|||
|
powers of legislation, subject only to the condition that they shall not
|
|||
|
abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States
|
|||
|
or deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process
|
|||
|
of law. The basic principle on which all these decisions rest is that
|
|||
|
prior to the amendments, the control of all these subjects resided in
|
|||
|
the States; that the amendments do not justify establishing a Federal
|
|||
|
code of municipal law regulative of all private rights between man and
|
|||
|
man in society, or make Congress take the place of State legislatures;
|
|||
|
that the legislation which Congress is authorized to enact is not
|
|||
|
general legislation upon the rights of citizens, but corrective
|
|||
|
legislation on the States, such legislation as may be necessary to
|
|||
|
counteract State legislation prohibited by the amendments; and that,
|
|||
|
subject to this restriction, the power of the States to legislate on all
|
|||
|
these subjects is as unqualified as it was before the amendments.(30)
|
|||
|
All the opinions rendered deal with this general idea, and we shall
|
|||
|
proceed to consider in detail the decisions under the following heads:
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
1. Of the Regulation of Ordinary Business Pursuits by the States.
|
|||
|
a. To establish slaughter-houses.(31)
|
|||
|
The opinion delivered in the Slaughter-House Cases is perhaps the most
|
|||
|
thorough and exhaustive discussion to be found of the reserved police
|
|||
|
powers of the State in the Union. Further citations from it are
|
|||
|
unnecessary in view of what has preceded.
|
|||
|
b. To control the regulation of laundries.(32)
|
|||
|
In the cases of Barbier v. Connolley and Soon Hing v. Crowley, cited
|
|||
|
below, it was declared that the XIV Amendment did not impair the police
|
|||
|
powers; of the States and that they might prohibit laundries within
|
|||
|
certain limits between certain hours; but, in the later case of Yick Wo
|
|||
|
v. Hopkins 8, this police power was limited by the requirements that,
|
|||
|
such laws, and indeed any laws regulating the conduct of business,
|
|||
|
should not by their terms or in their administration discriminate
|
|||
|
between classes of people engaged in the business. Yick Wo was a
|
|||
|
Chinaman in San Francisco, and an ordinance of the city, either by its
|
|||
|
terms or in its administration, discriminated against Chinese. That was
|
|||
|
held to deny to a class the equal protection of the law in violation of
|
|||
|
the amendment.
|
|||
|
c. Regulation of liquor traffic.(33)
|
|||
|
The cases relating to the control of liquor traffic by the States are
|
|||
|
numerous. They are unanimous that the right to traffic in intoxicating
|
|||
|
drinks is not a privilege or immunity which the XIV Amendment forbids
|
|||
|
a State from abridging unless the law so operates as to amount to a
|
|||
|
deprivation of property without compensation or violates the provisions
|
|||
|
against interstate commerce. In the License Cases Mr. Justice Greer
|
|||
|
said: "Police power which is exclusively in the States is alone
|
|||
|
competent to the correction of these great evils," and in the case of
|
|||
|
Foster v. Kansas it was said that the constitutional power of the States
|
|||
|
to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors is no
|
|||
|
longer an open question. The States have the power to regulate and even
|
|||
|
to prohibit the sale of liquors; but a number of cases will be found,
|
|||
|
arising under the interstate commerce law, which forbid the States from
|
|||
|
interfering with liquor passing through or brought into a State while
|
|||
|
it is in the condition of commercial transit.
|
|||
|
d. To inspect food supplies.(34)
|
|||
|
Inspection laws passed by the State to secure pure food for its
|
|||
|
citizens are valid, but inspection laws which go beyond this purpose and
|
|||
|
either discriminate between classes or interfere with interstate
|
|||
|
commerce must yield to the supremacy of the Federal law. The decisions
|
|||
|
on this question are numerous, and each case which shall arise hereafter
|
|||
|
must depend upon the phraseology and effect of the law under
|
|||
|
consideration.
|
|||
|
e. Authority to guard against the introduction of infected cattle from
|
|||
|
other States.(35)
|
|||
|
This has been sustained in a number of cases, as has also a law which
|
|||
|
imposes damages upon owners for damage done by cattle or other stock in
|
|||
|
the highways.
|
|||
|
f. To prohibit business on Sunday.(36)
|
|||
|
The right of the State to prohibit business on Sunday has been upheld
|
|||
|
on the same ground of police powers.
|
|||
|
g. For the same reason, to require licenses from vendors.(37)
|
|||
|
h. The right to regulate the flow of oil wells and the like.(38)
|
|||
|
i. Also the right to forbid the unlawful combination of citizens to
|
|||
|
injure others in their reputation, trade, or business, or combinations
|
|||
|
known as trusts deemed destructive of competition.(39)
|
|||
|
k. To prescribe regulations concerning many other things.(40)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
2. The Right to Regulate Woman's Rights.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
One of the first claims decided was that of a woman, in Bradwell v.
|
|||
|
State.(41) She sought to compel the State of Illinois to admit her to
|
|||
|
the practice of law, but the court promptly held that while she was a
|
|||
|
citizen it was within the power of the State to determine whether she
|
|||
|
should be entitled to practice. In the case of Miner v. Happersett(42)
|
|||
|
in the same volume, a woman claimed the right of suffrage, but the
|
|||
|
courts held that the right of suffrage was under the control of the
|
|||
|
State.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
3. The Right to Regulate the Practice of Professions.(43)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Laws requiring professional men to submit to examination to procure
|
|||
|
licenses have been held not to invade any rights granted to them by the
|
|||
|
Constitution; but in one case the conviction of a lawyer refusing to pay
|
|||
|
a tax was held to be illegal and was set aside, and he was discharged
|
|||
|
on habeas corpus, because the tax demanded violated the contract clause
|
|||
|
of the Constitution by the manner of its imposition.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
4. Of Suffrage.(44)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
In the first case which arose under the XIV Amendment involving the
|
|||
|
right of suffrage, the Supreme Court was very positive in its statement
|
|||
|
that the right of suffrage was derived exclusively from the States; that
|
|||
|
it was not an incidental privilege or immunity of Federal citizenship
|
|||
|
before the adoption of the XIV Amendment; that the XIV Amendment did not
|
|||
|
add to the privileges or immunities which it undertook to protect; that
|
|||
|
suffrage was not even coextensive with State citizenship; that neither
|
|||
|
the Constitution of the United States nor the XIV Amendment made all
|
|||
|
citizens voters; and that a provision in the State constitution limiting
|
|||
|
suffrage to male citizens did not violate the Federal Constitution. In
|
|||
|
the next case in which suffrage was considered it was declared that the
|
|||
|
XV Amendment conferred no right to vote, and that it merely invested
|
|||
|
citizens of the United States with the right of exemption from
|
|||
|
discrimination against them (in the exercise of suffrage) by reason of
|
|||
|
race, color, or previous condition; but that the power of Congress to
|
|||
|
legislate at all concerning voting at State elections rests on the XV
|
|||
|
Amendment, and can be exercised only by providing punishment when the
|
|||
|
wrongful refusal is because of the race or color of the voter.
|
|||
|
In the case of U.S. v. Cruikshank(45) it was said, referring to the
|
|||
|
two cases above: 'The Constitution of the United States has not
|
|||
|
conferred the right of suffrage upon any one, and the United States have
|
|||
|
no voters of their own creation in the States." In the later case of Ex
|
|||
|
p. Yarbrough, it was said that there were cases in which the XV
|
|||
|
Amendment substantially conferred the right to vote on the negro, as
|
|||
|
where it was held, in the case of Neal v. Delaware(46) to annul the word
|
|||
|
"white" in the State constitution.
|
|||
|
In the case of Ex p. Yarbrough(47) it was contended that "the right
|
|||
|
to vote for a member of Congress is not dependent upon the Constitution
|
|||
|
and laws of the United States, but is governed by the laws of each State
|
|||
|
respectively." The Supreme Court denied that, and answered it as
|
|||
|
follows: "It is not correct to say that the right to vote for a member
|
|||
|
of Congress does not depend on the Constitution of the United States.
|
|||
|
The office, if it be properly called an office, is created by that
|
|||
|
Constitution and by that alone. It also declares how it shall be filled,
|
|||
|
namely, by election. Its language is: 'The House of Representatives
|
|||
|
shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of
|
|||
|
the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the
|
|||
|
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the
|
|||
|
State legislature.' (Art. 1, Sec. 2.) The States, in prescribing the
|
|||
|
qualifications of voters for the most numerous branch of their own
|
|||
|
legislatures, do not do this with reference to the election for members
|
|||
|
of Congress, nor can they prescribe the qualification for voters for
|
|||
|
those nominated."
|
|||
|
In the case of McPherson v. Blacker,(48) it was said that the right
|
|||
|
of a citizen of the United States, from the time of his majority, to
|
|||
|
vote for presidential electors, is a right secured to him by Article II
|
|||
|
of the Constitution and is unaffected by the XIV and XV Amendments. So
|
|||
|
that, whatever may be said concerning the sources from which the right
|
|||
|
of suffrage is derived, it is certain that the right to vote for members
|
|||
|
of the House of Representatives and for presidential electors is derived
|
|||
|
from the Constitution of the United States itself and not from the
|
|||
|
States.
|
|||
|
The framers of the Constitution saw fit to ascertain the Federal
|
|||
|
electorate by reference to a State rule of selection, but that does not
|
|||
|
make the right originate with the State any more than the measuring of
|
|||
|
cloth with a yardstick makes the cloth the product of a machine shop
|
|||
|
instead of a woolen factory.
|
|||
|
In two recent cases (Wiley v. Sinkler(49) and Swafford v. Templeton
|
|||
|
(50), instituted in federal courts for alleged interference with the
|
|||
|
rights of the plaintiffs to vote at an election for members of the House
|
|||
|
of Representatives, the jurisdiction of the federal courts has been
|
|||
|
sustained, and the right of the citizens to vote for a member of the
|
|||
|
House of Representatives has been declared to have its origin in federal
|
|||
|
law; but the Supreme Court has steadily refused to entertain
|
|||
|
jurisdiction of questions of suffrage relating to State elections, where
|
|||
|
it was not pointed out that the law discriminated against a citizen on
|
|||
|
account of his race, color, or previous condition.
|
|||
|
In the case of Gibson v. Mississippi,(51) it was declared that States
|
|||
|
are empowered to qualify the right of suffrage by conditions confining
|
|||
|
it to males, to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain
|
|||
|
ages, or to those having educational qualifications; the only limitation
|
|||
|
upon the power of the States, being that the laws shall not in form or
|
|||
|
in administration discriminate between voters on account of race, color,
|
|||
|
or condition.
|
|||
|
In Williams v. Mississippi(52) the court declared that provisions of
|
|||
|
a State constitution prescribing suffrage which were in themselves
|
|||
|
unobjectionable, and concerning the administration of which no specific
|
|||
|
wrong was alleged, would not be declared null merely because there was
|
|||
|
a possibility that in their administration wrong might be committed
|
|||
|
under them.
|
|||
|
In the case of Pope v. Williams,(53) very recently decided, a State
|
|||
|
law requiring voters to give twelve mouths' notice of an intention to
|
|||
|
claim citizenship was held not to be violative of the amendment; and
|
|||
|
even in the case of Wiley v. Sinkler, where the right asserted was held
|
|||
|
to be a Federal right, the court decided that in order to make a case
|
|||
|
of prima facie invasion of his right, the plaintiff must show not only
|
|||
|
that he was entitled to vote, but that he had complied with the State
|
|||
|
registration laws which prescribe the conditions precedent to the
|
|||
|
exercise of that right.
|
|||
|
In sundry other cases recently decided, the effort has been made to
|
|||
|
induce the Supreme Court to consider the claims and to redress the
|
|||
|
wrongs of persons who alleged that they had been unlawfully deprived of
|
|||
|
suffrage; but the court hat; refused to entertain jurisdiction,
|
|||
|
declaring that the questions rained are political and call for redress
|
|||
|
which can be given only by the legislative and executive departments of
|
|||
|
the government.
|
|||
|
In the recent case of Giles v. Harris,(54) it was said: "The
|
|||
|
traditional limits of proceedings in equity have not embraced a remedy
|
|||
|
for political wrongs." And again: "In determining whether a court of
|
|||
|
equity can take jurisdiction, one of the first questions is what it can
|
|||
|
do to enforce any order that it may make. This is alleged to be the
|
|||
|
conspiracy of a State, although the State is not and could not be made
|
|||
|
a party to the bill. The Circuit Court has no constitutional power to
|
|||
|
control its action by any direct means; and if we leave the State out
|
|||
|
of consideration, the court has as little practical power to deal with
|
|||
|
the people of the State in a body. The bill imports that the great mass
|
|||
|
of the white population intends to keep the blacks from voting. To meet
|
|||
|
such an intent something more than ordering the plaintiffs name to be
|
|||
|
inscribed upon the lists of 1902 will be needed. . . . Unless we are
|
|||
|
prepared to supervise the voting in that State by officers of the court,
|
|||
|
it seems to us that all that the plaintiff could get from equity would
|
|||
|
be an empty form. Apart from damages to the individual, relief from a
|
|||
|
great political wrong, if done, as alleged, by the people of a State and
|
|||
|
the State itself, must be given by them or by the legislative and
|
|||
|
political department of the government of the United States."
|
|||
|
While this has been the attitude of the Supreme Court upon suffrage
|
|||
|
questions, sundry States have been legislating upon the subject in such
|
|||
|
a way, that, on one pretext or another, large bodies of citizens who
|
|||
|
had exercised the right of suffrage uninterruptedly for many years under
|
|||
|
pledges given to Congress by the States, when they were restored to
|
|||
|
their relations in the Union, that their suffrage never would be
|
|||
|
curtailed, have been deprived of their right to vote. Despairing of
|
|||
|
obtaining any relief from the Federal judiciary, the attempt has been
|
|||
|
made to transfer the controversy to the House of Representatives. In
|
|||
|
the 58th Congress (1903-1905) contests were made up from the State of
|
|||
|
South Carolina in the House of Representatives, which, by
|
|||
|
the terms of the Constitution, is made the sole judge of the elections,
|
|||
|
returns, and qualifications of its members. (Article 1, Section 5,
|
|||
|
Clause 1.) The issue thus presented challenged the right of any of the
|
|||
|
sitting representatives of South Carolina to hold their seats because
|
|||
|
of alleged violations of the Constitution of the United States in the
|
|||
|
State constitution and the laws regulating suffrage under which they
|
|||
|
were elected. The issues were squarely presented and called for a
|
|||
|
decision by the House; but the committee on elections made a report in
|
|||
|
which it stated that the cases involved grave constitutional questions,
|
|||
|
which, if decided in favor of the claimants, would go to the very
|
|||
|
foundation of the State government of South Carolina and would perhaps
|
|||
|
affect not only her representation, but that of the other States; that
|
|||
|
the House should hesitate about taking a step which might be so
|
|||
|
far-reaching in its consequences, until the legal questions involved
|
|||
|
were decided by the courts intrusted with the duty of constitutional
|
|||
|
interpretation, and that the courts might more safely be relied upon for
|
|||
|
correct decision than a transitory and ever-changing unprofessional body
|
|||
|
like the House of Representatives. And so the matter of suffrage rests;
|
|||
|
the courts declining to pass upon it as a political question, and
|
|||
|
Congress insisting that it is a judicial question. Meanwhile a great
|
|||
|
body of citizens whose very political being depends upon a decision are
|
|||
|
left without any tribunal to decide their rights.
|
|||
|
The historian of our times may be at a loss to understand how a nation
|
|||
|
so powerful for self-preservation, and so insistent upon the
|
|||
|
establishment of negro suffrage, afterwards became so weak and
|
|||
|
indifferent to providing means for its enforcement.
|
|||
|
It will be plain to, him, if he recalls the facts that the bestowal
|
|||
|
of suffrage upon a great mass of ignorant people was, when it was done,
|
|||
|
the product of war passions rather than of reason, and that afterwards
|
|||
|
those war passions which gave rise to it subsided, but race prejudices
|
|||
|
survived and have brought the whites in the lately antagonistic sections
|
|||
|
of our country together against an alien race. Under the influence of
|
|||
|
those racial affinities, the whites of the triumphant section have
|
|||
|
resolved not to oppose their former antagonists, but brethren in race,
|
|||
|
in the effort to preserve white supremacy in all parts of the Union; and
|
|||
|
have even come to look upon the bestowal of suffrage upon the negro as
|
|||
|
a great mistake.
|
|||
|
Negro suffrage has been pronounced a failure by men high in the trust
|
|||
|
and confidence of the Political party which bestowed it; so pronounced,
|
|||
|
because it is evident to any student of our conditions that the negro
|
|||
|
is incapable of maintaining his right and has no considerable body of
|
|||
|
disinterested white friends to champion his cause.
|
|||
|
This brings us, as related to the question of suffrage, to
|
|||
|
consideration of the second section of the XIV Amendment, which deals,
|
|||
|
with the reduction of representation of the States in Congress, under
|
|||
|
certain circumstances.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Reduction of the Representation of the States in Congress.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Under the Constitution of the United States, as it was adopted and
|
|||
|
remained in force for seventy nine years (Article 1, Section 2, Clause
|
|||
|
3), representation in Congress was apportioned among the several States
|
|||
|
according to their numbers, determined by adding to the whole number of
|
|||
|
free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and
|
|||
|
excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons. The
|
|||
|
words "all other persons" meant slaves. The framers of the Constitution
|
|||
|
had an aversion to using the term slave or slavery in the instrument.
|
|||
|
The representation which the States should have, respectively, in
|
|||
|
Congress, led to long and trying discussions in the convention which
|
|||
|
framed the Constitution. The basis finally adopted was a compromise
|
|||
|
which gave the slave States representation for three-fifths of their
|
|||
|
slave population. But the people of the free States never acquiesced in
|
|||
|
the justice of this basis, and it was a constant source of jealousy and
|
|||
|
friction between the sections.
|
|||
|
While the XIII Amendment abolished slavery, it conferred no
|
|||
|
citizenship on anybody and effected no change in the basis of
|
|||
|
representation. The XIV Amendment was the work of the triumphant free
|
|||
|
States and was arranged to suit themselves . The slave States were
|
|||
|
virtually excluded from any voice in the discussion of the new basis of
|
|||
|
representation. Many idiots were advanced for the new basis. One
|
|||
|
proposition was to determine representation by the number of votes
|
|||
|
actually cast at general elections; another, that representation should
|
|||
|
be based on the number of males of voting age in each State. Finally the
|
|||
|
new basis adopted the words of the old Constitution, omitting all
|
|||
|
references to taxes, or persons bound in service, and excluding from the
|
|||
|
computation of numbers only Indians not taxed. This was followed by a
|
|||
|
proviso authorizing Congress to reduce the representation from any State
|
|||
|
if it should deny to any of its male inhabitants, twenty-one years of
|
|||
|
age and citizens of the United States, the right to vote at certain
|
|||
|
elections, or in any way abridge the same, except for participation in
|
|||
|
rebellion or other crime. The elections referred to were (1) elections
|
|||
|
of electors of President and Vice President of the United States or
|
|||
|
representatives in Congress; (2) elections of the executive and judicial
|
|||
|
officers of a State or members of the legislature. The reduction was to
|
|||
|
be effected by ascertaining the number of such male citizens so deprived
|
|||
|
or abridged of suffrage in the elections named, and reducing the
|
|||
|
congressional representation of the State in the proportion which the
|
|||
|
number of males deprived of suffrage might bear to the whole number of
|
|||
|
male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. The fifth section
|
|||
|
of the amendment empowered Congress to enforce these provisions by
|
|||
|
appropriate legislation.
|
|||
|
Let us examine critically the circumstances under which this power to
|
|||
|
reduce the representation of a State arises.
|
|||
|
First, What denial or abridgment of suffrage by the State calls the
|
|||
|
power into play?
|
|||
|
Second, Whether the denial or abridgment of the suffrage of a class
|
|||
|
must be for any particular cause.
|
|||
|
Concerning the first: The denial or abridgement which justifies
|
|||
|
congressional action is not confined to Federal elections. Congress may
|
|||
|
act for the denial or abridgment of the right of a citizen to vote in
|
|||
|
a State election for the executive and judicial officers of the State
|
|||
|
or for members of the legislature. But its power arises only when the
|
|||
|
right of suffrage of a male citizen is denied or abridged.The power of
|
|||
|
a State to deny suffrage to the female sex is untouched by the
|
|||
|
Constitution of the United States. So also is the power of the State to
|
|||
|
prescribe the electorate in all State elections except for the executive
|
|||
|
or judicial officers of a State or members of the legislature.
|
|||
|
Concerning the second inquiry, it will be observed that whereas
|
|||
|
representation of the States is primarily determined by the whole number
|
|||
|
of persons in each State, the reduction of the representation (if the
|
|||
|
State can only be made for her denial or abridgment of the right of
|
|||
|
suffrage to male citizen of the United States twenty-one year's of age,
|
|||
|
and then in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall
|
|||
|
bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in
|
|||
|
such State. It will also be observed that the XIV Amendment left the
|
|||
|
States at liberty to deny or abridge this right for any cause. That
|
|||
|
right to deny or abridge the right of suffrage is still unrestrained
|
|||
|
except by the XV Amendment. It forbids the United States or any State
|
|||
|
to deny or abridge it on account of race, color, or previous condition
|
|||
|
of servitude, but it does not go further.(55)
|
|||
|
It is therefore manifest that but for the XV Amendment, the States
|
|||
|
would have the absolute power to fix the qualifications of voters and
|
|||
|
to limit and restrict the right to vote, as their several interests
|
|||
|
might seem to demand, and that the States still have that power except
|
|||
|
that they cannot deny or abridge the right of citizens of the United
|
|||
|
States to vote, on account of their race, color, or previous condition
|
|||
|
of servitude.
|
|||
|
Neither the XIV Amendment nor the XV Amendment forbids reasonable
|
|||
|
educational and property or other restrictions upon suffrage.(56) If a
|
|||
|
State constitution should provide that no one in the State shall enjoy
|
|||
|
the privilege of the ballot unless he is able to read and translate
|
|||
|
Hebrew and Sanskrit or to calculate eclipses of the heavenly bodies,
|
|||
|
what is there in the Federal Constitution or amendments to declare such
|
|||
|
legislation invalid? It was with the full knowledge of these facts that
|
|||
|
Congress demanded of the States then lately in rebellion that before
|
|||
|
resuming their relations to the Union they should adopt constitutions
|
|||
|
with clauses in them providing for universal manhood suffrage, and
|
|||
|
should agree that these features be irrepealable. The States did accept
|
|||
|
such constitutions and did give such pledges. It remains to be tested
|
|||
|
how far they were obligatory upon them. Many wise and learned lawyers
|
|||
|
are of opinion that those acts of Congress and the acceptance of the
|
|||
|
States based upon them were unconstitutional because, under our federal
|
|||
|
plan of government, it is contemplated that the States shall be equal
|
|||
|
in authority and sovereignty.(57)
|
|||
|
It is, argued that there can be and should be no distinction between
|
|||
|
the States in their power to regulate their own affairs; that no State
|
|||
|
can voluntarily surrender any portion of the power reserved to it by the
|
|||
|
Constitution; and that Congress in demanding from the States these
|
|||
|
"fundamental conditions" of reconstruction, as they were called, created
|
|||
|
an unconstitutional discrimination in favor of the domestic sovereignty
|
|||
|
of the States; which gave the pledge, making it different from that of
|
|||
|
the States which gave no such pledge, thus tending to destroy that
|
|||
|
equilibrium of State sovereignty and independence which is demanded by
|
|||
|
considerations affecting the common welfare and is necessary to the
|
|||
|
permanency of the Union as well as to the integrity of the States
|
|||
|
composing it.
|
|||
|
It is contended also that the right to vote is neither a natural
|
|||
|
right, nor one secured by the Federal Constitution except as provided
|
|||
|
in the XV Amendment; that it is purely a political privilege conferred
|
|||
|
upon certain members of the body politic for the benefit and welfare of
|
|||
|
all. That is true. But the entire frame of this government is predicated
|
|||
|
upon the idea that this is a government of the people, by the people,
|
|||
|
and for the people; and that the people have a right to choose their own
|
|||
|
representatives and to make and administer the laws. By the word "people
|
|||
|
" is always meant the intelligent mass of the community.
|
|||
|
The theory of those who framed and induced the adoption of the XIV and
|
|||
|
XV Amendments was that it behooved the Federal government, not
|
|||
|
arbitrarily to establish, but to encourage, universal manhood suffrage;
|
|||
|
that it is its duty to prevent the denial of suffrage on account of the
|
|||
|
race, color, or previous condition of the citizen, but that beyond this
|
|||
|
it could not control State action on the subject; that it is the
|
|||
|
unmistakably correct policy of republican institutions to confer the
|
|||
|
ballot, as far as it may be safely done, upon all who are relied upon
|
|||
|
to bear the burdens and fight the battles of the government. Civil and
|
|||
|
political privileges are practically one. The rights of citizenship and
|
|||
|
of property are of little value and of small consequence in the absence
|
|||
|
of the right of the ballot to shield and protect them. No people or race
|
|||
|
of people can be said in any proper sense to enjoy the boon of freedom,
|
|||
|
if they are denied the power -of participating in the making and
|
|||
|
administering of the laws. The right of suffrage under proper conditions
|
|||
|
is a stimulant to patriotism, an encouragement to civic pride, and an
|
|||
|
inspiration to improvement, and makes the citizen a better citizen by
|
|||
|
the sense of being part of his government and by imposing on him
|
|||
|
responsibility for the wisdom of that government and the success of its
|
|||
|
administration. (58)
|
|||
|
Congress doubtless reserved to itself the power to reduce
|
|||
|
representation under the conviction that while it might not have power
|
|||
|
to prevent States from denying or abridging suffrage in all respects,
|
|||
|
it should have power to reduce their representation in Congress if for
|
|||
|
any cause States should abridge their own electorates so as to make the
|
|||
|
voting class cease to be representative of popular sovereignty. It has
|
|||
|
been said that this is the only agency at the command of Congress by
|
|||
|
which to make good to the States the constitutional guaranty of
|
|||
|
republican government in spirit as well as in form. If for instance, the
|
|||
|
millionaires of a State should succeed in confining suffrage to a few
|
|||
|
very wealthy men, it would be, in effect, the substitution of a moneyed
|
|||
|
aristocracy for free democracy in that State. Under the XIV Amendment
|
|||
|
Congress would have power in such case to reduce the representation of
|
|||
|
that State in proportion to the disfranchisement. The denial or
|
|||
|
abridgment in that instance would have nothing to do with race, color,
|
|||
|
or previous condition, yet the power to deal with it, conferred by the
|
|||
|
XIV Amendment, is apparent, and may become of vital importance as the
|
|||
|
only available way of practically enforcing the Federal guarantee of a
|
|||
|
republican form of government for the States.
|
|||
|
The argument has been made that the power granted to Congress by the
|
|||
|
XIV Amendment to reduce representation for disfranchisement was repealed
|
|||
|
by the adoption of the XV Amendment. The fallacy of this contention is
|
|||
|
apparent at a glance. The XV Amendment prohibits the States from denying
|
|||
|
or abridging the right of suffrage for a single cause, viz., race,
|
|||
|
color, or previous condition. The XIV Amendment authorizes the reduction
|
|||
|
of representation if the right of suffrage is denied or abridged for
|
|||
|
any cause. If a State should abridge the right to an arbitrary or
|
|||
|
unreasonable extent, by imposing educational, or property, or so-called
|
|||
|
"intelligence" qualifications, or by any more unreasonable methods,
|
|||
|
Congress would have the power to examine into its action and to judge
|
|||
|
whether such practical denial or abridgment of suffrage subjected that
|
|||
|
State to liability to have its representation reduced. The denial or
|
|||
|
abridgment on account of race, color, or previous condition would be a
|
|||
|
nullity because it is made unconstitutional by the XV Amendment. That
|
|||
|
would perhaps prevent Congress from reducing representation by reason
|
|||
|
of such a law, because, being inoperative, it could neither deny nor
|
|||
|
abridge the right of any class. Doubtless it was a solicitude for the
|
|||
|
protection of the colored citizen that inspired the XIV Amendment, but
|
|||
|
it is written in general terms and applies to all classes of people, and
|
|||
|
notwithstanding the XV Amendment it stands unrepealed. Minnesota can no
|
|||
|
more disfranchise a considerable portion of her white citizens without
|
|||
|
reference to race or color, and escape the risk of having her
|
|||
|
representation reduced therefor, than can Mississippi disfranchise her
|
|||
|
black citizens. The XIV Amendment is as operative to-day as it was the
|
|||
|
day of its enactment. An educational or a property qualification imposed
|
|||
|
by any State of this Union to the extent of reducing popular
|
|||
|
representation, and to the destruction of real popular representative
|
|||
|
government, is as plain an abridgment of the right of suffrage, contrary
|
|||
|
to the spirit of the XIV Amendment, as an abridgment on account of race,
|
|||
|
color, or condition. One of these restrictions is as capable of abuse
|
|||
|
with sinister motives as the other, and it is within the plain power of
|
|||
|
Congress to consider and deal with both.
|
|||
|
So much for the letter and the spirit of the law of federal
|
|||
|
representation in Congress. As a practical question it is not probable
|
|||
|
that Congress will ever enact a law to enforce the provisions of the
|
|||
|
second section of the XIV Amendment by "appropriate legislation," or
|
|||
|
that it will ever attempt to reduce the representation of any State
|
|||
|
because it has denied or abridged the right of citizens of the United
|
|||
|
States to vote at any of the elections named in the amendment The
|
|||
|
reasons for this opinion are brief. In the first place, the overwhelming
|
|||
|
majority of representatives in Congress are white men. The racial
|
|||
|
sympathy existing between white representatives of States where the
|
|||
|
blacks are few, and the white representatives of the States which
|
|||
|
disfranchise them, is stronger than any political theories. The statutes
|
|||
|
of the States where the blacks are disfranchised do not openly aver the
|
|||
|
real purposes of the acts. They are ostensibly based upon sundry other
|
|||
|
disqualifications, educational, ownership of property, registration,
|
|||
|
residence, etc. If the legislation is assailed, those whose frame it
|
|||
|
admit its real purpose, in private, and justify it by specious appeals
|
|||
|
to racial sympathies and exaggerated pictures of the dangers to white
|
|||
|
supremacy in their section unless the course adopted be followed. So
|
|||
|
industriously is this system of persuasion and appeal to racial sympathy
|
|||
|
pursued, that even political antagonists are soon converted too this
|
|||
|
idea of "doing evil that good may come of it," and join in the effort
|
|||
|
to demonstrate that the discriminations are not racial. Once off that
|
|||
|
dangerous ground, new elements of sympathy are enlisted, for, throughout
|
|||
|
the North and West, educational and property qualifications are: deemed
|
|||
|
justifiable limitations upon suffrage, and it would be impossible to
|
|||
|
secure, by the votes of representatives; from those sections, any Act
|
|||
|
of Congress reducing the representation of any State for other than race
|
|||
|
discrimination.
|
|||
|
Congress is changing body, and while its members from some sections,
|
|||
|
as a rule, remain but a short time, a representative from the South,
|
|||
|
under the system prevailing, once elected is apt to stay for a long
|
|||
|
time; and as he becomes familiar with congressional methods he becomes
|
|||
|
more and more master of the Machiavelian logic of his peculiar school,
|
|||
|
and past master of the trading politics which have always characterized
|
|||
|
the dealings with each other of representatives from the different
|
|||
|
sections in Congress. He knows that he will be called upon to make many
|
|||
|
concessions to the representatives of other sections upon commercial
|
|||
|
legislation, and on questions affecting their local interests. In return
|
|||
|
he has, as a rule, but one concession to demand from them, and that is
|
|||
|
both in accord with their own prejudices and in the line of interests
|
|||
|
against congressional interference with their own States. It is the
|
|||
|
privilege of being left alone in the management of his State affairs.
|
|||
|
The power granted by the amendment against the States is too broad to
|
|||
|
be comfortable to those called on to enforce it. It can never be
|
|||
|
exercised save by the vote of a majority of representatives from the
|
|||
|
States to be affected. It is not likely that any party will ever possess
|
|||
|
a majority sufficient to enforce these provisions against any State, for
|
|||
|
there will ever be a margin of timid representatives who will fear the
|
|||
|
effect on their own fortunes at home if they should recognize a
|
|||
|
principle which may be dangerously turned against their ow n
|
|||
|
constituents. The bargain is easy; the result, nonaction by Congress.
|
|||
|
And so far as any practical results are to be expected from the exercise
|
|||
|
of this power of Congress to reduce representation, it is as unlikely
|
|||
|
that Congress will act as that it will some day declare this government
|
|||
|
to be an absolute monarchy.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
5. The Right of States to Regulate State Procedure,
|
|||
|
Especially Concerning the Summoning and Constitution
|
|||
|
of Juries.(59)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Many cases have arisen in which the trial of citizens by the State
|
|||
|
according to State procedure has been questioned as an infringement of
|
|||
|
a right secured by the XIV Amendment The only cases in which these
|
|||
|
claims have been sustained are those in which there was a discrimination
|
|||
|
on account of race, color, or previous condition.
|
|||
|
The right of a citizen of the United States to trial by jury in a
|
|||
|
federal court is absolute in all trials for crimes except in cases of
|
|||
|
impeachment (Constitution, Article 111, Section 1, Clause 3, and
|
|||
|
Amendment VII), and in suits at common law where the value in
|
|||
|
controversy does not exceed twenty dollars (Amendment VII). But even
|
|||
|
concerning this right it has been held that in contempt proceedings the
|
|||
|
party in contempt is not entitled to a trial by jury within the meaning
|
|||
|
of the provisions of the Constitution.(60)
|
|||
|
While, as a rule, the several States guarantee to their citizens
|
|||
|
trials by jury, it has been held that trial by jury in the State courts
|
|||
|
for offenses against the State is not a privilege or immunity of
|
|||
|
national citizenship which the XIV Amendment forbids the States to
|
|||
|
abridge.(61)
|
|||
|
In the case of Louisville, etc., R. Co. v. Kentucky,(62)the Supreme
|
|||
|
Court said: "For the Federal courts to interfere with the legislative
|
|||
|
department of the State government, when acting within the scope of its,
|
|||
|
admitted powers, is always the exercise of a delicate power, one that
|
|||
|
should not be resorted to unless the reason for doing so is clear and
|
|||
|
unmistakable."
|
|||
|
The same language is equally applicable to an interference with the
|
|||
|
judiciary department of a State government.
|
|||
|
In the case of McPherson v. Blacker(63) the Supreme Court again said
|
|||
|
that the XIV Amendment did not "radically change the whole theory of the
|
|||
|
relations of the State and Federal governments to each other, and of
|
|||
|
both governments to the people."
|
|||
|
In the case of Williams v. Mississippi,(64) the Supreme Courts said:
|
|||
|
"The conduct of a criminal trial in a State court cannot be reviewed by
|
|||
|
the Supreme Court of the United States , unless the trial is had under
|
|||
|
some statute repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, or was
|
|||
|
so conducted as to deprive the accused of home right or immunity secured
|
|||
|
to him by that instrument."
|
|||
|
In the case of In re Converse,(65) it is said: "The XIV Amendment .
|
|||
|
. . was not designed to interfere with the power of the State to protect
|
|||
|
the lives, liberty, and property of its citizens; nor with the exercise
|
|||
|
of that power in the adjudications of the courts of a State in
|
|||
|
administering the process provided by the law of the State."
|
|||
|
And while the court has repeatedly declared that in determining the
|
|||
|
qualifications of State jurors the States must take care that no
|
|||
|
discrimination in respect to such service be made against any class of
|
|||
|
citizens solely because of their race, it also held in the case of In
|
|||
|
re Shibuya Jugiro (66) that no person charged with a crime involving
|
|||
|
life and liberty is entitled, by virtue of the Constitution of the
|
|||
|
United States, to have his race represented upon the grand jury that may
|
|||
|
indict him, or upon the petit jury that may try him, and that it rests
|
|||
|
with each state to prescribe such qualifications as it deems proper for
|
|||
|
jurymen, subject only to the limitation against race discrimination
|
|||
|
above referred to.
|
|||
|
In the case of Ex p. Reggel (67) it was declared that the State may
|
|||
|
regulate State procedure.
|
|||
|
In the case of Gibson v. Mississippi(68) it was decided that the
|
|||
|
States may impose for jury service conditions confining jurors to males,
|
|||
|
to freeholders, to citizens, to persons within certain ages, or too
|
|||
|
persons having educational qualifications, and that the claim to a mixed
|
|||
|
jury is not a matter of right; that it is a denial, because of color,
|
|||
|
of rights accorded to whites, that constitutes the forbidden
|
|||
|
discrimination.
|
|||
|
In the case of Maxwell v. Dow, (69) the complainant averred that be
|
|||
|
was deprived of his privileges and immunities by a trial in the State
|
|||
|
court by a jury of eight persons. The decision was adverse to his claim
|
|||
|
on the ground that the right of trial by a jury of twelve was a
|
|||
|
guarantee of the Federal Constitution concerning federal trials, and the
|
|||
|
State had a right to prescribe a trial by eight jurors if that was the
|
|||
|
ordinary course of legal procedure.
|
|||
|
Some amusing claims have been made under the supposed protection of
|
|||
|
this guarantee, as for example, in the case of McDonald v.
|
|||
|
Massachusetts(70) where the power of the State to impose additional
|
|||
|
punishment upon habitual criminals was questioned; but the contention
|
|||
|
was rejected and the States were held to have the power to impose such
|
|||
|
additional punishment. In the case of In re Kemmler,(71) one who had
|
|||
|
been condemned to death in a State proceeding in New York, and sentenced
|
|||
|
to electrocution, questioned the power of the State to impose such a
|
|||
|
sentence. The privilege which he appears to have asserted was the
|
|||
|
privilege of being hanged instead of being electrocuted; but the
|
|||
|
decision was adverse, for the State was declared to possess complete
|
|||
|
control of the subject, and his right, if such a fanciful claim may be
|
|||
|
so called, was held not to be within Federal protection.
|
|||
|
It has been repeatedly held that where the proceedings in a State
|
|||
|
court are according to the regular forms of State procedure and not
|
|||
|
based on laws which create the forbidden discrimination, the federal
|
|||
|
court has no jurisdiction to inquire or decide whether erroneous rulings
|
|||
|
were made in the trial or to review the trial as upon an appeal on the
|
|||
|
merits, and that the function of the federal tribunal is confined to the
|
|||
|
inquiry whether the law involved, in terms, or in its administration,
|
|||
|
makes a discrimination against the accused on account of race, color,
|
|||
|
or condition.
|
|||
|
As was said in the case of Kennard v. Louisiana,(72) the real inquiry
|
|||
|
concerning the legality of the procedure in a State court is whether the
|
|||
|
trial was had in the State court "in due course of legal proceedings,
|
|||
|
according to those rules and forms which have been established for the
|
|||
|
protection of private rights "and it was added, "irregularities and mere
|
|||
|
errors in the proceedings can only be corrected in the State courts."
|
|||
|
And in the later case of Presser v. Illinois(73) it was said that the
|
|||
|
State may pass any laws in regulating the privileges and immunities of
|
|||
|
its citizens if they do not abridge their privileges and immunities; as
|
|||
|
citizens of the United States. Varying the number of challenges of
|
|||
|
veniremen in proceedings in the State court in different parts of a
|
|||
|
State is not a denial of the equal Protection of the law.(74)
|
|||
|
The power of the State to deal with crime within its borders is not
|
|||
|
limited by the XIV Amendment save that no State can deprive parts or
|
|||
|
classes of its people of equal and impartial justice.(75)
|
|||
|
In the case of Iowa Cent. R. Co. v. Iowa(76) it is said that it is not
|
|||
|
"a right, privilege, or immunity of a citizen of the United States to
|
|||
|
have a controversy in the State court prosecuted or determined by one
|
|||
|
form of action instead of by another."
|
|||
|
The case of Andrews v. Andrews(77) contains an important and
|
|||
|
instructive discussion of the power of the States to prescribe and
|
|||
|
control State procedure in questions of marriage and divorce.
|
|||
|
Actual discriminations by officers charged with the administration of
|
|||
|
State statutes unobjectionable in themselves, against the rights of a
|
|||
|
negro on trial, by purposely excluding negroes from the jury will not
|
|||
|
be presumed but must be proved, and in order to sustain a motion to
|
|||
|
quash an indictment because negroes were excluded from the grand jury
|
|||
|
a defendant must prove the fact or offer to prove it.(78)
|
|||
|
Supplementing the above outlines of the decisions upon the question
|
|||
|
what State procedure is within the power of the States to regulate, the
|
|||
|
reader will find a full collection of the authorities in Appendix B at
|
|||
|
the end of this book.
|
|||
|
An interesting discussion of the reserved powers of the States will
|
|||
|
be found in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice White, in the famous
|
|||
|
'merger decision." (79)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
6. Of the Power of the State to Control and Regu-
|
|||
|
late the Business of Corporations in the State.(80)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Numerous decisions are to the effect that corporations are within the
|
|||
|
meaning of the XIV Amendment.(81) But the fact that they are within the
|
|||
|
meaning of the amendment does not give foreign insurance companies any
|
|||
|
more rights as against the State than they had before its enactment. The
|
|||
|
State may still regulate the term upon which they may be admitted to do
|
|||
|
business in the State.(82) It may enact penalties for their
|
|||
|
negligence.(83) The State may regulate grade crossings of railroads.(84)
|
|||
|
It may also pass laws establishing a rule of damages in the case of
|
|||
|
injuries to employees under what is known as the "fellow-servant law."
|
|||
|
(85) It has also been held that the States may classify the subjects of
|
|||
|
legislation and make different regulations as to the property of
|
|||
|
different individuals differently situated. The provisions of the
|
|||
|
Federal Constitution are satisfied if all persons similarly situated are
|
|||
|
treated alike in the privileges conferred and the liabilities
|
|||
|
imposed.(86)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
7. The Right to Control the Conduct of Individuals
|
|||
|
and Bodies of Citizens in Public Places.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The XIV Amendment did not destroy the power of the States to enact
|
|||
|
police regulations concerning the subjects within their control." In
|
|||
|
Presser v. Illinois,(88) it was declared that the State may pass laws
|
|||
|
regulating the privileges and immunities of its own citizens if they do
|
|||
|
not abridge their privileges and immunities as citizens of the United
|
|||
|
States. And in Davis v. Massachusetts(89) a municipal ordinance making
|
|||
|
it necessary to procure a permit from the mayor to entitle a person to
|
|||
|
make a public address upon any public grounds of the city was held to
|
|||
|
be valid, as a mere exercise of the administrative authority within the
|
|||
|
police power of the State.
|
|||
|
Numerous cases cited in note 6, p. 214, supra, sufficiently sustain
|
|||
|
this power, especially the case of Wilson v. Eureka City.(90)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
8. To Require Citizens to Observe Morality and Decency.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The claims to immunity asserted against this power are in many
|
|||
|
instances ludicrous. For example, a negro citizen of Alabama who was
|
|||
|
prosecuted for living openly in improper relations with a white woman
|
|||
|
pleaded the immunity of the XIV Amendment. The reply was that nothing
|
|||
|
in the amendment warranted any such violation of decency.(91) So also
|
|||
|
the right to live in a state of polygamy was asserted as a religious
|
|||
|
tenet of the accused. The right was denied on the ground that crime
|
|||
|
could not be covered up by pleading that it was committed as a part of
|
|||
|
the religious faith of the defendant.(92) And the law of Illinois
|
|||
|
forbidding gambling in options was likewise held to be within the power
|
|||
|
of the State.(93)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
9. Of the Power of the State to Separate the Races in Public Places.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
This question has given rise to a series of most interesting
|
|||
|
decisions. The first case in the Supreme Court was that of the
|
|||
|
Louisville, etc., R. Co. v. Mississippi.(94) The State law of
|
|||
|
Mississippi provided for the separation of blacks and whites in public
|
|||
|
conveyances. The Supreme Court of Mississippi decided that the law did
|
|||
|
not apply to interstate commerce, and the Supreme Court of the United
|
|||
|
States, adopting that construction of the law, held that it was
|
|||
|
competent to the State in the exercise of its police powers to separate
|
|||
|
the races, and declared that it was no discrimination on account of
|
|||
|
race, or badge of servitude put upon either race, to require that they
|
|||
|
should be separated.
|
|||
|
In the later case of Plessy v. Ferguson (95) this idea was expressed
|
|||
|
as follows: "The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the
|
|||
|
absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of
|
|||
|
things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based
|
|||
|
upon color."
|
|||
|
The question likewise came up in regard to the separation of the races
|
|||
|
in public schools, in the case of Cumming v. Board of Education,(96)
|
|||
|
where it was said: "Interference on the part of Federal authority with
|
|||
|
the management of such schools cannot be justified except in the case
|
|||
|
of a clear and unmistakable disregard of rights secured. . . . The
|
|||
|
education of the people in schools maintained by State taxation is a
|
|||
|
matter belonging to the respective States."
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
10. Of the Power of the State to Regulate State Taxation.(97)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Many questions have arisen upon this power of State taxation, and in
|
|||
|
nearly every case the particular State law involved was assailed on the
|
|||
|
triple ground that it abridged privileges and immunities, that it
|
|||
|
deprived of due process of law, and that it deprived of the equal
|
|||
|
protection of the laws. A study of the cases will be necessary to an
|
|||
|
understanding of all tine points decided. The following are some of the
|
|||
|
general principles settled:
|
|||
|
A State law off taxation which discriminates between the complainant
|
|||
|
and others of the same class is invalid. A State law of taxation which
|
|||
|
taxes an individual at a rate different from those in his class, in
|
|||
|
effect denies him the equal protection of the laws. It was not the
|
|||
|
purpose or function of the amendment to change the system or policy of
|
|||
|
the State in regard to the devolution of estates or to limit the extent
|
|||
|
of the taxing power of the State in cases of the devolution of estates.
|
|||
|
States have a right to classify the subjects of taxation when the
|
|||
|
property of different individuals is differently situated, and if all
|
|||
|
persons similarly situated are treated alike in the liabilities imposed
|
|||
|
the State does not violate the amendment.
|
|||
|
The State may pass special legislation of special character applicable
|
|||
|
to and imposing taxes on certain districts only, for particular
|
|||
|
improvements there, such as draining marshes and irrigating arid plains,
|
|||
|
supplying water for preventing fires, lighting particular districts,
|
|||
|
cleaning particular streets, opening parks, arid for many other objects;
|
|||
|
and regulations for these purposes may press with more or less weight
|
|||
|
upon one than upon another citizen; but in their designate they are not
|
|||
|
to impose unequal and unnecessary restrictions upon any one, and though
|
|||
|
necessarily special in their character, they furnish no ground of
|
|||
|
complaint if they operate alike upon all persons and property under the
|
|||
|
same circumstances and conditions.(98)
|
|||
|
Class legislation, discriminating against some and favoring others,
|
|||
|
is prohibited by the amendment, but legislation which, in carrying out
|
|||
|
a public purpose, is limited in its applications if within the sphere
|
|||
|
of its operation it affects alike all persons similarly situated, is not
|
|||
|
within the amendment.(99) So. too, in the case of a nonresident whose
|
|||
|
lands were subjected to a local assessment for the common benefit of the
|
|||
|
locality, the same assessment being levied against resident
|
|||
|
property-holders in the same vicinity, it was held that the law levying
|
|||
|
the assessment was not a discriminating tax. And a paving ordinance
|
|||
|
making an assessment on people in a particular neighborhood for the
|
|||
|
benefit of their common property was held not to violate any privilege
|
|||
|
or immunity of the citizen because it applied to all similarly situated.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
ii. of the Right of the State to Control State Elections.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
This subject was fully discussed in the celebrated case of Taylor v.
|
|||
|
Beckhamn,(100) and has already been referred to, and it is sufficient
|
|||
|
to say concerning it that federal courts have repudiated any
|
|||
|
jurisdiction to consider the conduct of the results of State elections
|
|||
|
unless in some controversy wherein the law under which they were held,
|
|||
|
or the manner in which they were conducted, discriminated against the
|
|||
|
complainant by reason of his race.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Due Process of Law.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Amendment V to the Constitution provides that the Federal government
|
|||
|
shall not deprive any citizen of life, liberty, or property without due
|
|||
|
process of law. Although that proviso remained in the Constitution until
|
|||
|
the adoption of the XIV Amendment, the only case in which the meaning
|
|||
|
of these words was construed in the eighty years that it stood alone is
|
|||
|
the case of Murray v. Hoboken Land, etc., Co(101) The XIV Amendment
|
|||
|
merely made that same rule obligatory upon the States. Within the forty
|
|||
|
years since the adoption of the amendment, there has never been a time
|
|||
|
when the Supreme Court docket was not crowded with cases in which it was
|
|||
|
claimed that State legislation had deprived the complainant of life,
|
|||
|
liberty, or property without due process of law. A glance at the
|
|||
|
formidable array of cases in which the Supreme Court has passed upon
|
|||
|
this question gives but a faint idea of the amount of litigation to
|
|||
|
which it has given rise. In one of the earliest cases, Davidson v. New
|
|||
|
Orleans,(102) Mr. Justice Miller, perhaps the ablest judge on the
|
|||
|
Supreme Court bench since the adoption of the XIV Amendment, rendered
|
|||
|
an opinion in which he gave the origin and history of this provision of
|
|||
|
the Constitution as found in Magna Charta and in the V and XIV
|
|||
|
Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. ln that opinion he
|
|||
|
also said: "But apart from the imminent risk of a failure to give any
|
|||
|
definition which would be at once perspicuous, comprehensive, and
|
|||
|
satisfactory, there is wisdom, we think, in the ascertaining of the
|
|||
|
intent and application of such an important phrase in the Federal
|
|||
|
Constitution, by the gradual process of judicial inclusion and
|
|||
|
exclusion, as the cases presented for decision shall require." And in
|
|||
|
a very recent case,(103) Mr. Justice McKenna, delivering the opinion of
|
|||
|
the court, reverted to this expression of Mr. Justice Miller and said
|
|||
|
that the court was still pursuing the process of inclusion and exclusion
|
|||
|
as the cases were presented for decision, but was still unprepared to
|
|||
|
formulate a definition.
|
|||
|
In delivering the opinion in Davidson v. New Orleans,(104) Mr. Justice
|
|||
|
Miller also used the following emphatic language: "It is not a little
|
|||
|
remarkable, that while this provision has been in the Constitution of
|
|||
|
the United States, as a restraint upon the authority of the Federal
|
|||
|
government, for nearly a century, and while, during all that time, the
|
|||
|
manner in which the powers of that government have been exercised has
|
|||
|
been watched with jealousy, and subjected to the most rigid criticism
|
|||
|
in all its branches, this special limitation upon its powers has rarely
|
|||
|
been invoked in the judicial forum or the more enlarged theatre of
|
|||
|
public discussion; but while it has been a part of the Constitution, as
|
|||
|
a restraint upon the power of the States, only a very few years, the
|
|||
|
docket of this court is crowded with cases in which we are asked to hold
|
|||
|
that State courts and State legislatures have deprived their own
|
|||
|
citizens of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. There
|
|||
|
is here abundant evidence that there exists some strange misconception
|
|||
|
of the scope of this provision as found in the XIV Amendment. In fact,
|
|||
|
it would seem, from the character of many of the cases before us, and
|
|||
|
the arguments made in them, that the clause under consideration is
|
|||
|
looked upon as a means of bringing to the test of the decision of this
|
|||
|
court the abstract opinions, of every unsuccessful litigant in a State
|
|||
|
court of the justice of the decision against him, and of the merits of
|
|||
|
the legislation on which such a decision may be founded."
|
|||
|
The honored judge who uttered these words has been in his grave for
|
|||
|
many years, but the cases involving the abstract opinions of
|
|||
|
unsuccessful litigants in State courts have continued to multiply. The
|
|||
|
decisions rendered by this court are so nearly unanimous in rejecting
|
|||
|
the claims made, that they might well be described as decisions upon
|
|||
|
what the XIV Amendment does not mean, rather than adjudications of
|
|||
|
rights arising under it.
|
|||
|
The earliest interpretation of the meaning of this clause was in the
|
|||
|
case of Kennard v. Louisiana(105) where it was said that due process of
|
|||
|
law meant the trial of a case in due course of legal proceedings, in a
|
|||
|
State court, according to those rules and forms which have been
|
|||
|
established for the protection of private rights. In Caldwell v. Texas
|
|||
|
(106) it was said that due process of law is secured when the laws
|
|||
|
operate on all alike, and no one is subjected to a partial or arbitrary
|
|||
|
exercise of the powers of government. In the hundreds of cases since
|
|||
|
decided the opinions delivered merely ring the changes in the particular
|
|||
|
case upon this general principle.
|
|||
|
A volume, interesting and instructive, might unquestionably be written
|
|||
|
upon the cases decided, but it is doubtful if any new principles would
|
|||
|
be found in them. Moreover, as each new case arises, those intrusted
|
|||
|
with its conduct will be forced to an examination of the decisions in
|
|||
|
detail in order to discover in what respects their case is similar to
|
|||
|
the others that have gone before, and how far the decisions already
|
|||
|
rendered or passed upon by the State affect the case submitted to them.
|
|||
|
For these reasons, and for the further reason that this subject of due
|
|||
|
process of law is to be treated in a separate volume, we shall not
|
|||
|
discuss it further.(107)
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Of the Equal Protection of the Law.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
Nearly all the cases above cited with reference to the abridgment of
|
|||
|
privileges and immunities by due process of law deal with the question
|
|||
|
of what ia and what is not equal protection of the law, and a full
|
|||
|
discussion in place of the decisions in all those cases would not only
|
|||
|
involve infinite repetition, but would occupy a space that cannot be
|
|||
|
spared to it.
|
|||
|
It has been decided that the exclusion of colored citizens by law from
|
|||
|
juries summoned to try persons of their race is a denial of the equal
|
|||
|
protection of the law. The authorities on this point are the same as
|
|||
|
those cited in connection with the abridgment of privileges and
|
|||
|
immunities.
|
|||
|
A State law establishing one system of law in one portion of its
|
|||
|
territory and another system in another, prescribing the jurisdiction
|
|||
|
of the several courts with reference to territory, subject-matter, and
|
|||
|
the finality of the judgments rendered, was, however, held not to be
|
|||
|
obnoxious to the XVI Amendment. That amendment was declared to
|
|||
|
contemplate the protection or persons and classes, and not to relate to
|
|||
|
territorial or municipal arrangements made for the different portions
|
|||
|
of the States.(108)
|
|||
|
So, too, in another case a distinction was pointed out between
|
|||
|
discriminations concerning different kinds of business in certain hours
|
|||
|
and discriminations between different classes engaged in the same kind
|
|||
|
of business. The former were declared to be admissible, the latter
|
|||
|
inadmissible.(109)
|
|||
|
In the case of YickWo v. Hopkins,(110) which arose under certain laws
|
|||
|
of San Francisco plainly discriminating against Chinamen, and upon proof
|
|||
|
that these laws were partially administered, it was held that arbitrary
|
|||
|
and unjust discriminations founded on differences of race between
|
|||
|
persons otherwise in similar circumstances were violative of the XIV
|
|||
|
Amendment. The court said that if the law was so framed as to admit of
|
|||
|
a partial administration, it was void. But in a later case in which the
|
|||
|
constitution and laws of a State were assailed as framed and
|
|||
|
fraudulently intended to exclude the negro population from suffrage, the
|
|||
|
court said that where the provisions of a State constitution or law do
|
|||
|
not, on their face, show a discrimination, and it has not been shown
|
|||
|
that their actual administration is evil, but only that evil is possible
|
|||
|
under them, they are not obnoxious to the XIV Amendment.(111)
|
|||
|
The creation of certain State railroad commissions with power to
|
|||
|
regulate domestic operation of railroads was held not to violate this
|
|||
|
principle.
|
|||
|
The case which is perhaps more signally illustrative of the extent to
|
|||
|
which these extravagant claims have been carried than any other is that
|
|||
|
in which a man owning a Newfoundland dog sued a railroad for killing the
|
|||
|
dog. The railroad defended by pleading a State statute which denied to
|
|||
|
the owner of a dog the right to sue for the same as property unless he
|
|||
|
had first registered the animal and paid a license fee. The court below
|
|||
|
sustained the plea, and the plaintiff appealed to the Supreme Court of
|
|||
|
the United States on the ground that the State law denied the right to
|
|||
|
sue for the value of his dog unless he registered it and paid a license
|
|||
|
abridged his privilege, deprived him of his property without due process
|
|||
|
of law, and denied him the equal protection of the laws. It is hardly
|
|||
|
necessary to add that the Supreme Court rejected the claims
|
|||
|
asserted.(112)
|
|||
|
Having now fully considered every aspect of the amendment and the
|
|||
|
decisions rendered under it, we may leave the subject with the single
|
|||
|
remark that while it has not proved to be "a new Magna Charta," the
|
|||
|
great discussions of the true relations between the Nation and the
|
|||
|
States composing it, and of citizens to Nation and State, to which this
|
|||
|
amendment has given rise, have resulted in a most beneficial and
|
|||
|
thorough understanding of what rights of the citizen are derived from
|
|||
|
and protected by the Nation, and what are derived from and protected by
|
|||
|
the States. It is doubtful whether without the XIV Amendment these
|
|||
|
questions would have been so fully digested and settled in a century of
|
|||
|
litigation.
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The Fifteenth Amendment
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
The language of the XV Amendment is as follows: "The right of citizens
|
|||
|
of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
|
|||
|
United States; or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
|
|||
|
condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
|
|||
|
article by appropriate legislation."
|
|||
|
The amendment relates exclusively to the subject of voting. It simply
|
|||
|
forbids either the Federal or the State government to deny or abridge
|
|||
|
the right of citizens of the United States to vote "on account of race,
|
|||
|
color, or previous condition of servitude."
|
|||
|
It relates to no other cause of denial than race, color, or previous
|
|||
|
condition of servitude. It does not forbid the denial or abridgment of
|
|||
|
the right to vote, by the Nation or the State, for any other cause.
|
|||
|
It makes no attempt to forbid or to punish the effort by an individual
|
|||
|
to deny or abridge the right of a citizen to vote, and it gives to
|
|||
|
Congress no power to legislate against an individual who attempts to
|
|||
|
deny or abridge the right of a citizen to vote. The prohibition of the
|
|||
|
amendment is against the United States and the States alone. The power
|
|||
|
given to Congress to enforce the article is power to enforce it against
|
|||
|
the United States or the States; which is not power to legislate against
|
|||
|
individuals for like offenses.(113) Such legislation by Congress against
|
|||
|
individuals has been held to be beyond the power of Congress, and not
|
|||
|
"appropriate legislation" within the meaning of the amendment.
|
|||
|
The first case in which the power of Congress to legislate under this
|
|||
|
amendment, against individuals, for offenses committed against suffrage,
|
|||
|
is the case of U.S. v. Reese(114) and the last case is the case of James
|
|||
|
v. Bowman.(115) Between these two come the cases of U.S. v. Harris(116)
|
|||
|
and Baldwin v. Franks.(117) All are to the same effect. In the cases of
|
|||
|
U.S. v. Cruikshank,(118) McPherson v. Blacker,(119) Wiley v.
|
|||
|
Sinkler,(120) and Swafford v. Templeton(121) the origin of suffrage was
|
|||
|
fully discussed. The language used in the early case of Minor v.
|
|||
|
Happersett,(122) which declared that suffrage originated solely in the
|
|||
|
States, was modified to the extent of declaring that the right to vote
|
|||
|
for members of Congress and for presidential electors had its origin
|
|||
|
not in any State legislation, but in the Constitution of the United
|
|||
|
States.
|
|||
|
In the case of Neal v. Delaware,(123) it was declared that the XV
|
|||
|
Amendment annulled the word "white" in the State constitution of
|
|||
|
Delaware as a qualification of suffrage. The Supreme Court, in referring
|
|||
|
to this, said, in the case of Ex p. Yarbrough,(124) that there are cases
|
|||
|
in which the XV Amendment substantially confers the right to vote on the
|
|||
|
negro, although it gives him no affirmative right; as where it annuls
|
|||
|
the word "white" in the State constitution of Delaware.
|
|||
|
But it by no means follows from this prohibition of a discrimination
|
|||
|
on the sole ground of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,
|
|||
|
that any citizen of the United States is entitled to vote by reason of
|
|||
|
his color. The decisions cited in connection with the XIV Amendment,
|
|||
|
the rulings of which are equally applicable to the XV Amendment, all
|
|||
|
hold that the States may impose reasonable qualifications upon suffrage,
|
|||
|
and that if those qualifications are not based on race, color, or
|
|||
|
previous condition of servitude, but are applicable to all citizens
|
|||
|
alike, they are within the power of the States and beyond the reach of
|
|||
|
congressional legislation.
|
|||
|
We may well conclude the discussion of this chapter with the language
|
|||
|
of the Supreme Court of the United States in the ease of Mattox v. U.
|
|||
|
S.,(125) as follows: "We are bound to interpret the Constitution in the
|
|||
|
light of the law as it existed at the time it was adopted not as
|
|||
|
reaching out for new guaranties of the rights of the citizen, but as
|
|||
|
securing to every individual such as he already possessed,... such as
|
|||
|
his ancestors had inherited and defended since the days of Magna
|
|||
|
Charta."
|
|||
|
FOOTNOTES
|
|||
|
|
|||
|
(1) "This amendment, as well as the Fourteenth, in undoubtedly
|
|||
|
self-executing without any ancillary legislation, so far as its terms
|
|||
|
are applicable to any existing state of circumstances. By its own
|
|||
|
unaided force and effect it abolished slavery and established universal
|
|||
|
freedom. Still legislation may be necessary and proper to meet all the
|
|||
|
various cases and circumstances to be affected by it, and to prescribe
|
|||
|
proper modes of redress for its violation in letter or spirit. And such
|
|||
|
legislation may be primary and direct in its character; for the
|
|||
|
amendment is not a mere prohibition of State laws establishing or
|
|||
|
upholding slavery, but an absolute declaration that slavery or
|
|||
|
involuntary servitude shall not exist in any part of the United States."
|
|||
|
Civil Rights Cases, (1883) 109 U. S. 20. See also Peonage Cases, (1903)
|
|||
|
123 Fed. Rep. 671; U. S. v. McClellan, (1904) 127 Fed. Rep. 971.
|
|||
|
(2) White v. Hart (1871) 13 Wall. U.S. 646; Osborn v. Nicholson, (1871)
|
|||
|
13 Wall. U.S. 654.
|
|||
|
There is nothing in the language of the amendment which in the
|
|||
|
slightest degree warrants the inference that those who framed or those
|
|||
|
who adopted it intended that it should effect the destruction of rights
|
|||
|
legally and completely vested at the time of its adoption. Osborn v.
|
|||
|
Nicholson (1871) 13 Wall. U.S. 602; White v. Hart (1871) 13 Wall. U.S.
|
|||
|
646.
|
|||
|
(3) "Undoubtedly. while negro slavery alone was in the mind of the
|
|||
|
Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any other
|
|||
|
kind of slavery, now or hereafter. If Mexican peonage or the Chinese
|
|||
|
coolly labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race
|
|||
|
within our territory, this amendment may safely be trusted to make it
|
|||
|
void. And so, if other rights are assailed by the States which properly
|
|||
|
and necessarily fall within the protection of these articles, that
|
|||
|
protection will apply though the party interested may not be of African
|
|||
|
descent." Slaughter-House Cases (1872) 16 Wall. 4 U.S. 71. See also
|
|||
|
Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896) 163 U.S. 642; U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark, (1898)
|
|||
|
169 U.S. 677.
|
|||
|
(4) Civil Rights Cases (1883) 109 U.S. 3.
|
|||
|
"A statute which implies merely a legal distinction between the white
|
|||
|
and colored races - a distinction which is founded in the color of the
|
|||
|
two races, and which must always exist so long as white men are
|
|||
|
distinguished from the other race by color - has no tendency to destroy
|
|||
|
the legal equality of the two races, or re-establish a state of
|
|||
|
involuntary servitude..... Legislation is powerless to eradicate racial
|
|||
|
instinct or to abolish distinctions based upon physical differences, and
|
|||
|
the attempt to do so can only result in accentuating the difficulties
|
|||
|
of the present situation. If the civil and political rights of both
|
|||
|
races be equal, one cannot be inferior to the other civilly or
|
|||
|
politically. If one race be inferior to the other socially, the
|
|||
|
Constitution of the United States cannot put them upon the same plane"
|
|||
|
Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896) 163 U.S. 543, 551.
|
|||
|
(5) Louisville, etc., R. Co. v. Mississippi, (1890) 133 U. S. 587;
|
|||
|
Plessy v. Ferguson, (1896) 163 U. S. 537; Cumming v. Board of Education,
|
|||
|
(1899) 175 U.S. 528; Chesapeake, etc., R. Co. v. Kentucky, (l900) 179
|
|||
|
U. S. 387.
|
|||
|
(6) Robertson v. Baldwin, (l897) 165 U. S. 275.
|
|||
|
"The amendment was not intended to introduce any novel doctrine with
|
|||
|
respect to certain descriptions of service which have always been
|
|||
|
treated as exceptional, such as military and naval enlistments, or to
|
|||
|
disturb the right of parents and guardians to the custody of their minor
|
|||
|
children or wards. The amendment, however, makes no distinction between
|
|||
|
a public and a private service. To say that persons engaged in a public
|
|||
|
service are not within the amendment is to admit that there are
|
|||
|
exceptions to its general language, and the further question is at once
|
|||
|
presented, where shall the line be drawn? We know of no better answer
|
|||
|
to make than to say that services which have from time immemorial been
|
|||
|
treated as exceptional shall not be regarded as within its purview."
|
|||
|
Robertson v. Baldwin, (1897) 165 U. 8. 282.
|
|||
|
(7) (1832) 6 Pet. U.S. 761.
|
|||
|
(8) (1856) 19 How. U.S. 398.
|
|||
|
(9) Slaughter-House Cases, (1872) 16 Wall. U.S. 36; Strauder v. West
|
|||
|
Virginia, (1879) 100 U.S. 306; Elk v. Wilkins, (1884) 112 U.S. 101; U.S.
|
|||
|
v. Wong Kim Ark, (1898) 169 U.S. 676; Maxwell v. Dow, (1900) 176 U.S.
|
|||
|
593.
|
|||
|
"Enough appears in the language employed in those provisions [the
|
|||
|
Civil Rights Act and the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal
|
|||
|
Constitution to allow that their principal object wait to confer
|
|||
|
citizenship, and the rights which belong to citizens as such, upon the
|
|||
|
colored people, and in that manner to abrogate the rules previously
|
|||
|
adopted by this court in the Dred Scott case."' Per Mr. Justice Clifford
|
|||
|
in Hall v. De Cuir, (1877) 95 U.S. 509.
|
|||
|
The distinction between citizenship of the United States and
|
|||
|
citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established. Not only
|
|||
|
may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of
|
|||
|
a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former
|
|||
|
into the latter. He must reside within the State to make him a citizen
|
|||
|
of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized
|
|||
|
in the United States to be a citizen of the Union. It is quite clear,
|
|||
|
then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a
|
|||
|
citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which
|
|||
|
depend upon different characteristics in the individual."
|
|||
|
Slaughter-House Cases, (1872) 16 Wall. U.S. 73.
|
|||
|
(10) Positive rights and privileges are undoubtedly secured by the
|
|||
|
Fourteenth Amendment; but they are secured by way of prohibition against
|
|||
|
State laws and State proceedings affecting those rights and privileges,
|
|||
|
and by power given to Congress to legislate for the purpose of carrying
|
|||
|
such prohibition into effect. and such Iegislation must necessarily be
|
|||
|
predicated upon such supposed State laws or State proceedings, and be
|
|||
|
directed to the correction of their operation and effect." Civil Rights
|
|||
|
Cases, (1883) 109 U.S. 11. See also U.S. v. Cruikshank, (1875) 92 U.S.
|
|||
|
542; Virginia v. Rives (1879) 100 U.S. 313; Ex p. Virginia, (1879) 104
|
|||
|
U.S. 339; Plessy c. Ferguson, (1896) 163 U.S. 637.
|
|||
|
(11) U.S. v. Reese, (1875) 92 U.S. 215.
|
|||
|
(12) U.S. v. Cruikshank, (1875) 92 U.S. 542.
|
|||
|
(13) (1882) 106 U.S. 640.
|
|||
|
(14) Baldwin v. Frank, (1887) 120 U.S. 684; Powell v. Pennsylvania,
|
|||
|
(1888) 127 U.S. 685; In re Kemmler, (1890) 136 U.S. 448; In re Rahrer,
|
|||
|
(1801) 140 U.S. 554; McPherson v. Blacker (1892) 146 U.S. 39; Mobile,
|
|||
|
etc., R. Co. v. Tennessee (1894) 153 U.S. 506; Scott v. McNeil (1894)
|
|||
|
154 U.S. 34, 45; Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Chicago, (1897) 166 U.S. 226,
|
|||
|
233; Louisville, etc.. R. Co. v. Kentucky, (1902) 183 U.S. 511; Chadwick
|
|||
|
v. Kelley, (1903) 187 U.S. 540; Missouri v. Dockery, (1903) 191 U.S.
|
|||
|
170.
|
|||
|
(15) (1800) 136 U.S. 448.
|
|||
|
(16) Civil Rights Cases, (1883) 109 U.S. 11.
|
|||
|
(17) "The prohibitions of the amendment are against State laws and
|
|||
|
acts done under State authority. Of course, legislation may, and should
|
|||
|
be, provided in advance to meet the exigency when it arises; but it
|
|||
|
should be adopted to the mischief and wrong which the amendment was
|
|||
|
intended to provide against; and that is, State laws, or State action
|
|||
|
of some kind, adverse to the rights of the citizen secured by the
|
|||
|
amendment. Such legislation cannot properly cover the whole domain of
|
|||
|
rights appertaining to life, liberty, and property, defining them and
|
|||
|
providing for their vindication. That would be to establish a code of
|
|||
|
municipal law regulative of all private rights between man and man in
|
|||
|
society. It would be to make Congress take the place of the State
|
|||
|
legislatures and to supersede them." Civil Rights Cases (1883) 109 U.S.
|
|||
|
13.
|
|||
|
(18) James v. Bowman, (1903) 100 U.S. 127.
|
|||
|
(19) Strauder v. West Virginia, (1879) 100 U.S. 303.
|
|||
|
(20) Virginia v. Rives (1879) 100 U.S. 313.
|
|||
|
(21) (1879) Ex p. Virginia, 100 U.S. 339.
|
|||
|
(22) (1882) 106 U.S. 640.
|
|||
|
(23) (1883) 109 U.S. 3.
|
|||
|
(24) (1887) 120 U.S. 684.
|
|||
|
(25) (1903) 100 U.S. 127.
|
|||
|
(26) In the Civil Rights Cases, (1883) 100 U.S. 3, the case of Ex p.
|
|||
|
Virginia, (1879) 100 U.S. 330, is distinguished by the Supreme Court in
|
|||
|
the following language: "In the Virginia case, the State, through its
|
|||
|
officer, enforced a rule of disqualification which the law was intended
|
|||
|
to abrogate and counteract. Whether the statute book of the State
|
|||
|
actually laid down any such rule of disqualification or not, the State,
|
|||
|
through its officer, enforced such a rule; and it is against such State
|
|||
|
action, through its officers and agents, that the last clause of the
|
|||
|
section is directed. This aspect of the law was deemed sufficient to
|
|||
|
divest it of any unconstitutional character, and makes it differ widely
|
|||
|
from the first and second sections of the same act which we are now
|
|||
|
considering."
|
|||
|
"The prohibition of the amendment refer to all the instrumentalities
|
|||
|
of the State, to its legislative, executive, and judicial authorities;
|
|||
|
and therefore whoever, by virtue of public position under a State
|
|||
|
government, deprives another of any right protected by that amendment
|
|||
|
against deprivation by the State `violates the constitutional
|
|||
|
inhibition; and as he acts in the name of and for the State, and is
|
|||
|
clothed with the States power, his act is that of the State.' This must
|
|||
|
be so, or, as we have often said, the constitutional prohibition has no
|
|||
|
meaning, and `the State has clothed one of its agents with power to
|
|||
|
annul or evade it."' Chicago, etc., R. Co. v. Chicago, (1897) 166 U.S.
|
|||
|
233.
|
|||
|
(27) Missouri v. Lewis (1879) 101 U.S. 22; Neal v. Delaware, (1880) 103
|
|||
|
U.S. 370; Carter v. Texas, (1900) 177 U.S. 442; Rogers v. Alabama,
|
|||
|
(1904) 192 U.S. 226; Tarrance v. Florida, (1903) 188 U.S. 519.
|
|||
|
(28) The decisions of the United States Supreme Court under the XIV
|
|||
|
Amendment are listed in the order of their rendition in the Appendix A
|
|||
|
at the close of this volume.
|
|||
|
(29) The following are the only cases decided by the Supreme Court of
|
|||
|
the United States sustaining claims set up under the XIII, XIV, and XV
|
|||
|
Amendments:
|
|||
|
Discrimination on juries against negroes: Strauder v. West Virginia
|
|||
|
(1879) 100 U.S. 303; Ex p. Virginia, (1879) 100 U.S. 339; Missouri v.
|
|||
|
Lewis (1879) 101 U.S. 22; Neal v. Delaware, (1880) 103 U.S. 370; Carter
|
|||
|
v. Texas (1900) 177 U.S. 442; Rogers v. Alabama (1904) 192 U.S. 226;
|
|||
|
Tarrance v.Florida (1903) 188 U.S. 519.
|
|||
|
Discriminating against Chinamen: Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) 118 U.S.
|
|||
|
356.
|
|||
|
Discriminating State laws of taxation, assessment, rates, or
|
|||
|
regulations: Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co., (1880) 118 U.S.
|
|||
|
394; California v. Central Pac. R. Co., (1888) 127 U.S. 40; Chicago,
|
|||
|
etc., R. Co., v. Minnesota, (1890) 134 U.S. 418; Minneapolis Eastern R.
|
|||
|
Co. v. Minnesota (1890) 134 U.S. 467; Reagan v. Farmers' L. & T. Co.
|
|||
|
(1894) 154 U.S. 362; Missouri Pac. R. Co. v. Nebraska (1896) 164 U.S.
|
|||
|
403; Covington,etc., Turnpike Road Co., v. Sandford (1896) 164 U.S.
|
|||
|
578; Bulg, etc., R. Co. v. Ellis (1897) 165 U.S. 150; Smyth v.
|
|||
|
Ames(1898) 169 U.S. 466; Norwood v. Baker (1898) 172 U.S. 269; Dewey v.
|
|||
|
Des Moines (1899) 173 U.S. 193; Lake Shore, etc. R. Co. v. Smith (1899)
|
|||
|
173 U.S. 684 (selling 1,000 mile tickets); Cotting v. Kansas City Stock
|
|||
|
Yards Co. (1901) 183 U.S. 79; Louisville etc., Ferry Co. v. Kentucky
|
|||
|
(1903) 188 U.S. 385.
|
|||
|
Discrimination in State procedure: Prout v. Starr (1903) 188 U.S. 537;
|
|||
|
Roller v. Holly (1900) 176 U.S. 398; Smyth v. Ames (1898) 169 U.S. 466.
|
|||
|
No due process: Scott v. McNeal (1894) 154 U.S. 34 (man supposed to
|
|||
|
be dead; was alive).
|
|||
|
Particular rights: Royall v. Virginia (1886) 116 U.S. 572 (abridging
|
|||
|
right to practice profession); Barron v. Burnside (1887) 121 U.S. 186;
|
|||
|
Allgeyer v. Louisiana(1897) 165 U.S. 579 (abridging right of contract);
|
|||
|
Blake v. McClung (1898) 172 U.S. 239 (discrimination between citizens
|
|||
|
of States).
|
|||
|
(30) The Fourteenth Amendment did not radically change the whole theory
|
|||
|
of the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other, and
|
|||
|
of both governments to the people. The same person may be at the same
|
|||
|
time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State. Protection
|
|||
|
to life, liberty, and property rests primarily with the States, and the
|
|||
|
amendment furnishes an additional guaranty against any encroachment by
|
|||
|
the States upon the fundamental rights which belong to citizenship, and
|
|||
|
which the State governments were created to secure. The privileges and
|
|||
|
immunities of citizens of the United States, as distinguished from the
|
|||
|
privileges and immunities of citizens of the States, are indeed
|
|||
|
protected by it; but those are privileges and immunities arising out of
|
|||
|
the nature and essential character of the national government, and
|
|||
|
granted or secured by the Constitution of the United States." In re
|
|||
|
Kemmler (1800) 136 U.S. 448; Maxwell v. Dow (1900) 176 U.S. 593. See
|
|||
|
also U.S. v. Cruikshank (1875) 92 U.S. 554; Mobile, etc., R. Co. v.
|
|||
|
Tennessee (1894) 153 U.S. 506; Giozza v. Tiernan (1893) 148 U.S. 662.
|
|||
|
(31) Slaughter House Cases (1872) 16 Wall. U.S. 36.
|
|||
|
(32) Barbier v. Connolly (1885) 113 U.S. 27; Soon Hing v. Crowley (1885)
|
|||
|
113 U.S. 703; Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886) 118 U.S. 356.
|
|||
|
(33) License Cases (1847) 5 How. U.S. 504; Bartemeyer v. Iowa, (1873)
|
|||
|
18 Wall. U.S. 133; Boston Beer Co. v. Massachusetts, (1877) 97 U.S. 25,
|
|||
|
33; Foster v. Kansas (1884) 112 U.S. 205; Schmidt v. Cobb, (1886) 119
|
|||
|
U.S. 286; Mugler v. Kansas (1887) 123 U.S. 623; Bowman v. Chicago, etc.,
|
|||
|
R. Co., (1888) 125 U.S. 465; Kidd v. Pearson, (1888) 128 U.S. 1;
|
|||
|
Eilenbeeker v. District Ct., (189O) 134 U.S. 31; Leisy v. Hardin, (1890)
|
|||
|
135 U.S. 100; Lyng v. Michigan, (1890) 135 U.S. 161; Crowley v.
|
|||
|
Christensen, (1890) 137 U.S. 91; Reymann Brewing Co. v. Brister, (1900)
|
|||
|
179 U.S. 445; In re Rahrer, (1891) 140 U.S. 545; Giozza v. Tiernan,
|
|||
|
(1893) 148 U.S. 657; Gray v. Connecticut, (1895) 159 U.S. 74; Cronin v.
|
|||
|
Adams, (1904) 192 U.S. 108.
|
|||
|
(34) Powell v. Pennsylvania, (1888) 127 U.S. 678; Minnesota v. Barber,
|
|||
|
(1890) 136 U.S. 318; Brimmer v. Rebman, (1891) 138 U.S. 78.
|
|||
|
(35) Kimmish v. Ball, (1889) 129 U.S. 222; Jones v. Brim, (1897) 165
|
|||
|
U.S. 180; Rasmussen v. Idaho, (1901); Morris v. Hitchcock, (1904) 194
|
|||
|
U.S. 384; Reid v. Colorado, (1902) 187 U.S. 137.
|
|||
|
(36) Hensington v. Georgia, (1896) 163 U.S. 29; Petit v. Minnesota,
|
|||
|
(1900) 177 U.S. 164.
|
|||
|
(37) Brennan v. Titusville, (1894) 153 U.S. 289; Gundling v.
|
|||
|
Chicago (1900) 177 U.S. 183; Emert v. Missouri, (1895) 156 U.S. 296; W.
|
|||
|
W. Cargill Co. v. Minnesota, (1901) 180 U.S. 452.
|
|||
|
(38) Montana Co. v. St. Louis Min., etc., Co., (1894) 152 U.S. 160;
|
|||
|
Holden v. Hardy, (1898) 169 U.S. 366; Backus v. Fort St. Union Depot
|
|||
|
Co., (1898) 169 U.S. 557; Ohio Oil Co. v. Indiana, (1900) 177 U.S. 190;
|
|||
|
St. Louis Consol. Coal Co. v. Illinois, (1902) 185 U.S. 103; Atkin v.
|
|||
|
Kansas, (1903) 191 U.S. 207.
|
|||
|
(39) Aikens v. Wisconsin (1904) 195 U.S. 194; Smiley v. Kansas, (1905)
|
|||
|
196 U.S. 447.
|
|||
|
(40) Markets: Natal v. Louisiana (1891) 139 U.S. 621.
|
|||
|
Dairies: Petit v. Minnesota, (1900) 177 U.S. 164.
|
|||
|
Railroads in Streets: Richmond, etc., R. Co. v. Richmond, (1877)
|
|||
|
96 U.S. 521; New York v. Squire, (1892) 145 U.S. 175.
|
|||
|
Grade Crossings: New York, etc., R. Co. v. Bristol, (1894) 151 U.S.
|
|||
|
556.
|
|||
|
Fishing: Lawton v. Steele, (1894) 152 U.S. 133.
|
|||
|
Inspecting mines: Montana Co. v. St. Louis Min., etc., Co., (1894)
|
|||
|
152 U.S. 160.
|
|||
|
Restraining Contracts: Allgeyer v. Louisiana, (1897) 165 U.S. 579.
|
|||
|
Marriage: Andrews v. Andrews, (1903) 188 U.S. 14.
|
|||
|
Various objects: Wilson v. Eureka City, (1899) 173 U.S. 33; Lake
|
|||
|
Shore, etc., R. Co. v. Smith, (1899) 173 U.S. 684.
|
|||
|
(41) Bradwell v. State, (1872) 16 Wall. U.S. 130.
|
|||
|
(42) Minor v. Happersett, (1874) 21 Wall. U.S. 162.
|
|||
|
(43) Bradwell v. State, (1872) 16 Wall. U.S. 130; Dent v. West Virginia,
|
|||
|
(1880) 129 U.S. 114; Royall v. Virginia, (1880) 116 U.S. 572; Gray v.
|
|||
|
Connecticut (1895) 159 U.S. 74; Reetz v. Michigan, (1903) 188 U.S. 505.
|
|||
|
"The power of the State to provide for the general welfare of its
|
|||
|
people authorizes it to prescribe all such regulations as, in its
|
|||
|
judgement, will secure or tend to secure them against the consequences
|
|||
|
of ignorance and incapacity as well as ofdeception and fraud.... If they
|
|||
|
are apprropriate to the calling or profession, and attainable by
|
|||
|
reasonable study or application, no objection to their validity can be
|
|||
|
raised because of their stringency or difficulty. It is only when they
|
|||
|
have no relation to such callingor profession, or are unattainable by
|
|||
|
such reasonable studyand application, that they can operate to deprive
|
|||
|
one of his right to pursue a lawful vocation." Dent v. West Virginia,
|
|||
|
(1880) 129 U.S. 122.
|
|||
|
(44) Minor v. Happersett, (1874) 21 Wall. U.S. 162; U.S. v. Reese (1875)
|
|||
|
92 U.S. 214-217; U.S. v. Cruikshank, (1875) 92U.S. 542-554; Ex p.
|
|||
|
Yarbrough, (1884) 110 U.S. 651; Neal v. Delaware (1880) 103 U.S. 370;
|
|||
|
U.S. v. Waddell, (1884) 112 U.S. 76; McPherson v. Blacker, (1892) 146
|
|||
|
U.S. 1; Taylor v. Beckham (1900) 178 U.S. 548; Mason v. Missouri, (1900)
|
|||
|
179 U.S. 328; Wiley v. Sinkler, (1900) 179 U.S. 58; Swafford v.
|
|||
|
Templeton, (1902) 185 U.S. 487; Gibson v. Mississippi, (1896)162 U.S.
|
|||
|
565; William v. Mississippi (1898)170U.S. 213; Giles v. harris (1903)
|
|||
|
189 U.S. 486; Green v. Mills(1895) 69 Fed. Rep. 852, 159U.S. 651; James
|
|||
|
v. Bowman (1903) 190 U.S. 127; Pope v. Williams (1904) 193 U.S. 621;
|
|||
|
Report of Committee on Elections, 58th Congress, Cong. Record, March 18,
|
|||
|
1904, pp. 35, 92, 93.
|
|||
|
"The amendment did not add to the privileges and immunities of a
|
|||
|
citizen. It simply furnished an additional guaranty for the protection
|
|||
|
of such as he already had. No new voters were necessarily made by it.
|
|||
|
Indirectly it may have had that effect, because it may have increased
|
|||
|
the number of citizens entitled to suffrage under the constitution and
|
|||
|
laws of the States, but it operates for this purpose, if at all, through
|
|||
|
the States and State laws, and not directly upon the citizen." Minor v.
|
|||
|
Happersett (1874) 21 Wall. U.S. 171.
|
|||
|
(45) (1875) 92 U.S. 542.
|
|||
|
(46) (1880) 103 U.S. 370.
|
|||
|
(47) (1884) 110 U.S. 651.
|
|||
|
(48) (1892) 146 U.S. 1.
|
|||
|
(49) (1900) 179 U.S. 58.
|
|||
|
(50) (1002) 185 U.S. 487.
|
|||
|
(51) (1808) 162 U.S. 565.
|
|||
|
(52) (1898) 170 U.S. 213.
|
|||
|
(53) (1904) 193 U.S. 621.
|
|||
|
(54) (1903) 189 U.S. 486.
|
|||
|
(55) "A few years experience satisfied the thoughtful men who had been
|
|||
|
the authors of the other two amendments that, notwithstanding the
|
|||
|
restraints of those articles on the States, and the laws passed under
|
|||
|
the additional powers granted to Congress, these were inadequate for the
|
|||
|
protection of life, liberty, and property. without which freedom to the
|
|||
|
slave was no boon. They were in all those States denied the right of
|
|||
|
suffrage. The laws were administered by the white man alone it was urged
|
|||
|
that a race of men distinctively remarked as was the negro, living in
|
|||
|
the midst of another and dominant race, could never be fully secured in
|
|||
|
their person and their property without the right of suffrage. Hence the
|
|||
|
Fifteenth Amendment." Slaughter-House Cases, (1872) 10 Wall. (U. S.) 71.
|
|||
|
(56) "The privilege to vote in any State is not given by the Federal
|
|||
|
Constitution or by any of its amendments. It is not a privilege
|
|||
|
springing from citizenship of the United States. It may not be refused
|
|||
|
on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude, but it
|
|||
|
does not follow from mere citizenship of the United States. In other
|
|||
|
words, the privilege to vote in a State is within the jurisdiction of
|
|||
|
the State itself, to be exercised as the State may direct, and upon such
|
|||
|
terms as to it may seem proper, provided, of course, no discrimination
|
|||
|
is made between individuals in violation of the Federal Constitution."
|
|||
|
Pope v. Williams. (1904) 193 U.S. 632.
|
|||
|
(57) In answer to an objection that the Georgia constitution " was
|
|||
|
adopted under the dictation and coercion of Congress, and is the act of
|
|||
|
Congress rather than of the State," the Supreme Court has said: 'The
|
|||
|
result was submitted to Congress as a voluntary and valid offering, and
|
|||
|
was so received and so recognized in the subsequeut action of that body.
|
|||
|
The State is estopped to &"ail it upon such an assumption. Upon the same
|
|||
|
grounds she might deny the validity of her ratification of the
|
|||
|
constitutional amendments. The action of Congress upon the subject
|
|||
|
cannot be inquired into. The case is clearly one in which the judicial
|
|||
|
is bound to follow the action of the political department of the
|
|||
|
government, and is concluded by it." White v. Hart, (1871) 13 Wall. U.S.
|
|||
|
649.
|
|||
|
(58) For the above order of presentation and much of the language, the
|
|||
|
author is indebted to the Hon. Edgar D. Crunsacker, of Indiana, having
|
|||
|
found them in a remarkably able speech on representation and suffrage
|
|||
|
made by him in the House of Representatives. Feb. 24, 1905.
|
|||
|
(59) "The limit of the tull control which the State has in the
|
|||
|
proceedings of its courts, both in civil and criminal cases, in subject
|
|||
|
only to the qualification that s uch procedure must not work a denial
|
|||
|
of fundamental rights or conflict with specific and applicable
|
|||
|
provisions of the Federal Constitution" West v. Louisiana. (1904) 104
|
|||
|
U. S. 263.
|
|||
|
The decisions of the United States Supreme Court on the rights of the
|
|||
|
State to regulate procedure are listed at the elude of this volume in
|
|||
|
Appendix B.
|
|||
|
(60) Eilenbecker v. District Ct., (1890) 134 U. S. 31.
|
|||
|
(61) Edwards v. Elliott, (1874) 21 Wall. U.S. 557; Walker v. Sauvinet,
|
|||
|
(1875) 92 U.S. 90; Pearson v. Yewdall, (1877) 95 U.S. 294.
|
|||
|
"The States, so far as this amendment is concerned, are left to
|
|||
|
regulate trials in their own courts in their own way. A trial by jury
|
|||
|
in suits at common law pending in the State courts is not, therefore,
|
|||
|
a privilege or immunity of national citizenship, wbich the States are
|
|||
|
forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment to abridge. A State cannot deprive
|
|||
|
a person of his property without due process of Iaw; but this does not
|
|||
|
necessarily imply that all trials in the state courts affecting the
|
|||
|
property of persons muat be by jury. This requirement of the
|
|||
|
Constitution is met if the trial is had according to the settled course
|
|||
|
of judicial proceedings" Walker v. Sauvinet, (1875) 92 U.S. 92.
|
|||
|
(62) (1902) 183 U.S. 511.
|
|||
|
(63) (l892) 146 U. S. 3L
|
|||
|
(64) (1898) 170 U. S. 213.
|
|||
|
(65) (1891) 137 U. S. 6 31.
|
|||
|
(66) (1891) 140 U. S. 297.
|
|||
|
(67) A State "has the right to establish the forms of pleadings and
|
|||
|
process to be observed in her own courts, in both civil and criminal
|
|||
|
cases observed o n ly to t hose provisions of the Constitution uf the
|
|||
|
United States involving the protection of life, liberty, and property
|
|||
|
in all the States of the Union." Ex p. Reggel (1885) 114 U. S. 651.
|
|||
|
(68) (1896) 162 U.S. 565.
|
|||
|
(69) (1900) 176 U.S. 581.
|
|||
|
(70) (1901) 180 U.S. 311.
|
|||
|
(71) (1890) 136 U.S. 436.
|
|||
|
(72) (1875) 92 U.S. 480.
|
|||
|
(73) (1886) 116 U.S. 252.
|
|||
|
(74) Hayes v. Missouri, (1887) 120 U.S. 68.
|
|||
|
(75) Leeper v. Texas, (1891) 139 U.S. 462.
|
|||
|
(76) (1896) 160 U.S. 393.
|
|||
|
(77) (1903) l88 U.S. 14.
|
|||
|
(78) Brownfield v. South Carolina, (1903) 189 U.S. 426; Smith v.
|
|||
|
Mississippi, (1896) 162 U.S. 592.
|
|||
|
(79) Northern Securities Co. v. Minnesota, 194 U.S. 48.
|
|||
|
(80) The decisions of the United States Supreme Court on the power of
|
|||
|
the States to regulate and control the business of corporations are
|
|||
|
listed in the order of their rendition at the close of this volume. See
|
|||
|
Appendix C.
|
|||
|
(81) Santa Clara County v. Southern Pac. R. Co., (1886) 118 U.S. 394;
|
|||
|
Pembina Consol. Silver Min., etc., Co. v. Pennsylvania, (1888) 125 U.S.
|
|||
|
189; Missouri Pac. R. Co. v. Mackey, (1888) 127 U.S. 209; Minneapolis,
|
|||
|
etc., R. Co. v. Beckwith, (1889) 129 U.S. 28; Home Ins. Co. v. New York,
|
|||
|
(1890) 134 U.S. 606; Charlotte, etc., R. Co. v. Gibbes, (1892) 142 U.S.
|
|||
|
391; Gulf, etc., R. Co. v. Ellis, (1897) l85 U.S. 154; Covington, etc.,
|
|||
|
Turnpike Road Co. v. Sandford, (1896) 164 U.S. 592; Lake Shore, etc.,
|
|||
|
R. Co. v. Smith, (1899) 173 U.S. 690; Covington, etc., Turnpike Road Co.
|
|||
|
v. Sandford, (1896) 144 U.S. 578; Smyth v. Ames (1898) 169 U.S. 464.
|
|||
|
"It is now settled that corporations are persons within the meaning
|
|||
|
of the constitutional provisions forbidding the deprivation of property
|
|||
|
without due process of law, an well as a denial of the equal protection
|
|||
|
of the laws." Covington, etc., Turnpike Road Co. v. Sandford, (1896) 164
|
|||
|
U.S. 592.
|
|||
|
"The rights and securities guaranteed to persons by that instrument
|
|||
|
[the Constitution] cannot be disregarded in respect to these artificial
|
|||
|
entities called corporations any more than they can be in respect to the
|
|||
|
individuals who are the equitable owners of the property belonging to
|
|||
|
such corporations. A State has no more power to deny to corporations the
|
|||
|
equal protection of the law than it has to individual citizens." Gulf,
|
|||
|
etc., R. Co. v. Ellis, (1897) 165 U.S. 154.
|
|||
|
(82) Philadelphia F. Assoc. v. New York, (1888) 119 U.S. 110;
|
|||
|
Waters-Pierce Oil Co. v. Texas, (1900) 177 U.S. 28; Orient Ins. Co. v.
|
|||
|
Daggs (1899) 172 U.S. 557.
|
|||
|
(83) Missouri Pac. R. Co. v. Humes (1885) 115 U.S. 5I3.
|
|||
|
"The inhibition of the amendment that no State shall deprive any
|
|||
|
person within its jurisdiction of the equal protection of the law was
|
|||
|
designed to prevent any person or class of persons from being singled
|
|||
|
out as a special subject for discriminating and hostile legislation.
|
|||
|
Under the designation of person there is no doubt that a private
|
|||
|
corporation is included . . [but] the State is not prohibited from
|
|||
|
discriminating in the privileges it may grant to foreign corporations
|
|||
|
as a condition of their doing business or hiring offices within its
|
|||
|
limits, provided always such discrimination does not interfere with any
|
|||
|
transaction by such corporations of interstate or foreign commerce."
|
|||
|
Pembina Consol. Silver Min., etc., Co. v. Penniiylvania, (1888) 125 U.
|
|||
|
S. 188.
|
|||
|
(84) New York, etc., R. Co. v. Bristol, (1894) 151 U.S. 556.
|
|||
|
(85) Tullis v. Lake Erie, etc., R. Co., (1899) 175 U.S. 348.
|
|||
|
(86) Field v. Barber Asphalt Paving Co., (1904) 194 U. S. 621, where the
|
|||
|
court said: "It is not the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment, as has
|
|||
|
been frequently held, to prevent the States from classifying the
|
|||
|
subjects of legislation and making different regulations an to the
|
|||
|
property of different individuals differently situated. The provision
|
|||
|
of the Federal Constitution is satisfied if all, persons similarly
|
|||
|
situated are treated alike in privileges conferred or liabilities
|
|||
|
imposed."
|
|||
|
"Legislation does not infringe upon the clause of the Fourteenth
|
|||
|
Amendment requiring legal protection of the laws, because it is special
|
|||
|
in its character; if in conflict at all with that clause, it must be on
|
|||
|
other grounds. And when legislation applies to particular bodies or
|
|||
|
associations , imposing upon them additional liabilities, it is not open
|
|||
|
to the objection that it denies to them the equal protection of the
|
|||
|
laws, if all persons brought under its influence are treated alike under
|
|||
|
the same conditions." Missouri Pac. R. co. v. Mackey (1888) 127 U.S.
|
|||
|
209.
|
|||
|
(87) "Neither the amendment - broad and comprehensive as it is - nor
|
|||
|
any earlier amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the
|
|||
|
State,
|
|||
|
sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regulations topromote
|
|||
|
the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people, and
|
|||
|
tolegislate so as toincrease the indisturies of the State, develop its
|
|||
|
resources, and add to its wealth and prosperity." Barbier v. Connolly
|
|||
|
(1885) 113 U.S. 31.
|
|||
|
"The police power cannot be put forward as an excuse for oppressive
|
|||
|
and unjust legislation, [but] it may be lawfully resorted to forthe
|
|||
|
purpose of preserving the public health, safety, ormorals, or the
|
|||
|
abatement of public nuisances, and a large discretion `is necessarily
|
|||
|
vested in the legislature to determine not only what the interests of
|
|||
|
the public require, but what measures are necessary for the protection
|
|||
|
of such interests.'" Holden v. Hardy (1898) 169 U.S. 392.
|
|||
|
(88) (1886) 116 U.S. 252.
|
|||
|
(89) (1897) 167 U.S. 44.
|
|||
|
(90) (1899) 173 U.S. 32.
|
|||
|
(91) Pace v. Alabama (1882) 106 U.S. 583.
|
|||
|
(92) Davis v. Beason, (1890) 133 U.S. 333.
|
|||
|
(93) Booth v. Illinois, (1902) 184 U.S. 425. See also McDonald v.
|
|||
|
Massachusetts (1901) 180 U.S. 311; Otis v. Parker (1903) 187 U.S. 606;
|
|||
|
U.S. v. Williams (1904) 194 U. S. 279; Public Clearing House v. Coyne,
|
|||
|
(1904) 104 U.S. 497.
|
|||
|
"If, looking at all the circumstances which attend or may ordinarily
|
|||
|
attend the pursuit of a particular calling, a State thinks that certain
|
|||
|
admitted evil cannot be successfully reached unless that calling be
|
|||
|
actually prohibited, the courts cannot interfere unless, looking through
|
|||
|
mere forms and at the substance of the matter, they can say that the
|
|||
|
statute, enacted professedly to protect the public morals, had no real
|
|||
|
or substantial relation to that object, but in a clear, unmistakable
|
|||
|
infringement of rights secured by the fundamental law." Booth v.
|
|||
|
Illinois (1902) 184 U.S. 425.
|
|||
|
(94) (1890) 133 U.S. 587.
|
|||
|
(95) (1896) 163 U.S. 544; Chesapeake, etc., R. Co., v. Kentucky (1900)
|
|||
|
179 U.S. 388.
|
|||
|
(96) (1899) 175 U.S. 528.
|
|||
|
(97) The decisions of the United States Supreme Court on the power of
|
|||
|
the States to regulate State taxation are listed in the order of their
|
|||
|
rendition at the close of this volume. See Appendix D.
|
|||
|
(98) " The amendment does not prevent the classification of property for
|
|||
|
taxation, subjecting one kind of property to one rate of taxation, and
|
|||
|
another kind of property to a different rate; distinguishing between
|
|||
|
franchises, licenses and privileges, and visible and tangible property,
|
|||
|
and between real and personal property. Nor does the amendment prohibit
|
|||
|
special legislation. Indeed, the greater part of all legislation is
|
|||
|
special, either in the extent to which it operates , or the object
|
|||
|
bought to be obtained by it. And when such legislation applies to
|
|||
|
artificial bodies, it is not open to objection if all such bodies are
|
|||
|
treated alike under similar circumstances and conditions, in respectt
|
|||
|
and the privileges conferred upon them and the liabilities to which they
|
|||
|
are subjected." Home lns. Co. v. New York, (1890) 134 U. S. 606.
|
|||
|
(99) "Clear and hostile discriminations against particular persons and
|
|||
|
classes, especially such as are of an unusual character, unknown to the
|
|||
|
practice of our government, might be obnoxious to the constitutional
|
|||
|
prohibition. It would, however, be impracticable and unwise to attempt
|
|||
|
to lay down any general rule or definition on the subject, that would
|
|||
|
include all cases. They must be decided as they arise. We think that we
|
|||
|
are safe in saying that the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to
|
|||
|
compel the State to adopt an iron rule of equal taxation. If that were
|
|||
|
its proper construction, it would not only supersede all those
|
|||
|
constitutional provisions and laws of some of the States, whose object
|
|||
|
is to secure equality of taxation, and which are usually accompanied
|
|||
|
with qualifications deemed material; but it would render nugatory those
|
|||
|
discriminations which the best interests of society require, which are
|
|||
|
necessary for the encouragement of needed and useful industries, and the
|
|||
|
discouragement of intemperance and vice, aud which every State, in one
|
|||
|
form or another, deems it expedient to adopt." Bell's Gap R. Co. v.
|
|||
|
Pennsylvania, (1890) 134 U.S. 237.
|
|||
|
"Perfect equality and perfect uniformity of taxation an regards
|
|||
|
individuals or corporations, or the different classes of property
|
|||
|
subject to taxation, is a dream unrealized. It may be admitted that the
|
|||
|
system which most nearly attains this is the beet. But the most complete
|
|||
|
system which can be devised must, when we consider the immense variety
|
|||
|
of subjects which it necessarily embraces, be imperfect." State Railroad
|
|||
|
Tax Cases (1875) 92 U.S. 612.
|
|||
|
(100) (1900) 178 U.S. 548, where the court said in part: "It is
|
|||
|
obviously essential to the independence of the States, and to their
|
|||
|
peace and tranquillity, that their power to prescribe the qualifications
|
|||
|
of their own officers, the tenure of their offices, the manner of their
|
|||
|
election, and the grounds on which, the tribunals before which, and the
|
|||
|
mode in which, such elections may be contested, should be exclusive, and
|
|||
|
free from external interference, except so far as plainly provided by
|
|||
|
the Constitution of the United States."
|
|||
|
(101) (1855) 18 How. U.S. 272.
|
|||
|
(102) (1877) 96 U.S. 97.
|
|||
|
While the provision of the Fourteenth Amendment which ordains that no
|
|||
|
State shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
|
|||
|
due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the
|
|||
|
equal protection of the laws. . . . is new in the Constitution of the
|
|||
|
United States, as a limitation upon the powers of the States, it is old
|
|||
|
as a principle of civilized government. It is found in Magna Charta,
|
|||
|
and, in substance if not in form, in nearly or quite all the
|
|||
|
constitutions that have been from time to time adopted by the several
|
|||
|
States of the Union. By the Fifth Amendment, it was introduced into the
|
|||
|
Constitution of the United States as a limitation upon the powers of the
|
|||
|
national government, and by the Fourteenth, as a guaranty against any
|
|||
|
encroachment upon an acknowledged right of citizenship by the
|
|||
|
legislatures of the States." Munn v. Illinois (1876) 94 U. S. 123.
|
|||
|
(103) Orient Ins. Co. v. Daggs (I899) 172 U. S. 557.
|
|||
|
(104) (1877) 96 U.S. 97.
|
|||
|
(105) (1876) 92 U.S. 480.
|
|||
|
To ascertain whether a particular process is due process "we must
|
|||
|
examine the Constitution itself, to see whether this process be in
|
|||
|
conflict with any of its provisions. It not found to be so, we must look
|
|||
|
to those settled usages and modes of proceeding existing in the common
|
|||
|
and statute law of England, before the emmigration of our ancestors, and
|
|||
|
which are shown not to have been unsuited to their civil and political
|
|||
|
condition by having been acted on by them after the settlement of this
|
|||
|
country." Murray v. Hoboken Land, etc., Co., (1855) 18 How. U.S. 277.
|
|||
|
(106) (1891) 137 U.S. 692.
|
|||
|
(107) See also Due Process of Law " by Lucius P. Mc.Gheen.
|
|||
|
(108) Missouri v. Lewis, (1879) 101 U.S. 22.
|
|||
|
(109) Soon Hing v. Crowley, (1885) 113 U.S. 703, where the court said:
|
|||
|
"The specific regulations for one kind of business, which may be
|
|||
|
necessary for the protectionof the public, can never bethe just ground
|
|||
|
of complaint because like restrictions are not imposed upon other
|
|||
|
business of a different kind. The discriminations which are open to
|
|||
|
objection are those where persons engaged in the same business are
|
|||
|
subjected to different restrictions, or are held entitled to different
|
|||
|
privileges under the same conditions. It is only then that the
|
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|
discrimination can be said to impair that equal right which all can
|
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|
claim in the enformment of the laws."
|
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|
(110) (1886) 118 U.S. 356.
|
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|
(111) Williams v. Mississippi (1898) 170 U.S. 213.
|
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|
On the other hand, "though the law itself be fair on its face and
|
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|
unpartial In appearance, yet, if it is applied and administered by
|
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|
public authority with an evil eye and an unequal hand, so practically
|
|||
|
to make unjust and illegal discriminations between persons in similar
|
|||
|
circumstances, material to their rights, the denial of equal justice is
|
|||
|
still within the prohibition of the Constitution." Yick Wo v. Hopkins
|
|||
|
(1886) 118 U.S. 356.
|
|||
|
(112) Sentell v. New Orleans, etc., R. Co. (1897) 166 U.S. 698.
|
|||
|
(113) "The principles of interpretation applicable to the first section
|
|||
|
of the Fourteenth Amendment are equally applicable to the construction
|
|||
|
of the Fifteenth Amendment. The amendment simply limits State power in
|
|||
|
respect to suffrage at State elections by prohibiting discrimination in
|
|||
|
the enjoyment of the elective franchise on accountof race, color, or
|
|||
|
condition. The right tovote in its own election can be conferred only
|
|||
|
by the State. No one, therefore, but the State cna `deny or abridge' the
|
|||
|
right to vote. The amendment is therefore properly addressed to the
|
|||
|
State. Individuals may by unlawful force or fraud prevent an otherwise
|
|||
|
lawful voter from voting. But it would simply be an act of lawless
|
|||
|
violence. The right of suffrage would not be deniedor abridged.
|
|||
|
Individuals cannot deny or abridge the right of suffrage, for they
|
|||
|
cannot confer it. It is a right which is secured by, and dependent upon,
|
|||
|
law.... Both the Fourteenth and the Fifteenth Amendments are addressed
|
|||
|
to State action through some channel exercising the power of the State."
|
|||
|
Karem v. U.S. (1903) 121 Fed. Rep. 258.
|
|||
|
(114) (1875) 92U.S. 214.
|
|||
|
(115) (1903) 190 U.S. 127.
|
|||
|
(116) (1882) 106 U.S. 640.
|
|||
|
(117) 120 U.S. 678.
|
|||
|
(118) 92 U.S. 542, 554.
|
|||
|
(119) 146 U.S. 1.
|
|||
|
(120) (1900) 179U.S. 58.
|
|||
|
(121) (1902) 185U.S. 487.
|
|||
|
(122) (1874) 21 Wall. U.S. 162.
|
|||
|
(123) (1880) 103 U.S. 370.
|
|||
|
(124) (1884) 110 U.S. 651. (125) (1895) 156 U.S. 237.
|