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Page Number: 45

10 

UNITED STATES v. RAHIMI 

KAVANAUGH, J., concurring 

The Equal Protection Clause provides another example.
Ratified in 1868, that Clause sought to reject the Nation’s
history of racial discrimination, not to backdoor incorporate
racially discriminatory and oppressive historical practices 
and  laws  into  the  Constitution.    See  generally  Flowers  v. 
Mississippi, 588 U. S. 284 (2019); Batson v. Kentucky, 476 
U. S.  79  (1986);  Loving  v.  Virginia,  388  U. S.  1  (1967); 
Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954). 

In short, pre-ratification American history—that is, pre-
laws,  practices,  and  understandings—can 
ratification 
inform interpretation of vague constitutional provisions in 
the  original  Constitution  and  Bill  of  Rights.  The  same 
principle  of  looking  to  relevant  pre-ratification  history
applies when interpreting broadly worded language in the 
later  amendments,  including  the  Fourteenth  Amendment
ratified  in  1868.  But  in  using  pre-ratification  history,
courts  must  exercise  care  to  rely  only  on  the  history  that 
the  Constitution  actually  incorporated  and  not  on  the 
history that the Constitution left behind. 

B 

text  and  determining  exceptions 

Post-ratification history.  As the Framers made clear, and 
as this Court has stated time and again for more than two 
centuries, post-ratification history—sometimes referred to 
as tradition—can also be important for interpreting vague
constitutional 
to 
individual  constitutional  rights.  When  the  text  is  vague 
and  the  pre-ratification  history  is  elusive  or  inconclusive, 
post-ratification  history  becomes  especially  important. 
Indeed, absent precedent, there can be little else to guide a
judge  deciding  a  constitutional  case  in  that  situation,
unless  the  judge  simply  defaults  to  his  or  her  own  policy 
preferences.

After ratification, the National Government and the state 

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continue to be subject to the “impious doctrine in the old world, that the 
people were made for kings, not kings for the people”?).