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4 

STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 
AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
JACKSON, J., dissenting 

breaking up the Union.”2  After the war, Senator John Sher-
man  defended  the  proposed  Fourteenth  Amendment  in  a
manner  that  encapsulated  our  Reconstruction  Framers’
highest sentiments: “We are bound by every obligation, by
[Black  Americans’]  service  on  the  battlefield,  by  their  he-
roes who are buried in our cause, by their patriotism in the 
hours that tried our country, we are bound to protect them 
and all their natural rights.”3 

To  uphold  that  promise,  the  Framers  repudiated  this 
Court’s  holding  in  Dred  Scott  v.  Sandford,  19  How.  393 
(1857), by crafting Reconstruction Amendments (and asso-
ciated  legislation)  that  transformed  our  Constitution  and 
society.4  Even after this Second Founding—when the need
to  right  historical  wrongs  should  have  been  clear  beyond 
cavil—opponents insisted that vindicating equality in this 
manner  slighted  White  Americans.    So,  when  the  Recon-
struction Congress passed a bill to secure all citizens “the 
same [civil] right[s]” as “enjoyed by white citizens,” 14 Stat.
27, President Andrew Johnson vetoed it because it “discrim-
inat[ed] . . . in favor of the negro.”5 

That  attitude,  and  the  Nation’s  associated  retreat  from 
Reconstruction, made prophesy out of Congressman Thad-
deus Stevens’s fear that “those States will all . . . keep up 

—————— 

2 An Appeal to Congress for Impartial Suffrage, Atlantic Monthly (Jan.
1867), in 2 The Reconstruction Amendments: The Essential Documents 
324 (K. Lash ed. 2021) (Lash). 

3 Speech of Sen. John Sherman (Sept. 28, 1866) (Sherman), in id., at 
276;  see  also  W.  Du  Bois,  Black  Reconstruction  in  America  162  (1998)
(Du Bois). 

4 See Sherman 276; M. Curtis, No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth 

Amendment and the Bill of Rights 48, 71–75, 91, 173 (1986). 

5 Message Accompanying Veto of the Civil Rights Bill (Mar. 27, 1866), 

in Lash 145.