Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/245/366/
Timestamp: 2019-04-18 15:04:40+00:00

Document:
The Thirteenth Amendment protection against involuntary servitude and the First Amendment protection on freedom of thought do not prevent the federal government from implementing a military draft.
The grant to Congress of power to raise and support armies, considered in conjunction with the grants of the powers to declare war, to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces, and to make laws necessary and proper for executing granted powers (Constitution, Art. I, § 8), includes the power to compel military service, exercised by the Selective Draft Law of May 18, 1917, c. 15, 40 Stat. 76. This conclusion, obvious upon the face of the Constitution, is confirmed by an historical examination of the subject.
The army power, combining the powers vested in the Congress and the States under the Confederation, embraces the complete military power of government, as is manifested not only by the grant made, but by the express limitation of Art. I, § 10, prohibiting the States, without the consent of Congress, from keeping troops in time of peace or engaging in war.
The militia power reserved to the States by the militia clause (Art. I, § 8), while separate and distinct in its field, and while serving to diminish occasion for exercising the army power, is subject to be restricted in, or even deprived of, its area of operation through the army power, according to the extent to which Congress, in its discretion, finds necessity for calling the latter into play.
expressly authorized, by the militia clause, to call the militia; the presence in the Constitution of such express regulations affords no basis for an inference that the army power, when exerted, is not complete and dominant to the extent of its exertion.
The power of Congress to compel military service as in the Selective Draft Law, clearly sustained by the original Constitution, is even more manifest under the Fourteenth Amendment, which, as frequently has been pointed out, broadened the national scope of the government by causing citizenship of the United States to be paramount and dominant, instead of being subordinate and derivative, thus operating generally upon the powers conferred by the Constitution.
The constitutionality of the Selective Draft Law also is upheld against the following objections: (1) That, by some of its administrative features, it delegates federal power to state officials; (2) that it vests both legislative and judicial power in administrative officers; (3) that, by exempting ministers of religion and theological students under certain conditions and by relieving from strictly military service members of certain religious sects whose tenets deny the moral right to engage in war, it is repugnant to the First Amendment, as establishing or interfering with religion, and (4) that it creates involuntary servitude in violation of the Thirteenth Amendment.
selecting from the body so called, on the further proclamation of the President, 500,000 enlisted men and a second body of the same number, should the President in his discretion deem it necessary. To carry out its purposes, the act made it the duty of those liable to the call to present themselves for registration on the proclamation of the President, so as to subject themselves to the terms of the act, and provided full federal means for carrying out the selective draft. It gave the President, in his discretion, power to create local boards to consider claims for exemption for physical disability or otherwise made by those called. The act exempted from subjection to the draft designated United States and state officials, as well as those already in the military or naval service of the United States, regular or duly ordained ministers of religion and theological students under the conditions provided for, and, while relieving from military service in the strict sense the members of religious sects as enumerated whose tenets excluded the moral right to engage in war, nevertheless subjected such persons to the performance of service of a noncombatant character to be defined by the President.
questions thus raised, convictions having resulted from instructions of the courts that the legal defences were without merit, and that the statute was constitutional.
"to declare war; . . . to raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; . . . to make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces."
Article I, § 8. And, of course, the powers conferred by these provisions, like all other powers given, carry with them, as provided by the Constitution, the authority "to make ah laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers." Article I, § 8.
the brief of the Government contains a list of Colonial acts manifesting the power and its enforcement in more than two hundred cases. And this exact situation existed also after the separation. Under the Articles of Confederation, it is true Congress had no such power, as its authority was absolutely limited to making calls upon the States for the military forces needed to create and maintain the army, each State being bound for its quota as called. But it is indisputable that the States, in response to the calls made upon them, met the situation when they deemed it necessary by directing enforced military service on the part of the citizens. In fact, the duty of the citizen to render military service and the power to compel him against his consent to do so was expressly sanctioned by the constitutions of at least nine of the States, an illustration being afforded by the following provision of the Pennsylvania constitution of 1776.
"That every member of society hath a right to be protected in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and therefore is bound to contribute his proportion towards the expense of that protection, and yield his personal service when necessary, or an equivalent thereto."
resort to drafts to fill their quotas [Footnote 4] -- that fact serves to demonstrate, instead of to challenge, the existence of the authority. A default in exercising a duty may not be resorted to as a reason for denying its existence.
When the Constitution came to be formed, it may not be disputed that one of the recognized necessities for its adoption was the want of power in Congress to raise an army and the dependence upon the States for their quotas. In supplying the power, it was manifestly intended to give it all, and leave none to the States, since, besides the delegation to Congress of authority to raise armies, the Constitution prohibited the States, without the consent of Congress, from keeping troops in time of peace or engaging in war. Article I, § 10.
in some respects to services for which the militia, it is assumed, may only be used, since this admits the appropriateness of the call to military service in the army and the power to make it, and yet destroys the purpose for which the call is authorized -- the raising of armies to be under the control of the United States.
"The Congress shall have power . . . To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the States, respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress."
interest required, furnishes no ground for supposing that the complete power was lost by its partial exertion. Because, moreover, the power granted to Congress to raise armies in its potentiality was susceptible of narrowing the area over which the militia clause operated affords no ground for confounding the two areas which were distinct and separate to the end of confusing both the powers, and thus weakening or destroying both.
the Government determined that the exercise of the power to organize an army by compulsory draft was necessary, and Mr. Monroe, the Secretary of War (Mr. Madison being President), in a letter to Congress, recommended several plans of legislation on that subject. It suffices to say that by each of them it was proposed that the United States deal directly with the body of citizens subject to military duty, and call a designated number out of the population between the ages of 18 and 45 for service in the army. The power which it was recommended be exerted was clearly an unmixed federal power dealing with the subject from the sphere of the authority given to Congress to raise armies, and not from the sphere of the right to deal with the militia as such, whether organized or unorganized. A bill was introduced giving effect to the plan. Opposition developed, but we need not stop to consider it, because it substantially rested upon the incompatibility of compulsory military service with free government, a subject which, from what we have said, has been disposed of. Peace came before the bill was enacted.
Down to the Mexican War, the legislation exactly portrayed the same condition of mind which we have previously stated. In that war, however, no draft was suggested, because the army created by the United States immediately resulting from the exercise by Congress of its power to raise armies, that organized under its direction from the militia and the volunteer commands which were furnished, proved adequate to carry the war to a successful conclusion.
1864, producing a force of about a quarter of a million men. [Footnote 7] It is undoubted that the men thus raised by draft were treated as subject to direct national authority and were used either in filling the gaps occasioned by the vicissitudes of war in the ranks of the existing national forces or for the purpose of organizing such new units as were deemed to be required. It would be childish to deny the value of the added strength which was thus afforded. Indeed, in the official report of the Provost Marshal General, just previously referred to in the margin, reviewing the whole subject, it was stated that it was the efficient aid resulting from the forces created by the draft at a very critical moment of the civil strife which obviated a disaster which seemed impending, and carried that struggle to a complete and successful conclusion.
since the formation of the Constitution, the want of merit in the contentions that the act in the particulars which we have been previously called upon to consider was beyond the constitutional power of Congress is manifest. Cogency, however, if possible, is added to the demonstration by pointing out that, in the only case to which we have been referred where the constitutionality of the Act of 1863 was contemporaneously challenged on grounds akin to, if not absolutely identical with, those here urged, the validity of the act was maintained for reasons not different from those which control our judgment. (Kneedler v. Lane, 45 Pa.St. 238.) And as further evidence that the conclusion we reach is but the inevitable consequence of the provisions of the Constitution as effect follows cause, we briefly recur to events in another environment. The seceding States wrote into the constitution which was adopted to regulate the government which they sought to establish, in identical words, the provisions of the Constitution of the United States which we here have under consideration. And when the right to enforce under that instrument a selective draft law which was enacted, not differing in principle from the one here in question, was challenged, its validity was upheld, evidently after great consideration, by the courts of Virginia, of Georgia, of Texas, of Alabama, of Mississippi, and of North Carolina, the opinions in some of the cases copiously and critically reviewing the whole grounds which we have stated. Burroughs v. Peyton, 16 Gratt. 470; Jeffers v. Fair, 33 Georgia, 347; Daly and Fitzgerald v. Harris, 33 Ga. (Supp.) 38, 54; Barber v. Irwin, 34 Georgia, 27; Parker v. Kaughman, 34 Georgia, 136; Ex parte Coupland, 26 Texas, 386; Ex parte Hill, 38 Alabama, 429; In re Emerson, 39 Alabama, 437; In re Pille, 39 Alabama, 459; Simmons v. Miller, 40 Mississippi 19; Gatlin v. Walton, 60 N.Car. 333, 408.
it, as it has been argued, from the point of view of the Constitution as it stood prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. But to avoid all misapprehension, we briefly direct attention to that Amendment for the purpose of pointing out, as has been frequently done in the past, [Footnote 8] how completely it broadened the national scope of the Government under the Constitution by causing citizenship of the United States to be paramount and dominant, instead of being subordinate and derivative, and therefore, operating as it does upon all the powers conferred by the Constitution, leaves no possible support for the contentions made, if their want of merit was otherwise not so clearly made manifest.
the proposition that an establishment of a religion or an interference with the free exercise thereof repugnant to the First Amendment resulted from the exemption clauses of the act to which we at the outset referred, because we think its unsoundness is too apparent to require us to do more.
Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.
* The docket titles of these cases are: Arver v. United States, No. 663, Grahl v. United States, No. 664, Otto Wangerin v. United States, No. 665, Walter Wangerin v. United States, No. 666, in error to the District Court of the United States for the District of Minnesota; Kramer v. United States, No. 681, Graubard v. United States, No. 769, in error to the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
"The Stateman's Year-book for 1917 cites the following governments as enforcing military service: Argentine Republic, p. 656; Austria-Hungary, p. 667; Belgium, p. 712; Brazil, p. 738; Bulgaria, p. 747; Bolivia, p. 728; Colombia, p. 790; Chile, p. 754; China, p. 770; Denmark, p. 811; Ecuador, p. 820; France, p. 841; Greece, p. 1001; Germany, p. 914; Guatemala, p. 1009; Honduras, p. 1018; Italy, p. 1036; Japan, p. 1064; Mexico, p. 1090; Montenegro, p. 1098; Netherlands, p. 1119; Nicaragua, p. 1142; Norway, p. 1152; Peru, p. 1191; Portugal, p. 1201; Roumania, p. 1220; Russia, p. 1240; Serbia, p. 1281; Siam, p. 1288; Spain, p. 1300; Switzerland, p. 1337; Salvador, p. 1270; Turkey, p. 1353."
See also the recent Canadian conscription act, entitled, "Military Service Act" of August 27, 1917, expressly providing for service abroad (printed in the Congressional Record of September 20, 1917, 55th Cong.Rec. p. 7959); the Conscription Law of the Orange Free State, Law No. 10, 1899, Military Service and Commando Law, sections 10 and 28, Laws of Orange River Colony, 1901, p. 855; of the South African Republic, "De Locale Wetten en Volksraadsbesluiten der Zuid-Afr. Republick," 1898, Law No. 20, pp. 230, 233, article 6, 28; Constitution, German Empire, April 16, 1871, Art. 57, 59, Dodd, 1 Modern Constitutions, p. 344; Gesetz, betreffend Aenderungen der Wehrpflicht, vom 11 Feb. 1888, No. 1767, Reichs-Gesetzblatt, p. 11, amended by law of July 22, 1913, No. 4264, RGBI., p. 593; Loi sur le recrutement de l'armee of 15 July, 1889 (Duvergier, vol. 89, p. 440), modified by act of 21 March, 1905 (Duvergier, vol. 105, p. 133).
Military Service Act, January 27, 1916, 5 and 6 George V, c. 104, p. 367, amended by the Military Service Act of May 25, 1916, 2nd session, 6 and 7, George V, c. 15, p. 33.
See also Constitution of Vermont, 1777, c. 1, Art. 9 (Thorpe, vol. 6, pp. 4747, 3740); New York, 1777, Art. 40 (id., vol. 5, p. 2637); Massachusetts Bill of Rights, 1780, Art. 10 (id., vol. 3, p. 1891); New Hampshire, 1784, pt. 1, Bill of Rights, Art. 12 (id., vol. 4, p. 2455); Delaware, 1776, Art. 9 (id., vol. 1, pp. 562, 564); Maryland, 1776, Art. 33 (id., vol. 3, pp. 1686, 1696); Virginia, 1776, Militia (id., vol. 7, p. 3817); Georgia, 1777, Art. 33, 35 (id., vol. 2, pp. 777, 782).
Journals of Congress, Ford's ed., Library of Congress, vol. 7, pp. 262, 263; vol. 10, pp. 199, 200; vol. 13, p. 299. 7 Sparks, Writings of Washington, pp. 162, 167, 442, 444.
Act of May 9, 1794, c. 27, 1 Stat. 367; Act of February 28, 1795, c. 36, 1 Stat. 424; Act of June 24, 1797, c. 4, 1 Stat. 522; Act of March 3, 1803, c. 32, 2 Stat. 241; Act of April 18, 1806, c. 32, 2 Stat. 383; Act of March 30, 1808, c. 39, 2 Stat. 478; Act of April 10, 1812, c. 55, 2 Stat. 705.
Upton, Military Policy of the United States, pp. 99 ct seq.
Historical Report, Enrollment Branch, Provost Marshal General's Bureau, March 17, 1866.
Slaughter House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 83 U. S. 72-74, 83 U. S. 94-95, 112-113; United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U. S. 542, 92 U. S. 549; Boyd v. Thayer, 143 U. S. 135, 143 U. S. 140; McPherson v. Blacker, 146 U. S. 1, 146 U. S. 37.

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