Source: https://lonang.com/commentaries/conlaw/bill-of-rights/incorporation-a-legal-and-historical-fallacy/
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 02:18:34+00:00

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The first step one must take when interpreting the Constitution is to view it in light of its overall structure, nature and purpose. In other words, the interpreter must adopt in his mind a presuppositional framework of analysis which seeks to honor the overarching design of the Constitution and the general principles it embodies.
Chief Justice Marshall expressed this commitment to honoring the overall design of the Constitution both in word and in deed. For example, Marshall not only expressed the importance of construing the document as a whole,23 but he also decided cases that came before him with a strong implicit consideration for the federal structure of government created by the Constitution.24 This presupposition in favor of preserving federalism can be most readily detected in early Supreme Court cases such as McCulloch v. Maryland25 that directly tested the division of powers between the state and federal governments.
Only after this presuppositional frame of mind has been adopted may the second step of constitutional interpretation be taken. The text, that is, the language of the Constitution itself, is above all the primary source from which the meaning of the Constitution is to be derived. If the language is clear and its meaning plain as used by an ordinary man, or by “those for whom the instrument was written,”26 then the text alone is sufficient, and interpretation is unnecessary.
However, because of the imperfection of human language, even John Marshall was willing to concede that ambiguous terms in the Constitution may require further inquiry to determine their proper meaning.29 This third step of constitutional interpretation involves a twofold analysis: 1) textual and 2) purposive.
Despite the previous statement, however, Marshall was willing, on appropriate occasions, to allow “those considerations to which the courts have always allowed great weight in the exposition of the laws,”32 namely contemporary interpretation.
Therefore, although contemporary construction of a Constitutional provision by its drafters may help to illustrate or explain a doubtful phrase, such interpretation is not absolutely conclusive, but must remain true to the meaning of the text as understood by the ordinary citizens of the states who ratified it.
First, Marshall allowed that the historical circumstances which led to a provision’s adoption, or “the former proceedings of the nation respecting it”36 may be taken into consideration in order to determine its constitutional purpose. Secondly, Marshall declared that the interpretation of a particular provision must often depend on a “fair construction of the whole instrument.”37 This is determined from the nature, scope and design of the entire Constitution.
The overall design of the Constitution must always be honored.
If the text is unambiguous, recourse to other means of interpretation is unnecessary and improper.
If there exists some doubt as to the meaning of a Constitutional provision, a two-fold analysis is required.
Using these rules, then, as the standard of Constitutional interpretation, let us see how the Court has applied or failed to apply them in the three most significant cases that bear upon the incorporation theory: 1) non-incorporation – the Slaughterhouse Cases; 2) selective incorporation – Palko v. Connecticut; and 3) wholesale incorporation – Adamson v. California (Justice Black, dissenting).
The Slaughterhouse Cases of 1872 were the first major decision by the Supreme Court since the 14th Amendment had been ratified which required the Court to interpret the provisions of the first section of that Amendment. In these cases a state law requiring the establishment of a state monopoly over the slaughter of livestock was challenged as violating, in particular, the privileges and immunities, due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment. Since it is these provisions of the 14th Amendment that are usually cited, in some combination or other, as the means by which the Bill of Rights are now made applicable to the states, let us see how the Court treated the interpretation of these phrases and compare its approach with Story’s rules of construction.
After first dealing with the 13th Amendment argument that had been raised by the plaintiffs in the case, the Court began its interpretation of the 14th Amendment by engaging in a clause-by-clause, word-by-word examination of the language of section one. By honoring the text in this way, the Court demonstrated its intention to abide by one of the most important rules of the Marshall/Story standard, namely, that the language of the Constitution is the primary source from which its meaning is to be derived. Now let us see whether the Court continued to follow the remaining rules.
The first clause of section one which the Court examined is the privileges and immunities clause. Yet, rather than analyzing this clause in complete isolation from the rest of the amendment, the Court first considered how this clause is affected by the preceding “citizenship clause,” which defines United States citizenship and distinguishes it from state citizenship.
In response to plaintiffs argument that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States are the same as those of citizens of the states, Justice Miller simply pointed to the language. He contrasted the language in the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th Amendment with that of Art. IV, sec. 2, and determined that these two clauses pertain to distinctly different classes of privileges and immunities enjoyed by two distinctly different classes of citizenship. He therefore concluded that an interpretation which equates the privileges and immunities of these two clauses is precluded by the sheer difference in their texts.
When Justice Miller asserted, however, that this textual distinction had been performed “understandingly and with a purpose,” he was not necessarily correct. The records of the debate over the 14th Amendment demonstrate that although the 39th Congress noticed the difference in the language between the two privileges and immunities clauses, they quite remarkably recognized no difference in the meaning of the two clauses. As a result, the majority of its members understood the privileges and immunities of section one to be identical with the purposes of the clause found in Art. IV, sec. 2.38 In order to better understand how this equation occurred, let us take a look at the historical record.
No State shall make any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State 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.
Justice Miller, however, writing for the Slaughterhouse majority, did notice the change. Yet, when the Court proceeded to offer its definition of “the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” based on what it inaccurately considered to be an intentional modification on the part of Congress, the Court was not guilty of usurping the will of the legislature that had adopted the 14th Amendment. Although the Court offered an interpretation of the new privileges and immunities clause different from that given to it by Congress, the Court’s interpretation, which reflected the obvious difference between the two privileges and immunities clauses, was justified by the plain language of the text of section one, whereas the interpretation given to the new clause by Congress was not. As we shall see, moreover, the Court’s interpretation of the privileges and immunities clause was much more reflective of the understanding held by the ordinary citizens of the states who ratified the 14th Amendment.
By thus offering an interpretation of the 14th Amendment privileges and immunities clause which was different from that given to it by Congress, the Court was simply following one of the fundamental rules of interpretation expressed by Chief Justice Marshall: “This Court would not feel itself authorized to disregard the plain meaning of words, in search of conjectured intent to which we are not conducted by the language of the instrument.”49 Because the “conjectured intent” of the 39th Congress, which equated the two privileges and immunities clauses, could not be justified by the language of section one, the Court offered an interpretation that could.
Thus, in the above analysis, the Court has honored the following rules of interpretation: 1) it gave primary consideration to the text itself; 2) it made a contextual comparison of section one with Art. IV, sec. 2; 3) it offers a subject matter analysis of the nature of citizenship; and 4) it considers the intent of the framers of the clause, but only as this could be derived from the text itself.
Furthermore, the Court goes on to answer the plaintiffs argument that the protection of all civil rights are now transferred by the privileges and immunities clause from the states to the federal government. The Court does this by engaging in an analysis of the purpose of both the 14th Amendment in particular, and of the Constitution as a whole.
Unable to locate such clear language in the 14th Amendment, the Slaughterhouse majority concluded: “We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States which ratified them.”54 Here again the Court is insisting on honoring the text, and refuses to adopt an interpretation not justified by it.
In the light of this analysis, the Court then goes on to offer a rather narrow, but justifiable interpretation of the “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States” as those arising from a person’s national citizenship. However, since this narrow definition left to the States the regulation of all civil rights such as those found in the Bill of Rights, it gave to the federal government no new power to protect the first eight amendments from state abridgement. Therefore, although the Slaughterhouse Cases did not directly address the incorporation doctrine, by adhering to the Marshall/Story rules of interpretation and construing the privileges and immunities clause in this way, the Slaughterhouse majority effectively eliminated this provision as justification for the claim that the Bill of Rights were thereby made applicable to the States.
By the time of the Slaughterhouse decision, the Supreme Court had had the opportunity to construe the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment on only two occasions.56 We may reasonably infer that the opinion which the Slaughterhouse court “deemed admissible” was Murray’s Lessee v. Hoboken Land and Improvement Co.57 In that case, the Court had embraced the historically accepted interpretation of due process as it had been understood since Magna Carta.58 It had long been held at common law that due process only refers to judicial procedure, not to executive or legislative proceedings. Moreover, due process of law had never been held to refer to general laws passed by legislatures.59 Murray’s Lessee did acknowledge, however, that the due process clause did restrict the legislative branch from declaring by its mere will any procedure to constitute due process of law.
Only one other Supreme Court due process precedent could have been relied upon by the plaintiff butchers in Slaughterhouse. That was Dred Scott v. Sanford.60 In Dred Scott, Chief Justice Roger Taney adopted a “substantive” due process interpretation of the Fifth Amendment which ruled that due process is as applicable to general laws passed by Congress as it is to rules governing judicial procedure. That ruling however, was a clear deviation from Anglo-American legal history. Acknowledging that other parts of Dred Scott had been specifically overruled by the first clause of the 14th Amendment,61 the Slaughterhouse Court simply assumed that the “substantive” due process of Dred Scott would be totally inadmissible. They thought it would have been ludicrous for the Court to have imposed upon the 14th Amendment the very interpretation of the due process clause over which the nation had just recently fought a bloody Civil War.
The Slaughterhouse majority, by thus accepting this historically recognized definition of due process, had honored the literal import of that phrase as it was understood by the “ordinary man,” both in England and in the United States. By doing so, the Court had attributed to that phrase a very narrow procedural meaning which could in no way be construed to incorporate the Bill of Rights.
Finally, the Court undertakes an analysis of the meaning of the equal protection clause. This phrase, though by no means entirely unique to the 14th Amendment, was a bit more inscrutable than the other clauses found in section one. Therefore, the Court chose to determine its meaning not only from a textual analysis, but also from an examination of the purpose of the 14th Amendment in light of the historical circumstances that led to its adoption.
As a consequence of its understanding of both the subject and object of the equal protection clause, the Court declared that this provision was so clearly intended for the protection of negroes as a class that it doubted any action brought before the Court would be upheld unless it was based on a claim of racial discrimination. Obviously, then, the interpretation of this clause by the Slaughterhouse majority offers no room for embracing within its terms the broad and sundry liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Thus, rather than substituting its own predilections for the language of section one, the Slaughterhouse majority remained faithful to the classical rules of constitutional construction. The temporary results, then, of this interpretive fidelity were the rejection of any notion that the Bill of Rights were incorporated by the 14th Amendment and the consequent preservation of the federal system of government.
* Copyright © 1990, 2014 Bryan Keith Morris. Used with permission.
23. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) 316, 406 (1803).
24. Paul Brest, “Constitutional Interpretation,” Encyclopedia of the Constitution, 468.
27. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) 1, 188 (1824).
28. Thomas M. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, Walter Carrington, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 8th edition, 1927), 123-4.
29. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) at 188-9.
30. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) at 414-15.
31. Craig v. Missouri; 29 U.S. (4 Pet.) 410, 434 (1830).
32. Cohens v. Virginia, 19 U.S. (6 Wheat.) 264, 416 (1821).
35. Gibbons v. Ogden, 22 U.S. (9 Wheat.) at 188-9.
36. McCulloch v. Maryland, 17 U.S. (4 Wheat.) at 401.
38. The classic interpretation of the privileges and immunities clause of Art. IV, sec. 2 had been given in the case of Corfield v. Coryell, 6 Fed. Cas. 546, No. 3230 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1823). In that opinion Justice Bushrod Washington had declared that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several states are those “which are, in their nature fundamental; which belong, of right, to the citizens of all free governments.” He went on to enumerate some of these privileges and immunities by listing such rights as life, liberty and property, the right to engage in economic pursuits and the right to maintain legal actions in state courts.
39. Quoted in Fairman, 21.
40. Conqressional Globe, 39th Congress, 1st session, H. 1034 (1865-66). Reprinted in Alfred Avins, ed. The Reconstruction Amendmentsi Debates (Richmond: Virginia Commission on Constitutional Government, 1967), 150.
41. The House debate on the proposal from February 26-28 clearly reveals this. Id., H. 1034-1095.
45. The most infamous treatment of the diversity of citizenship doctrine had been rendered by the Supreme Court in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1857).
46. Congressional Globe, 39th Cong., 1st session, S. at 2869.
48. In addition to Poland, Senators Davies and Henderson, who followed Howard in debate, also equated the two privileges and immunities clauses, without being contradicted by any member. Id., S. 2992-3033.
50. Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 78.
53. Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) at 250.
54. Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 78.
55. 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 80.
56. Barrett and Cohen, 481.
57. 59 U.S. (18 How.) 272 (1856).
58. The term “law of the land” found in the thirty-ninth chapter of Magna Carta is recognized to be synonymous with the term “due process of law” found in the Fifth Amendment. See Justice Curtisi discussion in Murray’s Lessee, 59 U.S. (18 How.) at 276.
59. See Berger, Government, 194-200.
61. Slaughterhouse Cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) at 73.
62. See Raoul Berger, “The Fourteenth Amendment: Light from the Fifteenth” 74 Nw. U. L. Rev. 311 (1979), 334-5.
63. It is well documented that the purpose of the equal protection clause was the guarantee of legal equality for blacks and the protection of basic civil rights as enumerated in the Civil Rights Act of 1866. See, for example, Id., 335-340; Flack, 153; James E. Bond, “The Original Understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania,” 18 Akron L. Rev. 435 (1985), 454-56.

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