Opinion ID: 108221
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Collateral Evidence of Congressional Intent

Text: It has been suggested that despite this evidence of congressional understanding, which seems to me overwhelming, the history is nonetheless inconclusive. Primary reliance is placed on debates over H. R. 51, the Joint Committee's first effort in the field of the basis of representation. In these debates, some of the more extreme Radicals, typified by Senator Sumner of Massachusetts, suggested that Congress had power to interfere with state voter qualifications at least to the extent of enfranchising the freedmen. This power was said to exist in a variety of constitutional provisions, including Art. I, § 2, Art. I, § 4, the war power, the power over territories, the guarantee of a republican form of government, and § 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment. Those who held this view expressed concern lest the Committee's proposal be read to authorize the States to discriminate on racial grounds and stated that they could not vote for the measure if such was the correct construction. They were sometimes comforted by supporters of the committee proposal, who assured them that there would be no such effect. From these statements, and the fact that some of those who took the extreme view ultimately did vote for the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, it is sought to construct a counter-argument: if H. R. 51, properly interpreted, would not have precluded congressional exercise of power otherwise existing under the constitutional provisions referred to, then § 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment, properly interpreted, does not preclude the exercise of congressional power under §§ 1 and 5 of that Amendment. This argument, however, is even logically fallacious, and quite understandably none of the opinions filed today place much reliance on it. I do not maintain that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment took away with one hand what they had given with the other, but simply that the Amendment must be construed as a whole, and that for the reasons already given, supra, at 167-170, the inclusion of § 2 demonstrates that the framers never intended to confer the power which my Brethren seek to find in §§ 1 and 5. Bingham, for one, distinguished between these two positions. When it was suggested in the debates over H. R. 51 that the proviso would remove pre-existing congressional power over voting qualifications, Bingham made the response quoted by my colleagues. Globe 431-432; see post, at 276-277. When it was observed during the debates over the proposed Fourteenth Amendment that § 2 demonstrated that the Amendment did not reach state control over voting qualifications, Bingham was the one making the observation. Globe 2542, quoted supra, at 185. As Bingham seems to have recognized, the sort of argument he made in connection with H. R. 51 is beside the point with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment. In any event, even disregarding its analytical difficulties, the argument is based on blatant factual shortcomings. All but one of the speakers on whose statements primary reliance is placed stated, either during the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment or subsequently, that the Amendment did not enfranchise the freedmen. [70] Finally, some of those determined to sustain the legislation now before us rely on speeches made between two and three years after Congress had sent the proposed Amendment to the States. Boutwell and Stevens in the House, and Sumner in the Senate, argued that the Fifteenth Amendment or enfranchising legislation was unnecessary because the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited racial discrimination in voter qualifications. Each had earlier expressed the opposite position. [71] Their subsequent attempts to achieve by assertion what they had not had the votes to achieve by constitutional processes can hardly be entitled to weight.