Opinion ID: 108221
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Language of the Amendment and Reconstruction.Measures

Text: Sections 1 and 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment as originally reported read as follows: [12] SEC. 1. No State shall make or enforce 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. SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But whenever, in any State, the elective franchise shall be denied to any portion of its male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation in such State shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens not less than twenty-one years of age. Globe 2286. In the historical context, no one could have understood this language as anything other than an abandonment of the principle of Negro suffrage, for which the Radicals had been so eager. By the same token, the language could hardly have been understood as affecting the provisions of the Constitution placing voting qualifications in the hands of the States. Section 1 must have been seen as little more than a constitutionalization of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, concededly one of the primary goals of that portion of the Amendment. [13] While these conclusions may, I think, be confidently asserted, it is not so easy to explain just how contemporary observers would have construed the three clauses of § 1 to reach this result. [14] No doubt in the case of many congressmen it simply never occurred to them that the States' longstanding plenary control over voter qualifications would be affected without explicit language to that effect. And since no speaker during the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment pursued the contention that § 1 would be construed to include the franchise, those who took the opposite view rarely explained how they arrived at their conclusions. In attempting to unravel what was seldom articulated, the appropriate starting point is the fact that the framers of the Amendment expected the most significant portion of § 1 to be the clause prohibiting state laws which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. These privileges were no doubt understood to include the ones set out in the first section of the Civil Rights Act. To be prohibited by law from enjoying these rights would hardly be consistent with full membership in a civil society. The same is not necessarily true with respect to prohibitions on participation in the political process. Many members of Congress accepted the jurisprudence of the day, in which the rights of man fell into three categories: natural, civil, and political. The privileges of citizens, being civil rights, were distinct from the rights arising from governmental organization, which were political in character. [15] Others no doubt relied on the experience under the similar language of Art. IV, § 2, which had never been held to guarantee the right to vote. The remarks of Senator Howard of Michigan, who as spokesman for the Joint Committee explained in greater detail than most why the Amendment did not reach the suffrage, contain something of each view. See Globe 2766, quoted infra, at 187; nn. 56 and 57, infra; cf. Blake v. McClung, 172 U. S. 239, 256 (1898) (dictum). Since the Privileges and Immunities Clause was expected to be the primary source of substantive protection, the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses were relegated to a secondary role, as the debates and other contemporary materials make clear. [16] Those clauses, which appear on their face to correspond with the latter portion of § 1 of the Civil Rights Act, see n. 13, supra, and to be primarily concerned with person and property, would not have been expected to enfranchise the freedmen if the Privileges and Immunities Clause did not. Other members of Congress no doubt saw § 2 of the proposed Amendment as the Committee's resolution of the related problems of suffrage and representation. Since that section did not provide for enfranchisement, but simply reduced representation for disfranchisement, any doubts about the effect of the broad language of § 1 were removed. Congressman Bingham, who was primarily responsible for the language of § 1, stated this view. Globe 2542, quoted infra, at 185. Finally, characterization of the Amendment by such figures as Stevens and Bingham in the House and Howard in the Senate, not contested by the Democrats except in passing remarks, was no doubt simply accepted by many members of Congress; they, repeating it, gave further force to the interpretation, with the result that, as will appear below, not one speaker in the debates on the Fourteenth Amendment unambiguously stated that it would affect state voter qualifications, and only three, all opponents of the measure, can fairly be characterized as raising the possibility. [17] Further evidence of this original understanding can be found in later events. The 39th Congress, which proposed the Fourteenth Amendment, also enacted the first Reconstruction Act, c. 153, 14 Stat. 428 (1867). This Act required, as a condition precedent to readmission of the Southern States, that they adopt constitutions providing that the elective franchise should be enjoyed by all male citizens over the age of 21 who had been residents for more than one year and were not disfranchised for treason or common-law felony; even so, no State would be readmitted until a legislature elected under the new Constitution had ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment and that Amendment had become part of the Constitution. The next development came when the ratification drive in the North stalled. After a year had passed during which only one Northern State had ratified the proposed Fourteenth Amendment, Arkansas was readmitted to the Union by the Act of June 22, 1868, 15 Stat. 72. This readmission was based on the fundamental condition that the state constitution should not be amended to restrict the franchise, except with reference to residency requirements. Three days later the Act of June 25, 1868, 15 Stat. 73, held out a promise of similar treatment to North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida if they would ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. By happy coincidence, the assent of those six States was just sufficient to complete the ratification process. It can hardly be suggested, therefore, that the fundamental condition was exacted from them as a measure of caution lest the Fourteenth Amendment fail of ratification. The 40th Congress, not content with enfranchisement in the South, proposed the Fifteenth Amendment to extend the suffrage to northern Negroes. See Gillette, supra, n. 3, at 46. This fact alone is evidence that they did not understand the Fourteenth Amendment to have accomplished such a result. Less well known is the fact that the 40th Congress considered and very nearly adopted a proposed amendment which would have expressly prohibited not only discriminatory voter qualifications but discriminatory qualifications for office as well. Each House passed such a measure by the required two-thirds margin. Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 3d Sess., 1318, 1428 (1869). A conference committee, composed of Senators Stewart and Conkling and Representatives Boutwell, Bingham, and Logan, struck out the officeholding provision, id., at 1563, 1593, and with Inauguration Day only a week away, both Houses accepted the conference report. Id., at 1564, 1641. See generally Gillette 58-77. While the reasons for these actions are unclear, it is unlikely that they were provoked by the idea that the Fourteenth Amendment covered the field; such a rationale seemingly would have made the enfranchising provision itself unnecessary. The 41st Congress readmitted the remaining three States of the Confederacy. The admitting act in each case recited good-faith ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and imposed the fundamental conditions that the States should not restrict the elective franchise [18] and [t]hat it shall never be lawful for the said State to deprive any citizen of the United States, on account of his race, color, or previous condition of servitude, of the right to hold office under the constitution and laws of said State. Act of Jan. 26, 1870, c. 10, 16 Stat. 62, 63 (Virginia); Act of Feb. 23, 1870, c. 19, 16 Stat. 67, 68 (Mississippi); Act of Mar. 30, 1870, c. 39, 16 Stat. 80, 81 (Texas). These materials demonstrate not only that § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment is susceptible of an interpretation that it does not reach suffrage qualifications, but that this is the interpretation given by the immediately succeeding Congresses. Such an interpretation is the most reasonable reading of the section in view of the background against which it was proposed and adopted, particularly the doubts about the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act, the prejudice in the North against any recognition of the principle of Negro suffrage, and the basic constitutional structure of leaving suffrage qualifications with the States. [19] If any further clarification were needed, one would have thought it provided by the second section of the same Amendment, which specifically contemplated that the right to vote would be denied or abridged by the States on racial or other grounds. As a unanimous Court once asked, Why this, if it was not in the power of the [state] legislature to deny the right of suffrage to some male inhabitants? Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 174 (1875). The Government suggests that the list of protected qualifications in § 2 is no more than descriptive of voting laws as they then stood. Brief for the United States, Nos. 46, Orig., and 47, Orig., 75. This is wholly inaccurate. Aside from racial restrictions, all States had residency requirements and many had literacy, property, or taxation qualifications. On the other hand, several of the Western States permitted aliens to vote if they had satisfied certain residency requirements and had declared their intention to become citizens. [20] It hardly seems necessary to observe that the politicians who framed the Fourteenth Amendment were familiar with the makeup of the electorate. In any event, the congressional debates contain such proof in ample measure. [21] Assuming, then, that § 2 represents a deliberate selection of the voting qualifications to be penalized, what is the point of it? The Government notes that it was intendedalthough it has never been usedto provide a remedy against exclusion of the newly freed slaves from the vote. Brief for the Defendant, Nos. 43, Orig., and 44, Orig., 20. Undoubtedly this was the primary purpose. But the framers of the Amendment, with their attention thus focused on racial voting qualifications, could hardly have been unaware of § 1. If they understood that section to forbid such qualifications, the simple means of penalizing this conduct would have been to impose a reduction of representation for voting discrimination in violation of § 1. Their adoption instead of the awkward phrasing of § 2 is therefore significant. To be sure, one might argue that § 2 is simply a rhetorical flourish, and that the qualifications listed there are merely the ones which the framers deemed to be consistent with the alleged prohibition of § 1. This argument is not only unreasonable on its face and untenable in light of the historical record; it is fatal to the validity of the reduction of the voting age in § 302 of the Act before us. The only sensible explanation of § 2, therefore, is that the racial voter qualifications it was designed to penalize were understood to be permitted by § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. The Amendment was a halfway measure, adopted to deprive the South of representation until it should enfranchise the freedmen, but to have no practical effect in the North. It was politically acceptable precisely because of its regional consequences and its avoidance of an explicit recognition of the principle of Negro suffrage. As my Brother BLACK states: [I]t cannot be successfully argued that the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to strip the States of their power, carefully preserved in the original Constitution, to govern themselves. Ante, at 127. The detailed historical materials make this unmistakably clear.