The Fourteenth Amendment, the "Right" to Vote, and the Understanding of the Thirty-Ninth Congress

Alstyne, William W. Van

doi:10.1086/scr.1965.3108784

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…123 V roce 1866 bylo však v Unii pouze pět států, které umožňovaly černošskému obyvatelstvu participovat na volebním procesu: Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island a Vermont, přičemž tyto byly obývány zhruba 6 % černošské populace v severních státech. 124 Zákonodárci napříč spektrem až na výjimky vyjadřovali přinejmenším skepsi k přiznání volebního práva propuštěncům, v horším případě se otevřeně stavěli proti; během projednávání zákona o občanských právech vystoupil kongresman James W. Patterson s projevem, v němž uvedl, že "údajní přátelé, prosazující politickou a společenskou rovnost" jsou dle něho "nejhorší nepřátelé barevné rasy". 125 Autor zákona, senátor L. Trumbull, vysvětlil obsah zákona velmi jasně: "Návrh se vztahuje výlučně na občanská práva.…”

Section: Stejná Ochrana Zákonaunclassified

Prvý oddíl čtrnáctého dodatku Ústavy Spojených států: původní význam a výklad

Ženíšek¹

2023

Právněhistorické Studie

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The paper analyzes the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution and its four key clauses – the citizenship clause, the priviliges or immunities clause, the due process clause and the equal protection clause. Special attention is paid to the debates of the members of the 39th Congress which offer an insight into the original understanding of terms and phrases used in the text of the Amendment and that make possible to understand the context of its origin. The paper tries to describe the most likely original meaning of the individual clauses of the first section and analyze their possible various interpretations that often stand in direct opposition. While it can be reasonably assumed that during the times of the passing and ratification of the Amendment its objective was fairly limited, reflecting the post-war political reality in the United States, during the decades following ratification the Amendment started to be applied to issues that until then had been completely in the hands of the legislatures and depending on the democratic discussion on both federal and state level. The authors quoted in this paper can not be assigned to just one method of interpretation and legal philosophy, to the contrary, the paper aims to confront different views on the Amendment and its original meaning and based on it reach a conclusion; therefore both the view seeing the meaning of the Amendment as limited, held for example by professors Charles Fairman and Raoul Berger, and the perspective that sees its objectives as broader, represented for example by professors Michael Kent Curtis and Randy Barnett, are mentioned.

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Section: Stejná Ochrana Zákonaunclassified

Prvý oddíl čtrnáctého dodatku Ústavy Spojených států: původní význam a výklad

Ženíšek¹

2023

Právněhistorické Studie

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“…Although the Court relied partially on the Fourteenth Amendment for authority to regulate malapportionment, there is little reference to malapportionment in the debates that surrounded the amendment (Avins 1966). 22 Close analyses of these debates conclude that the Fourteenth Amendment was meant generally to be "open textured," and nothing in the record precludes its application to malapportionment, but there is no explicit evidence that it was meant to encompass malapportionment (Kelly 1965;Van Alstyne 1965).…”

Section: Congressional and State Regulation Of Congressional Districtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Traditional Districting Principles: Judicial Myths vs. Reality

Altman¹

1998

Social Science History

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One person, one vote. With this principle, the Court permanently changed representation in the United States. Equal population requirements changed the face of legislative redistricting in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court applied it to congressional districts in Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 (1964), and to state legislatures in Reynolds v. Sims, 84 S. Ct. 1362 (1964). Equality in district population was valued not only as instrumental to other goals but also for itself, as Justice Black explained in Wesberry: “As nearly as practicable one man’s vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another’s. . . . To say that a vote is worth more in one district than another would . . . run counter to our fundamental ideas of democratic government.”As Justice Brennan made clear, the Court based its decision in large part on a particular understanding of the historical meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment and of article 1, section 2, of the Constitution. And as widely accepted as this principle has come to be, it has been subject to severe historical criticism, criticism that has never been resolved. For example, Berger (1977) claims that malapportionment was historically present and accepted before and during the creation of the Fourteenth Amendment and hence that the equal protection clause could not have implied the equal population principle (from chapter 5): “Certainly there was no disclosure that such intrusion [on apportionment] was contemplated; there is in fact striking evidence that malapportionment was an accepted practice.”

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“…XIV, section 2). The increased representation of the southern states concerned the Republican members of the 39th Congress because it threatened their political dominance (Van Alstyne, 1965). The southern states could benefit from increased representation from their large former slave population and yet deny Blacks-with their political sympathies toward the north-the right to vote.…”

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confidence: 99%

Felon Disenfranchisement

Schaefer

Kraska

2012

Race and Justice

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Felon disenfranchisement is deeply rooted in U.S. history as a form of punishment and as a tool to inhibit African Americans from voting. Today, there are 5.3 million U.S. residents politically disenfranchised due to a felony conviction-about 2 million of whom are African Americans. The overrepresentation of African Americans disenfranchised, and the U.S. history of racism, brings forth the question of how these laws continue to exist. The objective of this study is to demonstrate, through a socio-legal approach, the federal court system's role in perpetuating and maintaining the ethnoracial divisions in society through the validation and rationalization of felon disenfranchisement laws. We aim to demonstrate how over the past century many disenfranchisement laws have been ''whitewashed'' in order to eliminate any indication of racially motivated practices, a practice that coincides with the historic expansion of the penal state in the controlling of minority populations.

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The Fourteenth Amendment, the "Right" to Vote, and the Understanding of the Thirty-Ninth Congress

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

Prvý oddíl čtrnáctého dodatku Ústavy Spojených států: původní význam a výklad

Prvý oddíl čtrnáctého dodatku Ústavy Spojených států: původní význam a výklad

Traditional Districting Principles: Judicial Myths vs. Reality

Felon Disenfranchisement

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