Supreme Blunders

Slaughterhouse Cases

This ruling is objectionable not because of the outcome itself. Which I find objectionable but which is likely pretty open to debate. The case itself is over a government mandated monopoly and whether that monopoly violates the rights granted by the constitution. The court rules that on the not on the basic that conducting business in a certain manner in a certain place is not a right granted by the constitution but on the basis that the constitution doesn't actual grant any rights.

The majority opinion begins with a historical narrative. This seems to be a common ploy when a judge wants to put forth an interpretation that is counter intuitive or counter to the meaning the law its self creates from an actual reading.

It leads up then to a presentation of the 13^th 14^th and 15^th Amendments as measures enacted to insure the rights of former slaves in those place not inclined to grant them any rights. It then launches in to the core of it argument the contention that there is a substantial difference between Citizen of a State and Citizen of the Untied States.

“We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this amendment of great weight in this argument, because the next paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several States. The argument, however, in favor of the plaintiffs rests wholly on the assumption that the citizenship is the same, and the privileges and immunities guaranteed by the clause are the same.”

Here we see that by creating two distinct rights holding citizenships the rights of a single person may be divided between them those citizenships and some placed thereby outside the protection granted by the 14^th amendment.

“The language is, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States." It is a little remarkable, if this clause was intended as a protection to the citizen of a State against the legislative power of his own State, that the word citizen of the State should be left out when it is so carefully used, and used in contradistinction to citizens of the United States in the very sentence which precedes it. It is too clear for argument that the change in phraseology was adopted understandingly and, with a purpose.”

Here the author ignore the function of the construction “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” as serving to guaranty not only citizenship in the United States but to prevent States from denying residents of a state or a portion there (such as a particular race) of of citizenship of that state. That it would be appealing for some states to do so is clearly supported by the authors own presentation. Also the author ignore the possibility that congress would wish to securer the rights of citizens on its own basis rather than those of the states. That this section limits the power of the states can hardly be argued in good faith.

“Of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the United States, and of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the State, and what they respectively are, we will presently consider; but we wish to state here that it is only the former which are placed by this clause under the protection of the Federal Constitution, and that the latter, whatever they may be, are not intended to have any additional protection by this paragraph of the amendment.”

I think this is in and of itself a fair interpretation. Though one could argue that the amendment protects all privileges and immunities regardless of their source from state action.

“This definition of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the States is adopted in the main by this court in the recent case of Ward v. The State of Maryland, ^[n12] while it declines to undertake an authoritative definition beyond what was necessary to that decision. The description, when taken to include others not named, but which are of the same general character, embraces nearly every civil right for the establishment and protection of which organized government is instituted. They are, in the language of Judge Washington, those rights which are fundamental. Throughout his opinion, they are spoken of as rights belonging to the individual as a citizen of a State. They are so spoken of in the constitutional provision which he was construing. And they have always been held to be the class of rights which the State governments were created to establish and secure.”

Here he seeks to establish the rights grant to a citizen of a state.

“It would be the vainest show of learning to attempt to prove by citations of authority that, up to the adoption of the recent amendments, no claim or pretence was set up that those rights depended on the Federal government for their existence or protection beyond the very few express limitations which the Federal Constitution imposed upon the States -- such, for instance, as the prohibition against ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts. But, with the exception of these and a few other restrictions, the entire domain of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal government.”

Here he begins his attempt to exclude from the rights held by a citizen of the United States those rights held by citizen of a State.

“Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, by the simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal government?”

I believe that is indeed was the purpose and effect of the Amendment.

“And where it is declared that Congress Shall have the power to enforce that article, was it intended to bring within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States?”

From the Amendment itself: “5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”.

“All this and more must follow if the proposition of the [p78] plaintiffs in error be sound. For not only are these rights subject to the control of Congress whenever, in its discretion, any of them are supposed to be abridged by State legislation, but that body may also pass laws in advance, limiting and restricting the exercise of legislative power by the States, in their most ordinary and usual functions, as in its judgment it may think proper on all such subjects. And still further, such a construction followed by the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment. The argument, we admit, is not always the most conclusive which is drawn from the consequences urged against the adoption of a particular construction of an instrument. But when, as in the case before us, these consequences are so serious, so far-reaching and pervading, so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character; when, in fact, it radically changes the whole theory of the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other and of both these governments to the people, the argument has a force that is irresistible in the absence of language which expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt.”

Here is a presentation of a parade of horrors used to justify ignoring the each of the 14^th Amendment on the basis of the obfuscation constructed by the author himself.

“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.”

Here the author give to himself the ability to modify the effect of the Law based on the intentions of those who created it. This is an extremely dangerous and broad power allowing the courts to base judgments upon subjective and contradictory sources.

“Having shown that the privileges and immunities relied on in the argument are those which belong to citizens of the States as such, and that they are left to the State governments for security and protection, and not by this article placed under the special care of the Federal government, we may hold ourselves excused from defining the privileges [p79] and immunities of citizens of the United States which no State can abridge until some case involving those privileges may make it necessary to do so.”

Thus the author justifies the possible violation of the rights held by a citizen of the United States on the basis that those rights are held by that citizen on the basis of their citizenship of a States and thus can not be held on the basis of his citizenship of the United States. The author then list right which can not be considered to be based on citizenship of a State and places them under the protection of citizenship of the United States so as not to render the law and there by his argument pointlessly meaningless.

The charges that the law deprives the plaintiffs of property without due process of law and denies to them the equal protection of the law. Are quickly dismissed on the basis of the historical power of States. It is also contented that as the purpose of the amendment was to prevent gross injustice against blacks that its function is limit to that effect.

“But, however pervading this sentiment, and however it may have contributed to the adoption of the amendments we have been considering, we do not see in those amendments any purpose to destroy the main features of the general system. Under the pressure of all the excited feeling growing out of the war, our statesmen have still believed that the existence of the State with powers for domestic and local government, including the regulation of civil rights the rights of person and of property was essential to the perfect working of our complex form of government, though they have thought proper to impose additional limitations on the States, and to confer additional power on that of the Nation.”

Here is his closing justification which repudiates public opinion and infers into the motives of the legislature. I think that the right to conduct bussiness in the manner in which the plaintiffs content is their right could have on its own been found not to be a right. But the refutation of the 14^th Amendment found in this decision is willfully misconstrued so as to satisfy the opinions of the author not the demands of the law.