Undermining The Constitution
A HISTORY OF LAWLESS GOVERNMENT
XIII
THE CONSERVATION OF SOIL IN FARMING STATES BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS NOT AUTHORIZED BY THE CONSTITUTION
With the trickiness in the use of language which characterized the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Bituminous Coal Act (all three held unconstitutional), to make believe that they were not what they were, Congress passed the second AAA and called it an act for "Soil Conservation," proceeding there under to irrigate the farming land with money of the taxpayers which it had been prevented by the decision of the Supreme Court from distributing under the first act. The second AAA was as lawless as the first.
For more than a decade Congress has been sending money to the farmers ostensibly to help them conserve their soil, an obligation resting upon them in the first instance, and upon the State when the erosion (or whatever is the matter) is so widespread as to call for the exertion of the police power, of which power the United States has none.
The total of subsidies to agriculture in 1947, as reported (1948) by the Secretary of the Treasury (p. 429), was $2,299,000,000. Yet in the Presidential campaign of 1948 the candidates of all parties promised the farmer more! The returns indicated that he voted for the party that had delivered.
And that misuse of money favored a powerful voting class who were marketing wheat at $3 a bushel, corn at about the same price, oats at a similar price, and livestock at rates so high that restaurants were charging their patrons $4 for a sirloin steak!
Through the years, $1 a bushel for wheat, 75¢ for corn, and the same price for oats were regarded on the land as good prices.
Of course, as before said, the conservation of soil is none of the business of the United States. It is the obligation of the landowner to take care of his land. He had done that from the time the Pilgrims cleared away the timber in the Massachusetts Colonies. He mastered rivers without knowing that he should have the help of a Big or Little T.V.A., and he opened roads wherever they were needed without a Federal Highway Act.
"Soil conservation" is a deceiving term, like "commerce" in the National Labor Relations Act. It is a cover for subsidies from the pockets of the country to those on the land, a transfer of money from one class to another which the Supreme Court held could not be made when it pronounced the first Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional.
As mentioned in a preceding chapter, the farmer has been put in a bad situation by the mismanagement in Government which ballooned his costs and those of everybody else beyond all endurance. But that must be mended by removal of the cause, not by subsidies, which the taxpayers cannot carry indefinitely, even if they were legal.
But the subject is as far beyond the constitutional field of Congress as are the sands of the Sahara.
On July 22,1947, the Associated Press reported that the House of Representatives "had voted twice to eliminate the benefit-payment program for 1948 and sharply cut back payments on this year's crops." The Senate-House conference group agreed "to continue the main farm program into 1948." In addition to that, it agreed to a fund of $265,000,000 "to make the benefit payments and meet other costs of the farm crop program on the 1947 crop."
The "other costs" were $24,000,000 to pay the bureaucrats "for expenses of farmer committeemen who plan and check the programs"!
The farm bill compromise would provide $960,000,000 "for agricultural purposes during the fiscal year 1948 in comparison with last year's expenditures of $2,275,000,000" President Truman asked for $1,188,000,000.
1. The ruthless course of the Government at Washington respecting the taxpayers brings to mind the denunciation by Saint Simon of the Bourbon monarchy, which brought on by taxes the French Revolution, that it "has scourged, rather than governed, the state."
In the concluding chapter of this work it is shown that we must take the President out of this kind of politics by returning to the strictest observance of the method of election prescribed by the Constitution.
With the trickiness in the use of language which characterized the National Industrial Recovery Act, the Agricultural Adjustment Act, and the Bituminous Coal Act (all three held unconstitutional), to make believe that they were not what they were, Congress passed the second AAA and called it an act for "Soil Conservation," proceeding there under to irrigate the farming land with money of the taxpayers which it had been prevented by the decision of the Supreme Court from distributing under the first act. The second AAA was as lawless as the first.
For more than a decade Congress has been sending money to the farmers ostensibly to help them conserve their soil, an obligation resting upon them in the first instance, and upon the State when the erosion (or whatever is the matter) is so widespread as to call for the exertion of the police power, of which power the United States has none.
Illegal subsidies to agriculture
of appalling magnitude
The magnitude of this drain upon the taxpayers of the country may be understood from the fact that in 1946 Washington gave to the farmers for "soil conservation" $57,000,000.The total of subsidies to agriculture in 1947, as reported (1948) by the Secretary of the Treasury (p. 429), was $2,299,000,000. Yet in the Presidential campaign of 1948 the candidates of all parties promised the farmer more! The returns indicated that he voted for the party that had delivered.
And that misuse of money favored a powerful voting class who were marketing wheat at $3 a bushel, corn at about the same price, oats at a similar price, and livestock at rates so high that restaurants were charging their patrons $4 for a sirloin steak!
Through the years, $1 a bushel for wheat, 75¢ for corn, and the same price for oats were regarded on the land as good prices.
Of course, as before said, the conservation of soil is none of the business of the United States. It is the obligation of the landowner to take care of his land. He had done that from the time the Pilgrims cleared away the timber in the Massachusetts Colonies. He mastered rivers without knowing that he should have the help of a Big or Little T.V.A., and he opened roads wherever they were needed without a Federal Highway Act.
Why Constitution for independent individual
The men who wrote the Constitution being of that kind, they never gave authority to Congress to take the money of one class by taxation and pass it along with a bow and a smile to another group of great voting power. By Magna Carta their forebears made the King promise to keep hands off industry and trade, except under the necessity of war. Hence, the Constitution contains no grant of power to Congress to pass anything of even the remotest resemblance to the National Industrial Recovery Act. And as they extracted a pledge from King John to let trade alone, the Constitution authorizes Congress only to "regulate" commerce carried on by men, not to engage in commerce by any branch of government, or by a Fascist corporation set up by it. The early American tilled his land without expecting any help from anybody, and he had no idea that Government could by either punitive or predatory taxation place any limit on the fruits of his industry. Accordingly, no grant for paternalism or imperialism was given by the Constitution to Congress.
Soil conservation important,
but not to Washington
To be sure, the conservation of the soil of the farmer may become in some localities of so burdensome a nature that it ceases to be the obligation of the individual. Where erosion or some other peril is so widely extended and affects so many owners and so much property that it cannot be dealt with successfully by individuals or by a group of them, then it becomes the duty of the State, either to assist in the task of prevention or take it over altogether. But the United States has no police power. And the Tenth Amendment was designed to prevent it forever from usurping any."Soil conservation" is a deceiving term, like "commerce" in the National Labor Relations Act. It is a cover for subsidies from the pockets of the country to those on the land, a transfer of money from one class to another which the Supreme Court held could not be made when it pronounced the first Agricultural Adjustment Act unconstitutional.
As mentioned in a preceding chapter, the farmer has been put in a bad situation by the mismanagement in Government which ballooned his costs and those of everybody else beyond all endurance. But that must be mended by removal of the cause, not by subsidies, which the taxpayers cannot carry indefinitely, even if they were legal.
Procedure provided by Constitution
adequate for conservation
In a condition of erosion, or of a "dust bowl," involving several States, they have open to them the "Agreement or Compact with another State" authorized by the closing words of Article I of the Constitution, with "the Consent of Congress." The seven States in the basin of the Colorado River made use of this provision to work out an agreement for a fair division of the valuable water of that stream. So when the erosion or other trouble is beyond the ability of the landowner, it becomes the duty of the State to take hold. And when the difficulty belongs to more than one State, there is a constitutional way to solve the problem.But the subject is as far beyond the constitutional field of Congress as are the sands of the Sahara.
On July 22,1947, the Associated Press reported that the House of Representatives "had voted twice to eliminate the benefit-payment program for 1948 and sharply cut back payments on this year's crops." The Senate-House conference group agreed "to continue the main farm program into 1948." In addition to that, it agreed to a fund of $265,000,000 "to make the benefit payments and meet other costs of the farm crop program on the 1947 crop."
The farm bill compromise would provide $960,000,000 "for agricultural purposes during the fiscal year 1948 in comparison with last year's expenditures of $2,275,000,000" President Truman asked for $1,188,000,000.
National government without
feeling for taxpayers
The disrespect for the rights and property of the people in general, in order to favor highly organized voting groups, is, in addition to being unconstitutional, morally wrong. In the Congress for the last decade and a half, in the White House, in the legislatures, in the city councils, everywhere in public office where there is authority to spend, there has developed, through indifference or incompetence of those who should have been on guard, the grossest unconcern for the taxpayer. As a capital illustration of this, there is cited the veto by the President of a tax-reduction bill passed by the new Congress in 1947 which had been voted into power on a platform promising relief from exorbitant taxation.[1]1. The ruthless course of the Government at Washington respecting the taxpayers brings to mind the denunciation by Saint Simon of the Bourbon monarchy, which brought on by taxes the French Revolution, that it "has scourged, rather than governed, the state."
XIV
The Expansion Of The Constitution Beyond Its Letter And Spirit Through Judicial Legislation By The Supreme Court Of The United States Is, Because Insidious The Worst Threat To Liberty And Property
This chapter deals with the attempts of the Supreme Court of the United States to "construe" into the Fourteenth Amendment -- restraining the States -- what was not written in it, what the writers of it did not have in mind that is, "freedom" of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the Press.
The writers of the Amendment had under consideration (1866) the recently (1865) liberated Negro, to whom the Amendment would give citizenship in both his State and the United States; and it forbade the States to "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," or to deprive any person in a State of "life, liberty or property without due process of law," or to deny to him "the equal protection of the laws" of his State.
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the Press were safeguarded (1789) against denial by the National Government 77 years before by the First Amendment, the first article of what we call the Bill of Rights, in protection of the States and the people against interference by the National Government.
That reading ignores two cardinal rules of interpretation:
(1) that the plain language must be followed, without addition or subtraction; and
(2) that there must be kept in mind the evil which the writing was being made to cure.
First, the Fourteenth Amendment makes no mention of religion, speech, or Press. They cannot be drawn into it and be made a part of it by an expansive "construction" of the word "liberty."
Second, the writers of the Amendment were dealing only with the Negro and his "liberty" and prospective rights, which were to be protected. Religion, speech, and Press were as far away from their thoughts as the poles are apart.
But when, by specious reasoning, or no reasoning at all, by "assumptions," the Supreme Court makes application of constitutional provisions where they do not belong, the departure from principles is less likely to be noticed.
For a good many years the Supreme Court has had trouble with "due process of law" in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, restraining the Nation, and in the Fourteenth, curbing the State. It has been perplexed about the application of "the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States" in the Fourteenth.
"To say that the intention of the Instrument must prevail; that the intention must be collected from its words; that its words are to be understood in that sense in which they are generally used by those for whom the Instrument was intended; that its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance, nor extended to objects not comprehended in them, nor contemplated by its powers, is to repeat what has been already said more at large, and is all that is necessary."
The tragic effort of the Supreme Court has been in trying to make the Fourteenth Amendment bring down against the States prohibitions in the Bill of Rights written against National power only.
Of course, if the people should want the First Amendment, for example, applied against State power, they can say so by action under their amending Article V. But it is not for the Judiciary to do the amending.
If the States could not have intended by the First Amendment to curb themselves, why should the Supreme Court take authority to bring against them that Article of their Bill of Rights?
The question with the States was: would the over-all government eventually become absolutely over-all? They were determined that it should not. They got protection through ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, not one prohibition in which restrains the States in any way.
From the beginning both the States and the Nation proceeded on that fact. Many of the States abandoned the grand jury which the Nation is required (Amendment V) to employ and dispensed with the indictment. In some States if the accused does not take the witness stand to explain, that may be used against him before the jury, a practice forbidden in the Federal courts. Some States permit the trial of criminal cases without a jury, a practice forbidden to the Nation.
Others employ a jury of fewer than twelve. The unanimous verdict has been succeeded by the majority verdict of the jury in some States. The jury in suits for money (Amendment VII) is not called in many States.
But the Bill of Rights is strictly a barricade against the exertion of National power. It was so treated down to about the time (1926) that an inquiry by the American Bar Association revealed that out of 25 leading university law schools only 8 required a course in the Constitution as a condition to a degree! That may have been the origin of scrambled brains in the law of the Constitution.
Since the States demanding the Bill of Rights did not intend it to be operative against themselves, and since the States and the Nation so accepted it for near a century and a half, how in reason can a court now make an unintended application of any provision of it and act as pedagogue to a State?
The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is this:
"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."
That dual citizenship had always existed except as to those in slavery. In the Constitutional Convention that was expressed by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, the leading lawyer of the body, afterward a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States:
"A citizen of America is a citizen of the general government, and is a citizen of the particular State in which he may reside."
The second sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has become a Pandora's Box of evils, is this, with insertions in brackets to show how it had been read by the Supreme Court down to recent times:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [springing from National citizenship]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law [of the State]; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [of the State]."
As the First Amendment deals openly and specifically with the "freedom" of religion, speech, and Press, those subjects are certainly not contained again in the Fifth concealed in the word "liberty." The writers of that time were given to clarity, rather than redundancy and confusion.
The set-up in 1789 of the First and Fifth Amendments in the Bill of Rights refutes the theory that "liberty" in the Fifth carries again the freedoms (of religion, speech, and Press) of the First. If, therefore, "liberty" in the Fifth does not connote or contain freedom of religion, speech, and Press, then those subjects are not embraced in the "liberty" borrowed from the Fifth and inserted in the Fourteenth.
Accordingly, to read into "liberty" in the Fourteenth what was not in the "liberty" which the writers of it borrowed from the Fifth is to be guilty of "latitudinarian construction."
The purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment
The language of the Fourteenth Amendment is so clear that it does not need the interpretation just given to it. The meaning is that the Nation cannot enter a State except to enforce a right of National citizenship, as, for example, the right to travel at will throughout this land, which California was prevented (314 U. S. 160) from abridging by a law (1941) excluding from ingress indigent persons.
Second, it means that the Nation cannot enter a State in protection of "life, liberty or property" unless the State (not individuals) denies its due process in protection of a right springing from National citizenship, as the right of the Negro to possess property and exercise suffrage.
Third, it means that the Nation cannot enter a State to secure "the equal protection of the laws" of that State unless those laws are being administered to deny a right of National (not State) citizenship, as a law denying suffrage to the Negro, while others enjoy it.
"Congress shall make no law [nor shall any State] respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment just quoted imports an intention that we should take the word "liberty" (written after Emancipation) to mean the "free" exercise of religion, or the "freedom of speech, or of the Press," dealt with by the writers of the First Amendment seventy-seven years before.
When it comes to blending thus the First Amendment in the Fourteenth, or mingling the provisions of the two, that can be done, not by assertions of the Supreme Court, nor by the authority of Congress, even, but only by the Constituent Assembly, the people exerting sovereign power as constitution makers.
In all the years of litigation and argument respecting this matter no one has ever dared to propose to the States an amendment for their ratification which would emasculate them as they have been broken by decisions of the Supreme Court.
It may be well to illustrate the manner and extent of this before taking up the constitutional and judicial history which is to be the service of this chapter. Parents of different religious denominations in Illinois arranged with the board of education to have their children receive in the school building, but out of class, from special teachers, religious instruction for half an hour once or twice a week. The regulation was attacked as a violation by the State of this clause of the First Amendment:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the Press."
To be sure, Congress never passed any such law. But it was assumed, without any attempt at demonstrating, a practice which the Supreme Court had been employing for many years, that the Fourteenth Amendment, just before quoted in pertinent part, brought down against the States the First Amendment, originally written, with all its companion articles in the Bill of Rights, against action by the Nation only.
Consequently, no constitutional question could exist under the First Amendment. And the Supreme Court of Illinois so decided.
On the simple facts given before on the use of the schoolrooms the Supreme Court of the United States, speaking (1948) through Justice Black (333 U. S. 203), said:
"This is beyond all question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faiths. It falls squarely under the ban of the First Amendment (made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth) as we interpreted it in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1."
In the Everson case it was said:
"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."
First, the Fourteenth Amendment did not make the First applicable to any conditions in Illinois.
Second, no tax was levied for religious purposes. The use of rooms apart from school classes could be no more objectionable than the use of them for a meeting of a club or other local organization, a use very commonly enjoyed in every town and city. It is too bad if the people cannot use their own buildings for what they deem to be their own advantage -- and that in an educational way.
"We may mystify anything. But if we take a plain view of the words of the Constitution, and give to them a fair and obvious interpretation, we cannot fail in most cases in coming to a clear understanding of its meaning. We shall not have far to seek. We shall find it on the surface, and not in the profound depths of speculation."
That is to say, all that the Supreme Court had to do in the Illinois case, assuming that the First Amendment had any bearing on it, was to examine the record and find whether Illinois had passed a "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That, and that only, was forbidden. As shown in the quotation hereinbefore made from Chief Justice Marshall, the Court had no right to extend the language of the Amendment to something else.
When Judge Thomas M. Cooley was recognized as the constitutional authority of this country he stated the rule that the court should keep in view the conditions which caused the language to be written, else it will be made to say something that the writers never thought of, and thereby may work great harm.
Cooley told us in effect that when we consider the First Amendment we must, in the words of St. Paul, "think on these things." Were any of those things in Illinois? If not, then neither was the First Amendment operative there, even though we "assume," as the Supreme Court did, that the Fourteenth Amendment brought it down against the State.
Justice Reed, adhering to the text, dissented on the ground that the question was on "an establishment of religion," forbidden by the First Amendment, although he erroneously thought "the First Amendment . . . made effective as to the States by the Fourteenth." But he was right that "an establishment of religion" by Illinois must necessarily appear to work a violation by it of the Constitution, admitting for the moment the "assumption" of the Supreme Court.
In 1931, seventeen years before the decision in the case from Illinois, the Supreme Court (283 U. S. 697) made a similar misapplication of the provision in the First Amendment for the "freedom of the Press," Chief Justice Hughes writing the opinion, and Justices Butler, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Sutherland dissenting. As that decision may have given some parentage to the one in the school case, promulgated by younger and less experienced Justices, it, too, will be examined preceding the Judicial history to be made.
At the opening of the opinion the Chief Justice begged the main question, as follows (brackets and italics inserted):
"It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty [a word not in the First Amendment] of the Press, and of speech [in the First Amendment], is within the liberty safeguarded by the Due-Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law] from invasion by State action."
That is, the Fourteenth Amendment makes applicable against the States the prohibitions of the First against the Nation.
In support of his proposition the Chief Justice cited:
"For the present purposes we may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the Press -- which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgement by Congress -- are among the fundamental personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States."
An assumption contrary to a demonstrable historic fact cannot stand as the foundation of a departure from a long-settled reading of a constitutional provision.
In the Whitney case, under the Syndicalism Act of California, the main contention was that the legislation was directed against a class and that therefore "equal protection" was denied. The Supreme Court of California was reversed. The opinion contained no attempt to show that free speech or Press is protected against the State by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fiske case, reversed, dealt with due process under the Syndicalism Act of Kansas, not free Press. There was no showing as to how due process, protected from the beginning in all the constitutions of the States, had been converted into a right dependent upon National citizenship to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Stromberg case arose under the criminal statute of California forbidding the display of the red flag. The judgment of conviction was reversed on the ground that the law was too vague in its prohibition for a criminal statute.
Thus, not one of the four cases cited by the Chief Justice in support of the interference by the United States with the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Minnesota showed how that could be constitutionally done. The Constitution of Minnesota gives protection to a free Press, and the free Press guaranteed by the First Amendment against National (not State) interference was absolutely alien to the case, which the Supreme Court of Minnesota had correctly disposed of.
Every one of the four cases was a bald invasion of a sovereign State.
Even had each of the three States named denied freedom of speech, of Press, and of religion, that would not have been violative of the First Amendment, which says only that "Congress shall make no law," and which is not, therefore, a command to the States. It was so taken at its plain words by both Nation and States during the 79 years that the Fourteenth Amendment did not exist. This Amendment did not purport to make the First applicable to the States. It was the liberty, the property, and the general rights of the Negro that were under consideration when the Fourteenth Amendment was written -- not speech, not Press, not religion.
The legislation of Minnesota was sound
The law of Minnesota granting relief by injunction from continuous libels was sound. It was not at variance with the provision in the Constitution of the State for the protection of a free Press. The first ground of equity jurisdiction is that the complainant has no speedy and complete remedy at law. That is, if he were to recover judgment for damages in an action at law, the defendant might not be financially able to respond; and if he were financially able, the injured party would be obliged to bring an action for each libel. That is the second ground of equity jurisdiction, to prevent a "multiplicity of suits." The court of equity or chancery simply stops by its writ of injunction what the legislature properly denounced as a nuisance. The law does not suppress the periodical -- it stops the libeling.
In the dissent by Justice Butler and three associates -- Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Sutherland -- it was said:
"Confessedly, the Federal Constitution prior to 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, did not protect the right of free speech or Press against State action. Up to that time the right was safeguarded solely by the constitutions and laws of the States and, it may be added, they operated adequately to protect it."
That being so, why should the National Government attempt to take over after three quarters of a century?
"The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty.
"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a constitution for itself, and, in that constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated.
"The people of the United States formed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally and, we think, necessarily applicable to the government created by the Instrument. They are limitations of power granted by the Instrument itself; not of distinct [State] governments, formed by different persons and for different purposes. If these propositions be correct, the Fifth Amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the general government, and not as applicable to the States."
In the Minnesota case Chief Justice Marshall would rule that the First Amendment on the freedom of the Press could not be applied against the Constitution and laws of Minnesota. And he would make like ruling in the Illinois school case, namely, that the "establishment of religion" forbidden by the First Amendment was not forbidden to Illinois. And, anyway, Illinois made no law respecting an establishment.
The dissenting justices cited some other decisions to similar effect, but there is nothing to be said after Marshall.
In 1936 the decision in the case in Minnesota was cited and followed where a law of Louisiana imposed an excise tax on the proceeds of advertising in newspapers "for the privilege of engaging in such business." Collection of the tax was enjoined by the United District Court. Appellant contended, correctly, that the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit States from infringing freedom of the Press, citing Cooley to the point that the Amendment is to prevent hostile legislation by States against the "privileges and immunities" of citizens of the United States as distinguished from those of citizens of the States. The Supreme Court held (297 U. S. 333) the act "unconstitutional under the Due Process-of-law Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] because it abridges the freedom of the Press." There, again, it was assumed that the Fourteenth Amendment brings down the First against the States.
In 1883 the Supreme Court held (110 U. S. 516,535) that due process in the Fourteenth Amendment "refers to the law of the land in each State," not to the law of the United States. The State does not have to afford due process under National law -- under the Fourteenth Amendment in case of the Press or of religion.
In 1867, the year before the Fourteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States passed on a law of Nevada levying a tax of $1 on every person leaving the State by railroad or other vehicle. It was held in an opinion by Justice Miller, the lion of the Judiciary of that day, that the levy was invalid (6 Wallace, 35) as a restraint by a State upon a right of National citizenship, the right to go at will throughout the country, to Washington on business with the Government, to the land office of the United States, to go abroad, and so on.
The decision followed one by Chief Justice Marshall (12 Wheaton, 419) in 1827, that when the importer paid the duty levied by the United States he received from the United States a right to sell the imported packages, for which reason the license law of Maryland on importers was unconstitutional, a levy on a National right.
In 1872, four years after the Fourteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution, the most memorable decision that has been written respecting it was rendered (6 Wallace, 36) by the Supreme Court of the United States in a group of cases heard together and known as the Slaughter-House cases. A law of Louisiana authorizing the centralizing of livestock handling and butchering at a designated place outside of New Orleans was attacked by a number of butchers as abridging their "privileges and immunities" under the Fourteenth Amendment, and as denying the "due process" and "equal protection" guaranteed by that Amendment. Equal protection was not denied because the law required that the slaughter-house be open to all butchers.
"It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual."
On the meaning of "the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States," Justice Washington was quoted:
"They may all, however, be comprehended under the following general heads: protection by the [State] government, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such restrictions as the government may provide for the general good of the whole."
Up to the time of the three Civil War Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) no claim or pretense was made that these rights depended upon the Federal Government for their existence or protection, beyond the very few express limitations imposed by the original Constitution on the States -- against ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts.
"But with the exception of those and a few other restrictions," said the Court, "the entire domain of the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal Government" (italics inserted).
The holding was that the rights and privileges claimed by plaintiffs were not those of citizens of the United States within the Fourteenth Amendment.[1]
1. The cases presented no Federal question and were dismissed. A Federal question, essential to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, is, briefly, one arising under the Constitution, under an act of Congress, under a treaty, or under an action by a State against a right accruing from National citizenship.
It was the belief of some that the writers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to enfeeble all the States for what the Confederate States had done. But the opinion just reviewed came from master minds in statesmanship as well as in law.[2]
2. On the importance to the American people and the Republic of the able jurist, Senator Hoar wrote in his memoirs (vol. 2, p. 391) of the illustrious Chief Justice Shaw of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts:
"He possessed, beyond any other American judge, save Marshall, what may be termed the statesmanship of jurisprudence. He never undertook to make law upon the Bench, but he perceived with a farsighted vision what rule of law was likely to operate beneficially or hurtfully to the Republic. He was watchful to lay down no doctrine which would not stand this test. His great judgments stand among our great securities, like the provisions of the Bill of Bights."
They knew that it would be fatal to liberty to take from the supreme court of a State the final word respecting rights emanating from or existing under State citizenship. What that would mean -- what they divined -- we have seen in the Minnesota Press case and in the Illinois School case.
The very next case (16 Wallace, 130) was decided by Justice Miller and it was held that Mrs. Myra Bradwell, who had been denied a license to practice law in Illinois, had not been deprived of a right of National citizenship:
"The right to control and regulate the granting of a license to practice law in the courts of a State is one of those powers which are not transferred for its protection to the Federal Government and its exercise is in no manner governed or controlled by citizenship in the United States in the party seeking such license."
Chief Justice Chase dissented.
Marshall on power of people in States
The decision in the Twining case was in conformity with what Chief Justice Marshall had explained (4 Wheaton, 122) 89 years before:
"When the American people created the National Legislature, with certain enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the Constitution, where they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by the Instrument."
That goes to what has been before mentioned, that there is a National Republic and a State Republic, each operating "on its own." The State Republics existed before the National Republic -- they created it, not to manage their affairs, but to do certain duties which they carefully assigned to it; later, in fear, more clearly circumscribing its activities by a Bill of Rights.
4. However, in the case of contempt against the Denver newspaper Justice Holmes said that it raised "questions of local law, which are not open to re-examination here." No Federal question was raised and therefore an order of dismissal was entered.
But in 1937 a law of Georgia against insurrection, or inducing others to join in resistance to government, was held (301 U. S. 242) repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment in an opinion by Justice Roberts, who assumed that the Amendment let the United States into the Republic of Georgia for managerial purposes. Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler dissented.
In 1940 the Supreme Court reversed (310 U. S. 573) the United States District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held that the method established by Texas for regulating the production of oil made the owners of large areas diminish pumping while small adjoining owners drained the large holdings. That presented a proper question of the denial of "equal protection" by a State to a citizen of the United States, which the Fourteenth Amendment forbids as to the white man as well as the black.
In 1947 the Twining case was followed and it was held that the law and practice of California permitting comment before a jury upon the fact that the defendant in a criminal case did not take the witness stand to explain accusations denied no constitutional right. The opinion, by Justice Reed, said (332 U. S. 46) that "the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw all the rights in the Federal Bill of Rights under its protection." Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge dissented, showing the radical difference of opinion on this point.
By that rule the First Amendment, respecting religion, press, and speech, is in no way binding on any State. It was misapplied in the Minnesota Press case and in the Illinois School case.
Due process of law is enjoined by the Fifth Amendment on the Nation and by the Fourteenth on the States. That is, there is due process of law in each of the Republics, each enforcing its process.
"Due process of law," wrote Chief Justice Chase (92 U. S. 90) in 1875, "is process according to the law of the land. This process in the States is regulated by the law of the States." It was there held that "trial by jury [Seventh Amendment] in suits at common law pending in the State courts is not, therefore, a privilege or immunity of National citizenship which the State is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment to abridge."
"These principles grow out of the proposition universally accepted by American courts on the authority of Coke, that the words 'due process of law' are equivalent in meaning to the words 'law of the land,' contained in that chapter of Magna Carta which provides that 'no person shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any wise destroyed; nor shall we go upon him, nor send upon him, but by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'"
A denial of any of those rights guaranteed by King John at Runnymede is a denial of due process, a denial of the law of the land.
Thus, an accused must have
(1) inquiry of the charge by a Grand Jury in a Federal case. If a true bill be returned he must have
(2) a copy of the indictment with a list of the witnesses who testified respecting him. He must have
(3) adequate time to prepare his defense. He must have
(4) the assistance of counsel, and if he cannot employ counsel the Government must appoint a competent attorney to defend him. He must have
(5) a trial in public before
(6) a petit jury of twelve, fairly drawn, deciding for or against him unanimously. He must be
(7) confronted by the witnesses against him. Should he be convicted, he must have
(8) appeal to a court of review, if he desire it.
Many cases appear in the judicial reports in which some factor in this process due to the defendant or the litigant was denied, and in each the appellate court reversed the judgment and remanded the case to the trial court to proceed again, and correctly.
Those are some of the safeguards to "life, liberty and property" set up by the profound historians in the Constitutional Convention, who knew so well what has been insufficiently taught to us, that, in the words of William Ellery Channing, "the state is too often the grave of the man."
Justice Field said in 1885 (113 U. S. 27) of the Fourteenth Amendment, of late being misapplied against the States:
"But neither the Amendment -- broad and comprehensive as it is -- nor any other amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the State, sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people."
In that case a municipal ordinance regulating the operation of laundries at night was upheld. The case is an example of the unimportant litigation which has been taking the attention of the Supreme Court in recent years, and about which Justice Miller wrote (96 U. S. 97) in 1877 (brackets inserted):
"But while it has been a part of the Constitution [in Fourteenth Amendment], as a restraint upon the power of the States, only a very few [9] years, the docket of this Court is crowded with cases in which we are asked to hold that the State courts and the State legislatures have deprived their own citizens of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
"There is here abundant evidence that there exists some strange misconception of the scope of this provision as found in the Fourteenth Amendment."
In that case an assessment for the drainage of swamp lands in Louisiana was under attack. Unless the complainant was denied the procedure under the law of Louisiana which was given to everybody else, he had been deprived of no right under the Fourteenth Amendment.
What would that constitutionalist think could he know of the decisions in recent years exhibiting a "strange misconception of the scope of this provision as found in the Fourteenth Amendment?"
In 1897 a man spoke on Boston Common without a permit, for which he was apprehended. It was held (167 U. S. 43) that the regulation was not in conflict with any constitutional provision respecting National citizenship.
That decision should have been stare decicis, the controlling precedent, for a large number of late cases overturning local regulations of States or their municipalities for cleanliness and order.
In 1900 it was held (176 U. S. 581) that Utah, in setting up a jury of 8 in criminal cases, was not bound by the Sixth Amendment requiring the United States to have a jury of 12 deciding unanimously. To be sure, not one of the ten amendments touches the States.
In 1940 the Supreme Court of Connecticut was reversed (310 U. S. 296) for sustaining an ordinance requiring a permit for authority to solicit for a religious or other cause, Justice Roberts writing the opinion.
A large number of the cases overturning municipal ordinances prohibiting uses of the streets for different purposes were instituted by Jehovah's Witnesses under the claim that the religious freedom and the free speech protected by the First Amendment had been denied. They spoke in the streets and used sounding instruments to give recorded addresses, and they disturbed residents by knocking on the doors and urging the purchase of books and pamphlets. They were not forbidden to hire a hall and carry on there, or to go to some open place. But if they had been prevented by State or municipal law from activity anywhere, that would not have violated the First Amendment, a restriction on National action only.
From 1937 down, there have been more than thirty cases of the kind reviewed before the Supreme Court of the United States. They belonged for final decision in the tribunals of the States. It would be iteration and reiteration to go over any more of them.
Although the hour is very late, the organized Bar of each State should make ready to admonish the senators from its State to refuse to confirm any appointment by the President to any Federal Court -- the Supreme Court, the eleven Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the hundred and a half District (trial) Courts -- if the appointee is not a seasoned jurist of repute or an attorney who has won distinction as a practitioner in the field of constitutional law. Constitutional scholars, not sociologists or politicians, must make up those courts.[5]
5. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President, the Supreme Court of the United States numbered 5 Republicans and 4 Democrats. The policy had been to have each party fairly represented, although the subject is not political. Yet, when Congress turned over the general management of the country to the President, and his "policy" was Socialism, how could the American expect to secure in courts under such appointment the rights of free enterprise?
In 1949 the Court contained 8 Democrats and 1 Republican, the last mentioned having been a colleague in the Senate of Mr. Truman, who appointed him.
Of the 192 appointees to all Federal courts by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, 184 are Democrats and 8 are Republicans. Not one of these appointees, from top to bottom, had gained any measurable experience as a jurist on any of the State supreme courts, or had achieved distinction at the Bar as a constitutional lawyer.
By remaining dumb and inactive for a decade and a half or more while judicial appointments have gone to low politics and inexperience, the American lawyer has discredited himself.
The Press, because the schools failed the writers, was of little use, where it was not a contributor to the confusion.
Long ago a European writer on our system declared the Judiciary to be the keystone of the American arch. The writers of The Federalist said that it is the least able of the three Departments to defend itself, and that it would be in peril from the other two. The Executive Department has not made the best appointments, and the Legislative Department has sanctioned such appointments.
A thorough-going reform as to appointments and confirmations is imperative.
The "belt" is a three-mile strip of land lying under water seaward from low-water mark and called tideland. The belt of water is the boundary line between a nation and the open sea. Vessels of foreign countries entering those waters become affected by the maritime laws of the country. But the land under the waters is the property of the State.
Three decisions of the Supreme Court had held this.
California had been giving leases on this tideland to drillers for petroleum under an act of its Legislature of 1921. Many valuable wells have been found under the deep water. Similar valuable production of petroleum has been carried on along the Gulf Coast within the three-mile limit.
On October 27, 1947, Chief Justice Vinson entered a decree giving effect to the decision of the Court by Justice Black, declaring that the United States is now and has been "possessed of paramount rights and powers over the lands, minerals and other things underlying the Pacific Ocean lying seaward of the ordinary low-water mark on the coast of California, and outside of inland waters, extending seaward three nautical miles. The United States is entitled to injunctive relief" (italics inserted).
Neither the decision of the Court nor the decree deals with title to the land. Each is with respect to "paramount rights" of the United States, implying inferior rights in the State, but without any discussion as to how either got its rights or precisely what those rights are. In a dissenting opinion Justice Frankfurter asked how the United States got its "rights" -- by conquest, or how.
In the ordinary lawsuit a claimant of land must exhibit a deed, or a lease showing a right to occupy, or a will transmitting, or a line of inheritance, or prescription by adverse possession. Otherwise, his suit will be dismissed.
"That the political agencies of this Nation both claim and exercise broad dominion and control over our three-mile marginal belt is now a settled fact."
In a decision of the Court written by Chief Justice Taney in 1842 the law was stated (16 Peters 367) as follows, and it has remained unchanged (italics inserted):
"When the Revolution took place the people of each State became themselves sovereign; and in that character hold the absolute right to all their navigable waters and the soils under them for their own common use."
"Upon the admission of California into the Union upon equal footing with the original States, absolute property in, and dominion and sovereignty over, all soils under the tide-waters within her limits passed to the State," subject only to navigation.
The cases cited here, and others urged by California, were not overruled. They are still the law. Justice Black gave much attention to a case decided (3 Howard 212) in 1845 respecting tidelands in Mobile Bay and said that the principle applying to "inland waters" could not be extended seaward. The decree entered by the Chief Justice against California was made to deal with lands "outside of inland waters," which seems to show the only reason that the Court could find for not following the decisions by Taney and Field just before presented. However, the subject matter is tidelands, not waters inside or outside. Whether inside or outside, the land belongs to the State when the tide of the ocean covers it.
As international law has been a build-up under practices by the executive departments of governments, and by treaties covering points agreed to, the making of it necessarily lies beyond the jurisdiction of courts.
It was undoubtedly with reference to that language that the Supreme Court said (3 Howard 212) in 1845 (italics inserted):
"The United States has no constitutional capacity to exercise jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain within the limits of a State or elsewhere, except in the cases in which it is expressly granted."
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States [as are powers of coinage, treaties, war], are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
In the States is a vast reservoir of powers not surrendered, and the Sovereignty is withholding many more.
The official report of the decision in the case against California does not show that the Court was asked to explain how the National Government could vault those obstructions to its getting title -- or even "paramount rights" -- in a State. The first question that should have been elucidated -- Where did the United States get any "rights," and how, to tidelands in California? -- remains a deep mystery.
"Precipitate" imports sudden action. But the law of California authorizing the leasing was passed in 1921, a quarter of a century before the United States awoke to the invasion of its "paramount rights." The conflict between the States -- for interior as well as maritime States intervened in support of California and the Constitution -- and the Nation was "precipitated" in 1936 by the introduction of a bill by a senator destitute of any conception of the constitutional position of the States in the Union.
The bill of the unschooled senator declared the tide-lands to be part of the public domain of the United States. Title by ipse dixit! It was remodeled into a joint resolution directing the Attorney General to assert and establish the title of the United States to tidelands and petroleum deposits. The resolution passed the Senate by unanimous consent, but the House took no action. The Secretary of the Navy, whose Department got a sniff of petroleum during the dispute about the Teapot Dome in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, filed a brief in the Senate in support of the movement. While a number of maneuvers immaterial here were in progress, this suit was brought, and the attorneys general of 46 States filed a brief in opposition to it. That was an amazing awakening of the States from protracted slumber.
The Secretary of the Interior testified before a congressional committee that in a talk with President Roosevelt in April, 1937, the Chief Executive raised the question of the ownership of oil in the tidelands. That was shortly after the senator had "precipitated" the controversy. He authorized the litigation. After his death in April, 1945, President Truman did likewise.
Thus, the whole administration, the Executive Department, the Legislative Department, the Navy, and the Judicial Department, all concurred in this attempt upon the property of the States.
Quite a change in the American governmental mind has taken place since England attempted to "move over" and occupy some gold-bearing lands in Venezuela and was stopped by the Cleveland administration.
What has been shown is a demonstration that anything may happen here.
But, of a certainty, it is within the power of the States in Congress to override this startling decision and clear their lands of the cloud which it put upon title to them.
Again, in 1933, what became the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth (Prohibitory) Amendment, was proposed and it was adopted in the short space of nine months and fifteen days. After 13 years and .10 months of trial and controversy, the Prohibitory Amendment went out and carried with it the coercive legislation and some fantastic judicial decisions which it had engendered. In one case it was held that a man on an interstate journey by railroad with a flask of liquor in his valise was "transporting" intoxicating drink in "interstate commerce" in violation of governmental command!
In like manner, curative amendments should be proposed to the States revoking all the acts of Congress and the judicial decisions applying the Taxing Clause, the Commerce Clause, and the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution where they were not intended to be operative. It may be asked, for example: How can the National Labor Relations Act and all that has been done under it be unscrambled? The answer is that the States can resume the police power which they abandoned, but of which they could not divest themselves constitutionally, over their labor conditions and over all the needs of the people. Already that sentiment has found expression in many States.
In December, 1949, the State of Michigan had formally "seceded" from the District of Columbia. Its legislature had enacted a law forbidding strikes until a vote of the workers has been taken in accordance with specifications laid down. In the month named, the Department of Justice went into the Supreme Court of the United States to ask that the law of Michigan be restrained from operation, as the National Government had "preempted" that field, having reference to the unconstitutional National Labor Relations Act of Congress. But it has been shown from the Constitution and other authorities that the United States cannot take over a field inherently in the States and not susceptible of surrender by them.
The battle of the States for taking back their Union is opening up. They can win it easily. The whole power respecting the subject resides in them.
The interpretative amendment or amendments might declare that the grant of power to Congress by section 8 of Article I "to lay and collect . . . Taxes to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" shall be strictly construed as limiting expenditures for the Nation, at home and abroad, as a member of the family of nations, and shall not be taken to authorize the Government to engage in the manufacture of electric power, or to provide rural electrification, or to engage in any kind of industry or trade, or to provide aid to any class of individuals, who are protected by the inherent police power of the States.
Third, the General Welfare Clause shall be strictly construed to mean the welfare of the United States as a political entity, and as specified in the grant of powers in section 8 of Article I; and it shall not be taken to mean the welfare of persons as to health, safety, morals, education, and general well-being, matters of which the States have inherent jurisdiction by virtue of their police power, no part of which they surrendered to the Nation when they drew the Constitution. They adopted the Bill of Rights in further protection of that power.
Those suggestions are merely outlines of what should be developed in thorough detail in Congress for amendments to restore the Union to the States comprising it.
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THE COURSE OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS DURING THE LAST FORTY YEARS HAS MADE CLEAR THAT THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC REQUIRES RETURN TO STRICT CONFORMITY WITH THE DIRECTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION
http://barefootsworld.org/This chapter deals with the attempts of the Supreme Court of the United States to "construe" into the Fourteenth Amendment -- restraining the States -- what was not written in it, what the writers of it did not have in mind that is, "freedom" of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the Press.
The writers of the Amendment had under consideration (1866) the recently (1865) liberated Negro, to whom the Amendment would give citizenship in both his State and the United States; and it forbade the States to "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," or to deprive any person in a State of "life, liberty or property without due process of law," or to deny to him "the equal protection of the laws" of his State.
Freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of the Press were safeguarded (1789) against denial by the National Government 77 years before by the First Amendment, the first article of what we call the Bill of Rights, in protection of the States and the people against interference by the National Government.
The search for the unperceivable
The Supreme Court has held in recent years that the word "liberty," italicised in the foregoing quotation from the Fourteenth Amendment, against the States, is the equivalent of, or connotes, or contains, the "freedoms" of religion, speech, and Press, written against Congress in the First Amendment.That reading ignores two cardinal rules of interpretation:
(1) that the plain language must be followed, without addition or subtraction; and
(2) that there must be kept in mind the evil which the writing was being made to cure.
First, the Fourteenth Amendment makes no mention of religion, speech, or Press. They cannot be drawn into it and be made a part of it by an expansive "construction" of the word "liberty."
Second, the writers of the Amendment were dealing only with the Negro and his "liberty" and prospective rights, which were to be protected. Religion, speech, and Press were as far away from their thoughts as the poles are apart.
Judicial deviation from
Constitution most serious
When Congress, cloaking itself with the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, makes an enactment like the National Labor Relations Law, which shows by its name that it is not an act to regulate commerce among the States, the educated American is alerted. He should immediately do something about it. But at that time he didn't. He should have driven out of Congress every man that voted for the degradation of his State from its place in the Union of States.But when, by specious reasoning, or no reasoning at all, by "assumptions," the Supreme Court makes application of constitutional provisions where they do not belong, the departure from principles is less likely to be noticed.
For a good many years the Supreme Court has had trouble with "due process of law" in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, restraining the Nation, and in the Fourteenth, curbing the State. It has been perplexed about the application of "the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States" in the Fourteenth.
Chief Justice Marshall
on following the text
That has been owing to its failure to adhere to the text. On adhering to the text the great Chief Justice Marshall, in a dissenting opinion, gave these directions in 1827 (12 Wheaton, 213):"To say that the intention of the Instrument must prevail; that the intention must be collected from its words; that its words are to be understood in that sense in which they are generally used by those for whom the Instrument was intended; that its provisions are neither to be restricted into insignificance, nor extended to objects not comprehended in them, nor contemplated by its powers, is to repeat what has been already said more at large, and is all that is necessary."
The tragic effort of the Supreme Court has been in trying to make the Fourteenth Amendment bring down against the States prohibitions in the Bill of Rights written against National power only.
Of course, if the people should want the First Amendment, for example, applied against State power, they can say so by action under their amending Article V. But it is not for the Judiciary to do the amending.
Could the States have intended
to restrain themselves?
When, upon the submission by the Constitutional Convention to the States of the proposed new form of government, they complained that it did not contain restrictions enough on power, did they mean that they themselves would not be sufficiently curbed? Certainly not. The question is self-answering.If the States could not have intended by the First Amendment to curb themselves, why should the Supreme Court take authority to bring against them that Article of their Bill of Rights?
The question with the States was: would the over-all government eventually become absolutely over-all? They were determined that it should not. They got protection through ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, not one prohibition in which restrains the States in any way.
From the beginning both the States and the Nation proceeded on that fact. Many of the States abandoned the grand jury which the Nation is required (Amendment V) to employ and dispensed with the indictment. In some States if the accused does not take the witness stand to explain, that may be used against him before the jury, a practice forbidden in the Federal courts. Some States permit the trial of criminal cases without a jury, a practice forbidden to the Nation.
Others employ a jury of fewer than twelve. The unanimous verdict has been succeeded by the majority verdict of the jury in some States. The jury in suits for money (Amendment VII) is not called in many States.
States provide protection for their people
Most if not all of the constitutions of the States have their own provisions, like those in the Bill of Rights (Amendment VIII) against excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishment.But the Bill of Rights is strictly a barricade against the exertion of National power. It was so treated down to about the time (1926) that an inquiry by the American Bar Association revealed that out of 25 leading university law schools only 8 required a course in the Constitution as a condition to a degree! That may have been the origin of scrambled brains in the law of the Constitution.
Since the States demanding the Bill of Rights did not intend it to be operative against themselves, and since the States and the Nation so accepted it for near a century and a half, how in reason can a court now make an unintended application of any provision of it and act as pedagogue to a State?
States are Republics, independent
in most respects
It is to be kept in mind that by section 4 of Article IV of the Constitution "the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican form of Government." Every one of the forty-eight States is a Republic, has a Constitution of its own, with an Executive Department, a Legislative Department, and a Judicial Department, fully equipped to manage its own internal affairs. Fear that the National Government would not let those republics alone, made the original States add to the Constitution the Bill of Rights against it.The first sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment is this:
"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."
That dual citizenship had always existed except as to those in slavery. In the Constitutional Convention that was expressed by James Wilson of Pennsylvania, the leading lawyer of the body, afterward a justice of the Supreme Court of the United States:
"A citizen of America is a citizen of the general government, and is a citizen of the particular State in which he may reside."
Citizenship intended by Civil War Amendment
The Fourteenth Amendment was intended to give to the liberated Negro both citizenships, but the language is broad enough to include others, and it has been so applied.The second sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment, which has become a Pandora's Box of evils, is this, with insertions in brackets to show how it had been read by the Supreme Court down to recent times:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [springing from National citizenship]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law [of the State]; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [of the State]."
The meaning of "liberty" considered
In the Fifth Amendment that language precisely as to "liberty" had been written against the Nation -- "nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The writers of the Fourteenth Amendment, against the States, 76 years later, copied that language from the Fifth. The rule is that language thus borrowed carries into the later position the meaning that it expressed in the earlier position.As the First Amendment deals openly and specifically with the "freedom" of religion, speech, and Press, those subjects are certainly not contained again in the Fifth concealed in the word "liberty." The writers of that time were given to clarity, rather than redundancy and confusion.
The set-up in 1789 of the First and Fifth Amendments in the Bill of Rights refutes the theory that "liberty" in the Fifth carries again the freedoms (of religion, speech, and Press) of the First. If, therefore, "liberty" in the Fifth does not connote or contain freedom of religion, speech, and Press, then those subjects are not embraced in the "liberty" borrowed from the Fifth and inserted in the Fourteenth.
Accordingly, to read into "liberty" in the Fourteenth what was not in the "liberty" which the writers of it borrowed from the Fifth is to be guilty of "latitudinarian construction."
The purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment
The language of the Fourteenth Amendment is so clear that it does not need the interpretation just given to it. The meaning is that the Nation cannot enter a State except to enforce a right of National citizenship, as, for example, the right to travel at will throughout this land, which California was prevented (314 U. S. 160) from abridging by a law (1941) excluding from ingress indigent persons.
Second, it means that the Nation cannot enter a State in protection of "life, liberty or property" unless the State (not individuals) denies its due process in protection of a right springing from National citizenship, as the right of the Negro to possess property and exercise suffrage.
Third, it means that the Nation cannot enter a State to secure "the equal protection of the laws" of that State unless those laws are being administered to deny a right of National (not State) citizenship, as a law denying suffrage to the Negro, while others enjoy it.
What Fourteenth Amendment
did not contemplate
Nothing in the language of the Fourteenth Amendment just quoted indicates an intention of the writers in 1866 to recast or rewrite the First Amendment (1789) by inserting after "Congress shall make no law" the words "nor shall any State," making the Amendment since 1868 read thus:"Congress shall make no law [nor shall any State] respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment just quoted imports an intention that we should take the word "liberty" (written after Emancipation) to mean the "free" exercise of religion, or the "freedom of speech, or of the Press," dealt with by the writers of the First Amendment seventy-seven years before.
When it comes to blending thus the First Amendment in the Fourteenth, or mingling the provisions of the two, that can be done, not by assertions of the Supreme Court, nor by the authority of Congress, even, but only by the Constituent Assembly, the people exerting sovereign power as constitution makers.
In all the years of litigation and argument respecting this matter no one has ever dared to propose to the States an amendment for their ratification which would emasculate them as they have been broken by decisions of the Supreme Court.
Non-National subjects
occupying Supreme Court
It is with matters which are of no constitutional concern to the Nation that the Supreme Court has been overbusy of recent years, to the great confusion of thought respecting our Fundamental Law.It may be well to illustrate the manner and extent of this before taking up the constitutional and judicial history which is to be the service of this chapter. Parents of different religious denominations in Illinois arranged with the board of education to have their children receive in the school building, but out of class, from special teachers, religious instruction for half an hour once or twice a week. The regulation was attacked as a violation by the State of this clause of the First Amendment:
To be sure, Congress never passed any such law. But it was assumed, without any attempt at demonstrating, a practice which the Supreme Court had been employing for many years, that the Fourteenth Amendment, just before quoted in pertinent part, brought down against the States the First Amendment, originally written, with all its companion articles in the Bill of Rights, against action by the Nation only.
Illinois passed no law
respecting religion
Accepting for the moment (but no longer) the assumption of the Court that the First Amendment had been brought down to block action by Illinois, the answer is that neither did Illinois pass any "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."Consequently, no constitutional question could exist under the First Amendment. And the Supreme Court of Illinois so decided.
On the simple facts given before on the use of the schoolrooms the Supreme Court of the United States, speaking (1948) through Justice Black (333 U. S. 203), said:
"This is beyond all question a utilization of the tax-established and tax-supported public school system to aid religious groups to spread their faiths. It falls squarely under the ban of the First Amendment (made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth) as we interpreted it in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U. S. 1."
"No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."
How the law should have been stated
What the Supreme Court should have said in the Everson case (after taking jurisdiction of it when without authority to do so) is that Congress gets no authority from the Constitution to spend money in the States for any school purpose. And that schools, being within the inherent police jurisdiction of the States, are entitled to support by the States -- public schools, private schools, and religious schools -- provided only that a State constitution does not speak in some respect to the contrary.First, the Fourteenth Amendment did not make the First applicable to any conditions in Illinois.
Second, no tax was levied for religious purposes. The use of rooms apart from school classes could be no more objectionable than the use of them for a meeting of a club or other local organization, a use very commonly enjoyed in every town and city. It is too bad if the people cannot use their own buildings for what they deem to be their own advantage -- and that in an educational way.
The Supreme Court "mystified" the subject
The inaccuracy of the language of the Court, and its inapplicability to any constitutional provision, brings to mind what was said in an opinion (100 U. S. 393) by Justice Bradley, a judicial stalwart, seventy years ago:"We may mystify anything. But if we take a plain view of the words of the Constitution, and give to them a fair and obvious interpretation, we cannot fail in most cases in coming to a clear understanding of its meaning. We shall not have far to seek. We shall find it on the surface, and not in the profound depths of speculation."
That is to say, all that the Supreme Court had to do in the Illinois case, assuming that the First Amendment had any bearing on it, was to examine the record and find whether Illinois had passed a "law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That, and that only, was forbidden. As shown in the quotation hereinbefore made from Chief Justice Marshall, the Court had no right to extend the language of the Amendment to something else.
When Judge Thomas M. Cooley was recognized as the constitutional authority of this country he stated the rule that the court should keep in view the conditions which caused the language to be written, else it will be made to say something that the writers never thought of, and thereby may work great harm.
How to get meaning of First Amendment
The conditions which caused the First Amendment to be written in its brief and clear language were those of law and practice in England which drove the Pilgrims to Holland and thence to America, which made the Puritans set sail for Massachusetts, which made William Penn take his fellow Quakers to Pennsylvania, which caused Lord Baltimore to settle Maryland with his coreligionists; and the conditions in America which drove Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, and the law of Virginia which set up a State Church supported by taxation, a law which Jefferson and Madison caused to be repealed.Cooley told us in effect that when we consider the First Amendment we must, in the words of St. Paul, "think on these things." Were any of those things in Illinois? If not, then neither was the First Amendment operative there, even though we "assume," as the Supreme Court did, that the Fourteenth Amendment brought it down against the State.
Justice Reed, adhering to the text, dissented on the ground that the question was on "an establishment of religion," forbidden by the First Amendment, although he erroneously thought "the First Amendment . . . made effective as to the States by the Fourteenth." But he was right that "an establishment of religion" by Illinois must necessarily appear to work a violation by it of the Constitution, admitting for the moment the "assumption" of the Supreme Court.
The wide effect of the decision
The record in the case disclosed that in all but two of the States about 2,000 communities provided, by the use of school buildings or rooms, religious instruction to more than 1,500,000 pupils. That work was upset without reason -- and contrary to law. The Republic of Illinois, one of the oldest, was highly competent to manage constitutionally its own affairs, and the Republic of the United States should have kept out of its jurisdiction.In 1931, seventeen years before the decision in the case from Illinois, the Supreme Court (283 U. S. 697) made a similar misapplication of the provision in the First Amendment for the "freedom of the Press," Chief Justice Hughes writing the opinion, and Justices Butler, Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Sutherland dissenting. As that decision may have given some parentage to the one in the school case, promulgated by younger and less experienced Justices, it, too, will be examined preceding the Judicial history to be made.
The first definite trespass on State autonomy
The Republic of Minnesota, with a provision in its Constitution for the freedom of the Press (as every other State has in its basic law), enacted that the continued publication of libelous and scandalous matter would be regarded as a nuisance and might be stopped by the writ of injunction. The law was a valid exercise of police power by the State, and the Supreme Court of Minnesota so held. The case was taken by appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States, without jurisdiction to receive it, and the decision of the court of last resort in Minnesota was reversed. The law provided for the suspension of the libels only, not the periodical.At the opening of the opinion the Chief Justice begged the main question, as follows (brackets and italics inserted):
"It is no longer open to doubt that the liberty [a word not in the First Amendment] of the Press, and of speech [in the First Amendment], is within the liberty safeguarded by the Due-Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment [nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law] from invasion by State action."
That is, the Fourteenth Amendment makes applicable against the States the prohibitions of the First against the Nation.
In support of his proposition the Chief Justice cited:
- Gitlow v. New York (1925), 268 U. S. 652 (666), by Justice Sanford
- Whitney v. California (1927), 274 U. S. 357, by Justice Sanford
- Fiske v. Kansas (1927), 274 U. S. 380, by Justice Sanford
- Stromberg v. California (1931), 283 U. S. 359, by Chief Justice Hughes.
The "authorities" of the Court examined
In the Gitlow case, sustaining a conviction by a jury for violation of the Statute of New York against criminal anarchy, Justice Sanford began (italics inserted):"For the present purposes we may and do assume that freedom of speech and of the Press -- which are protected by the First Amendment from abridgement by Congress -- are among the fundamental personal rights and 'liberties' protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment from impairment by the States."
An assumption contrary to a demonstrable historic fact cannot stand as the foundation of a departure from a long-settled reading of a constitutional provision.
In the Whitney case, under the Syndicalism Act of California, the main contention was that the legislation was directed against a class and that therefore "equal protection" was denied. The Supreme Court of California was reversed. The opinion contained no attempt to show that free speech or Press is protected against the State by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Fiske case, reversed, dealt with due process under the Syndicalism Act of Kansas, not free Press. There was no showing as to how due process, protected from the beginning in all the constitutions of the States, had been converted into a right dependent upon National citizenship to be protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Stromberg case arose under the criminal statute of California forbidding the display of the red flag. The judgment of conviction was reversed on the ground that the law was too vague in its prohibition for a criminal statute.
Thus, not one of the four cases cited by the Chief Justice in support of the interference by the United States with the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Minnesota showed how that could be constitutionally done. The Constitution of Minnesota gives protection to a free Press, and the free Press guaranteed by the First Amendment against National (not State) interference was absolutely alien to the case, which the Supreme Court of Minnesota had correctly disposed of.
Every one of the four cases was a bald invasion of a sovereign State.
Even had each of the three States named denied freedom of speech, of Press, and of religion, that would not have been violative of the First Amendment, which says only that "Congress shall make no law," and which is not, therefore, a command to the States. It was so taken at its plain words by both Nation and States during the 79 years that the Fourteenth Amendment did not exist. This Amendment did not purport to make the First applicable to the States. It was the liberty, the property, and the general rights of the Negro that were under consideration when the Fourteenth Amendment was written -- not speech, not Press, not religion.
The legislation of Minnesota was sound
The law of Minnesota granting relief by injunction from continuous libels was sound. It was not at variance with the provision in the Constitution of the State for the protection of a free Press. The first ground of equity jurisdiction is that the complainant has no speedy and complete remedy at law. That is, if he were to recover judgment for damages in an action at law, the defendant might not be financially able to respond; and if he were financially able, the injured party would be obliged to bring an action for each libel. That is the second ground of equity jurisdiction, to prevent a "multiplicity of suits." The court of equity or chancery simply stops by its writ of injunction what the legislature properly denounced as a nuisance. The law does not suppress the periodical -- it stops the libeling.
In the dissent by Justice Butler and three associates -- Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, and Sutherland -- it was said:
"Confessedly, the Federal Constitution prior to 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, did not protect the right of free speech or Press against State action. Up to that time the right was safeguarded solely by the constitutions and laws of the States and, it may be added, they operated adequately to protect it."
That being so, why should the National Government attempt to take over after three quarters of a century?
Chief Justice Marshall on
relation of State and Nation
In support of their appeal to history, the dissenting justices cited a case (7 Pet. 243) decided in 1833 by Chief Justice Marshall, which involved a claim for damage to property done by the City of Baltimore in improving the harbor. The claim was made under the Fifth Amendment, which requires "just compensation" from the Nation for property taken for public use. That case of 116 years ago may be the first in which the principle under discussion here came up. The language of the Chief Justice suggests that it was new. He laid out the whole subject with the clarity and completeness that marked his work (italics inserted):"The question thus presented is, we think, of great importance, but not of much difficulty.
"The Constitution was ordained and established by the people of the United States for themselves, for their own government, and not for the government of the individual States. Each State established a constitution for itself, and, in that constitution, provided such limitations and restrictions on the powers of its particular government as its judgment dictated.
"The people of the United States formed such a government for the United States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this government were to be exercised by itself; and the limitations on power, if expressed in general terms, are naturally and, we think, necessarily applicable to the government created by the Instrument. They are limitations of power granted by the Instrument itself; not of distinct [State] governments, formed by different persons and for different purposes. If these propositions be correct, the Fifth Amendment must be understood as restraining the power of the general government, and not as applicable to the States."
State not commanded by Bill of Rights
In brief, a disregard by a State of any prohibition in the Bill of Rights, from the First Amendment down, is not remediable in a proceeding against the State, for the State is not commanded to obey it.In the Minnesota case Chief Justice Marshall would rule that the First Amendment on the freedom of the Press could not be applied against the Constitution and laws of Minnesota. And he would make like ruling in the Illinois school case, namely, that the "establishment of religion" forbidden by the First Amendment was not forbidden to Illinois. And, anyway, Illinois made no law respecting an establishment.
The dissenting justices cited some other decisions to similar effect, but there is nothing to be said after Marshall.
In 1936 the decision in the case in Minnesota was cited and followed where a law of Louisiana imposed an excise tax on the proceeds of advertising in newspapers "for the privilege of engaging in such business." Collection of the tax was enjoined by the United District Court. Appellant contended, correctly, that the Fourteenth Amendment does not prohibit States from infringing freedom of the Press, citing Cooley to the point that the Amendment is to prevent hostile legislation by States against the "privileges and immunities" of citizens of the United States as distinguished from those of citizens of the States. The Supreme Court held (297 U. S. 333) the act "unconstitutional under the Due Process-of-law Clause [of the Fourteenth Amendment] because it abridges the freedom of the Press." There, again, it was assumed that the Fourteenth Amendment brings down the First against the States.
In 1883 the Supreme Court held (110 U. S. 516,535) that due process in the Fourteenth Amendment "refers to the law of the land in each State," not to the law of the United States. The State does not have to afford due process under National law -- under the Fourteenth Amendment in case of the Press or of religion.
Cases examined respecting Bill of Rights
Now for "the strange, eventful history."In 1867, the year before the Fourteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution, the Supreme Court of the United States passed on a law of Nevada levying a tax of $1 on every person leaving the State by railroad or other vehicle. It was held in an opinion by Justice Miller, the lion of the Judiciary of that day, that the levy was invalid (6 Wallace, 35) as a restraint by a State upon a right of National citizenship, the right to go at will throughout the country, to Washington on business with the Government, to the land office of the United States, to go abroad, and so on.
The decision followed one by Chief Justice Marshall (12 Wheaton, 419) in 1827, that when the importer paid the duty levied by the United States he received from the United States a right to sell the imported packages, for which reason the license law of Maryland on importers was unconstitutional, a levy on a National right.
The two American citizenships made plain
In the opinion of the Court, by Justice Miller, he returned to the discussion of the dual citizenship which he had considered in the Nevada case, previously examined:"It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual."
On the meaning of "the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States," Justice Washington was quoted:
"They may all, however, be comprehended under the following general heads: protection by the [State] government, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such restrictions as the government may provide for the general good of the whole."
Up to the time of the three Civil War Amendments (Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth) no claim or pretense was made that these rights depended upon the Federal Government for their existence or protection, beyond the very few express limitations imposed by the original Constitution on the States -- against ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts.
"But with the exception of those and a few other restrictions," said the Court, "the entire domain of the privileges and immunities of the citizens of the States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal Government" (italics inserted).
Some privileges of
National citizenship named
Thus, holding that the privileges and immunities asserted by the plaintiffs in the cases with respect to slaughtering belong to citizens of the States and are to be protected, not by National but by State government, Justice Miller enumerated some privileges and immunities proceeding from National citizenship: to go from place to place throughout the land, to assert any claim against government, to share in its offices and affairs, to free access to seaports, to the land offices and courts of justice, to demand care and protection on the high seas and abroad, to have the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, the right to use navigable waters, to have the benefit of treaties and of the War Amendments.1. The cases presented no Federal question and were dismissed. A Federal question, essential to the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, is, briefly, one arising under the Constitution, under an act of Congress, under a treaty, or under an action by a State against a right accruing from National citizenship.
The theory which the Court rejected
A dissent was written by Justice Field and joined in by Chief Justice Chase, and Justices Swayne and Bradley, chiefly on the ground that an unlawful monopoly had been granted. The dissenters sought to bring within National cognizance every right of man -- whereas the majority opinion by Miller was that the right to slaughter or to pursue any other occupation existed before the Fourteenth Amendment, and therefore did not spring from it -- a right under State, not National, citizenship.It was the belief of some that the writers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended to enfeeble all the States for what the Confederate States had done. But the opinion just reviewed came from master minds in statesmanship as well as in law.[2]
2. On the importance to the American people and the Republic of the able jurist, Senator Hoar wrote in his memoirs (vol. 2, p. 391) of the illustrious Chief Justice Shaw of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts:
"He possessed, beyond any other American judge, save Marshall, what may be termed the statesmanship of jurisprudence. He never undertook to make law upon the Bench, but he perceived with a farsighted vision what rule of law was likely to operate beneficially or hurtfully to the Republic. He was watchful to lay down no doctrine which would not stand this test. His great judgments stand among our great securities, like the provisions of the Bill of Bights."
They knew that it would be fatal to liberty to take from the supreme court of a State the final word respecting rights emanating from or existing under State citizenship. What that would mean -- what they divined -- we have seen in the Minnesota Press case and in the Illinois School case.
The very next case (16 Wallace, 130) was decided by Justice Miller and it was held that Mrs. Myra Bradwell, who had been denied a license to practice law in Illinois, had not been deprived of a right of National citizenship:
"The right to control and regulate the granting of a license to practice law in the courts of a State is one of those powers which are not transferred for its protection to the Federal Government and its exercise is in no manner governed or controlled by citizenship in the United States in the party seeking such license."
Chief Justice Chase dissented.
Next great case of
applicability of amendments
In 1908 the case next to the Slaughter-House cases in importance in distinguishing between State citizenship and National citizenship was decided (211 U. S. 78), Justice Moody writing the opinion. Twining was on trial in New Jersey on a criminal charge. By the practice in that State comment was permitted before the jury on the fact that a defendant did not take the witness stand to clear up the accusations. He claimed that the Fifth Amendment, forbidding that a person "be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," was violated by New Jersey, as his right to be silent had been turned against him. It was held that the Amendment is not applicable to State citizenship -- that the first eight amendments[3] affect the United States Government only. For 79 years before the Fourteenth Amendment immunity from self-incrimination was afforded by the constitution of the State, if it was enjoyed at all in State tribunals.
3. The Bill of Rights is usually spoken of as the first ten amendments, but sometimes as the first eight. The Ninth and Tenth are the final warnings to Congress to keep within its boundaries, whereas the first eight are protective to men. But men could not be fully guarded without the Ninth and Tenth.
Counsel for Twining made frequent reference to "fundamental rights," but he drew no distinction between fundamental rights of State citizenship and rights fundamental to National citizenship.Marshall on power of people in States
The decision in the Twining case was in conformity with what Chief Justice Marshall had explained (4 Wheaton, 122) 89 years before:
"When the American people created the National Legislature, with certain enumerated powers, it was neither necessary nor proper to define the powers retained by the States. These powers proceed, not from the people of America, but from the people of the several States; and remain, after the adoption of the Constitution, where they were before, except so far as they may be abridged by the Instrument."
That goes to what has been before mentioned, that there is a National Republic and a State Republic, each operating "on its own." The State Republics existed before the National Republic -- they created it, not to manage their affairs, but to do certain duties which they carefully assigned to it; later, in fear, more clearly circumscribing its activities by a Bill of Rights.
Supreme Court avoided
applying First Amendment
In 1906, the year before the Twining case, the Supreme Court passed by the question, in a Denver newspaper case (205 U. S. 454), whether in the Fourteenth Amendment is to be found "prohibition similar to that in the First."[4] It had left the question open in 1902 (187 U. S. 71), Justice Harlan dissenting in both cases.4. However, in the case of contempt against the Denver newspaper Justice Holmes said that it raised "questions of local law, which are not open to re-examination here." No Federal question was raised and therefore an order of dismissal was entered.
But in 1937 a law of Georgia against insurrection, or inducing others to join in resistance to government, was held (301 U. S. 242) repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment in an opinion by Justice Roberts, who assumed that the Amendment let the United States into the Republic of Georgia for managerial purposes. Justices Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler dissented.
Supreme Court followed
Slaughter-House cases
In the same year (1937) it was stated (302 U. S. 319) in a case of murder done in Connecticut that "there is no such general rule" that "whatever would be a violation of the original Bill of Bights (Amendments I to VIII) if done by the Federal Government is now equally unlawful, by force of the Fourteenth Amendment, if done by the State." Justice Cardozo said that "the conviction of appellant was not in derogation of any privileges or immunities that belong to him as a citizen of the United States." Citizenship of the United States could not have been involved unless Connecticut had denied to him the "due process" of its laws or the "equal protection" of its laws. If it thus disfavored him by denying the practice due and given to others under its system, then the "no-State-shall-make-or-enforce-any-law" of the Fourteenth Amendment would be in control. As a citizen of the United States he was guaranteed the due process and equal protection of the law of his State. If it did not appear at the opening of the record in the Supreme Court that he charged denial of the law and procedure available to all others in his State, there was no "Federal question," and the appeal should have been dismissed, leaving the case where Connecticut closed it.
Where the Fourteenth
Amendment was applicable
In 1940 the Supreme Court reversed (310 U. S. 573) the United States District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals, which had held that the method established by Texas for regulating the production of oil made the owners of large areas diminish pumping while small adjoining owners drained the large holdings. That presented a proper question of the denial of "equal protection" by a State to a citizen of the United States, which the Fourteenth Amendment forbids as to the white man as well as the black.
In 1947 the Twining case was followed and it was held that the law and practice of California permitting comment before a jury upon the fact that the defendant in a criminal case did not take the witness stand to explain accusations denied no constitutional right. The opinion, by Justice Reed, said (332 U. S. 46) that "the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw all the rights in the Federal Bill of Rights under its protection." Justices Black, Douglas, Murphy, and Rutledge dissented, showing the radical difference of opinion on this point.
The question that embarrasses the Justices
If the Fourteenth Amendment "does not draw all the rights," which ones does it draw? And if it draws any at all, why and how? That is what troubled Justice Frankfurter, who wrote a concurring opinion and said that if the Fourteenth Amendment makes the Fifth operative against the States, then it must so effectuate all the others of the Bill of Rights. To be sure, that is the only logical conclusion.
An authority on constitutional construction
Thus, for 150 years the States -- and for most of the time the Nation -- had in their daily lives construed the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, as having no application to local governments. The States have established legal and procedural systems strikingly at variance with the requirements of the amendments. In striving for the meaning of a constitutional provision or a law, a court always inquires: How was it construed from the beginning by those whose duty it was to apply it in government?By that rule the First Amendment, respecting religion, press, and speech, is in no way binding on any State. It was misapplied in the Minnesota Press case and in the Illinois School case.
Due process of law is enjoined by the Fifth Amendment on the Nation and by the Fourteenth on the States. That is, there is due process of law in each of the Republics, each enforcing its process.
"Due process of law," wrote Chief Justice Chase (92 U. S. 90) in 1875, "is process according to the law of the land. This process in the States is regulated by the law of the States." It was there held that "trial by jury [Seventh Amendment] in suits at common law pending in the State courts is not, therefore, a privilege or immunity of National citizenship which the State is forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment to abridge."
Due process of law made clear
Justice Moody explained in the Twining case the meaning of due process:"These principles grow out of the proposition universally accepted by American courts on the authority of Coke, that the words 'due process of law' are equivalent in meaning to the words 'law of the land,' contained in that chapter of Magna Carta which provides that 'no person shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseized, or outlawed, or exiled, or in any wise destroyed; nor shall we go upon him, nor send upon him, but by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.'"
A denial of any of those rights guaranteed by King John at Runnymede is a denial of due process, a denial of the law of the land.
Another explanation of
Due process of Law
A better definition of due process for the nonlegal scholar may be built upon an expression by Justice Brandeis in a dissenting opinion in which he said substantially that fully as important as the constitutional or statutory provision for protecting the right of man is "procedural regularity" in the adjudication of his claim.Thus, an accused must have
(1) inquiry of the charge by a Grand Jury in a Federal case. If a true bill be returned he must have
(2) a copy of the indictment with a list of the witnesses who testified respecting him. He must have
(3) adequate time to prepare his defense. He must have
(4) the assistance of counsel, and if he cannot employ counsel the Government must appoint a competent attorney to defend him. He must have
(5) a trial in public before
(6) a petit jury of twelve, fairly drawn, deciding for or against him unanimously. He must be
(7) confronted by the witnesses against him. Should he be convicted, he must have
(8) appeal to a court of review, if he desire it.
States require due process of law
In civil proceedings in the courts of States involving money or realty or estates in probate or damages, there is like "procedural regularity" provided. A denial of any element of this procedure is a denial of the due process of law enjoined upon the Nation by the Fifth Amendment and upon the States by the Fourteenth.Many cases appear in the judicial reports in which some factor in this process due to the defendant or the litigant was denied, and in each the appellate court reversed the judgment and remanded the case to the trial court to proceed again, and correctly.
Those are some of the safeguards to "life, liberty and property" set up by the profound historians in the Constitutional Convention, who knew so well what has been insufficiently taught to us, that, in the words of William Ellery Channing, "the state is too often the grave of the man."
Justice Field said in 1885 (113 U. S. 27) of the Fourteenth Amendment, of late being misapplied against the States:
"But neither the Amendment -- broad and comprehensive as it is -- nor any other amendment, was designed to interfere with the power of the State, sometimes termed its police power, to prescribe regulations to promote the health, peace, morals, education, and good order of the people."
In that case a municipal ordinance regulating the operation of laundries at night was upheld. The case is an example of the unimportant litigation which has been taking the attention of the Supreme Court in recent years, and about which Justice Miller wrote (96 U. S. 97) in 1877 (brackets inserted):
Justice Miller on misuse
of due process clause
"It is not a little remarkable that while this provision [due process, Fifth Amendment] has been in the Constitution of the United States, as a restraint upon the authority of the Federal Government, for nearly a century, and while, during all that time, the manner in which the power of the Government has been exercised has been watched with jealousy, and subjected to the most rigid criticism in all its branches, this special limitation on its powers has rarely been invoked in the judicial forum or in the enlarged theater of public discussion."But while it has been a part of the Constitution [in Fourteenth Amendment], as a restraint upon the power of the States, only a very few [9] years, the docket of this Court is crowded with cases in which we are asked to hold that the State courts and the State legislatures have deprived their own citizens of life, liberty or property without due process of law.
"There is here abundant evidence that there exists some strange misconception of the scope of this provision as found in the Fourteenth Amendment."
In that case an assessment for the drainage of swamp lands in Louisiana was under attack. Unless the complainant was denied the procedure under the law of Louisiana which was given to everybody else, he had been deprived of no right under the Fourteenth Amendment.
What would that constitutionalist think could he know of the decisions in recent years exhibiting a "strange misconception of the scope of this provision as found in the Fourteenth Amendment?"
A review of some leading cases
In 1884 the Supreme Court held (110 U. S. 516) that California did not violate the Fifth Amendment, requiring indictment by a grand jury, by employing instead the "information" of the prosecuting attorney. Certainly not. The requirement was written against the United States Government only.In 1897 a man spoke on Boston Common without a permit, for which he was apprehended. It was held (167 U. S. 43) that the regulation was not in conflict with any constitutional provision respecting National citizenship.
That decision should have been stare decicis, the controlling precedent, for a large number of late cases overturning local regulations of States or their municipalities for cleanliness and order.
In 1900 it was held (176 U. S. 581) that Utah, in setting up a jury of 8 in criminal cases, was not bound by the Sixth Amendment requiring the United States to have a jury of 12 deciding unanimously. To be sure, not one of the ten amendments touches the States.
A State law tending to disorder
In 1921 the Supreme Court held (257 U. S. 312) that a law of Arizona exempting strikers from civil or criminal liability while all others remained liable for breaches of duty (torts) denied the "equal protection of the laws" of the State which the Fourteenth Amendment forbids. Of course, the Fourteenth Amendment was written against the States, while the First to Tenth, inclusive, were to protect the States from the National Government, which is now busy taking over, notwithstanding. Judicial "liberalism" appeared here. Justices Holmes, Pitney, and Brandeis dissented in the belief that the State could leave persons injured by strikers to remedy in actions at law for damages.
The doctors of law in disagreement
In 1939 an ordinance of Jersey City forbidding the leasing of a hall without permit for a meeting to advocate the obstruction of government was held (307 U. S. 496) in an opinion by Justice Roberts to violate the free speech provision of the First Amendment. A permit was denied to an organization of Communists. The United States District Court had enjoined the City from enforcing the ordinance, the Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed that, and the Supreme Court gave final affirmation, all three National courts applying to the Republic of New Jersey the Freedom-of-Speech Clause of the First Amendment, written against the Nation only. Justice McReynolds dissented on the ground that the plaintiffs should have sought relief in the courts of New Jersey, which alone had jurisdiction. Justice Butler also dissented, saying that the Boston Commons case, previously mentioned, should have been the guide.
Great States toppled in groups
In the same year again Justice Roberts wrote the opinion (308 U. S. 147) which overturned the courts of last resort in the sovereign States of California, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, and New Jersey upholding municipal ordinances forbidding the distribution of handbills in the streets. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts pointed out the fundamental fact that there was no interference with speech or publication anywhere in the city except in the streets. There is probably not a municipality in the United States, down to the smallest, that has not some such police ordinance, which is for good order -- and constitutional.In 1940 the Supreme Court of Connecticut was reversed (310 U. S. 296) for sustaining an ordinance requiring a permit for authority to solicit for a religious or other cause, Justice Roberts writing the opinion.
A large number of the cases overturning municipal ordinances prohibiting uses of the streets for different purposes were instituted by Jehovah's Witnesses under the claim that the religious freedom and the free speech protected by the First Amendment had been denied. They spoke in the streets and used sounding instruments to give recorded addresses, and they disturbed residents by knocking on the doors and urging the purchase of books and pamphlets. They were not forbidden to hire a hall and carry on there, or to go to some open place. But if they had been prevented by State or municipal law from activity anywhere, that would not have violated the First Amendment, a restriction on National action only.
From 1937 down, there have been more than thirty cases of the kind reviewed before the Supreme Court of the United States. They belonged for final decision in the tribunals of the States. It would be iteration and reiteration to go over any more of them.
Delinquency of American lawyer
The American Bar -- local, State, and National -- stood tongue-tied during the years that a quartet of great Justices -- Van Devanter, McReynolds, Sutherland, and Butler -- resisted steadily and brilliantly the pressure of swelling centralism against our system of widely divided powers.Although the hour is very late, the organized Bar of each State should make ready to admonish the senators from its State to refuse to confirm any appointment by the President to any Federal Court -- the Supreme Court, the eleven Circuit Courts of Appeals, and the hundred and a half District (trial) Courts -- if the appointee is not a seasoned jurist of repute or an attorney who has won distinction as a practitioner in the field of constitutional law. Constitutional scholars, not sociologists or politicians, must make up those courts.[5]
5. When Franklin D. Roosevelt became President, the Supreme Court of the United States numbered 5 Republicans and 4 Democrats. The policy had been to have each party fairly represented, although the subject is not political. Yet, when Congress turned over the general management of the country to the President, and his "policy" was Socialism, how could the American expect to secure in courts under such appointment the rights of free enterprise?
In 1949 the Court contained 8 Democrats and 1 Republican, the last mentioned having been a colleague in the Senate of Mr. Truman, who appointed him.
Of the 192 appointees to all Federal courts by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, 184 are Democrats and 8 are Republicans. Not one of these appointees, from top to bottom, had gained any measurable experience as a jurist on any of the State supreme courts, or had achieved distinction at the Bar as a constitutional lawyer.
Highly experienced judicial
material abundant
The courts of last resort in the forty-eight States, and the appellate courts below those, offer an abundance of highly competent jurists for appointment to the Federal courts. They are entitled to recognition by promotion. The Judiciary of States and of Nation would be strengthened by that course.By remaining dumb and inactive for a decade and a half or more while judicial appointments have gone to low politics and inexperience, the American lawyer has discredited himself.
The Press, because the schools failed the writers, was of little use, where it was not a contributor to the confusion.
Long ago a European writer on our system declared the Judiciary to be the keystone of the American arch. The writers of The Federalist said that it is the least able of the three Departments to defend itself, and that it would be in peril from the other two. The Executive Department has not made the best appointments, and the Legislative Department has sanctioned such appointments.
A thorough-going reform as to appointments and confirmations is imperative.
Will a packed court "deliver"?
On June 23, 1947, the Supreme Court of the United States, in a suit brought by the Attorney General against the State of California, held (332 U. S. 19) that "California is not the owner . . . and that the Federal Government, rather than the State, has paramount rights in and power over that belt, an incident to which is full dominion over the resources of the soil under that water area, including oil."The "belt" is a three-mile strip of land lying under water seaward from low-water mark and called tideland. The belt of water is the boundary line between a nation and the open sea. Vessels of foreign countries entering those waters become affected by the maritime laws of the country. But the land under the waters is the property of the State.
Three decisions of the Supreme Court had held this.
California had been giving leases on this tideland to drillers for petroleum under an act of its Legislature of 1921. Many valuable wells have been found under the deep water. Similar valuable production of petroleum has been carried on along the Gulf Coast within the three-mile limit.
On October 27, 1947, Chief Justice Vinson entered a decree giving effect to the decision of the Court by Justice Black, declaring that the United States is now and has been "possessed of paramount rights and powers over the lands, minerals and other things underlying the Pacific Ocean lying seaward of the ordinary low-water mark on the coast of California, and outside of inland waters, extending seaward three nautical miles. The United States is entitled to injunctive relief" (italics inserted).
What the United States went after
The petition of the Government (original in the Supreme Court) asked for a decree of ownership and for a writ enjoining the State and persons from continuing the trespass complained of.Neither the decision of the Court nor the decree deals with title to the land. Each is with respect to "paramount rights" of the United States, implying inferior rights in the State, but without any discussion as to how either got its rights or precisely what those rights are. In a dissenting opinion Justice Frankfurter asked how the United States got its "rights" -- by conquest, or how.
In the ordinary lawsuit a claimant of land must exhibit a deed, or a lease showing a right to occupy, or a will transmitting, or a line of inheritance, or prescription by adverse possession. Otherwise, his suit will be dismissed.
Baseless claim of U.S.A. to "right"
Here the United States appeared with empty hands with respect to documentary evidence of title. And it appeared with unclean hands, which is ground for dismissal in a court of equity. For California had held possession of the land for 100 years, since its admission under the Constitution of 1849 laying claim to the tidelands. Thus California had documentary evidence of its title. But without the provision in its Constitution accepted by the Congress which admitted it to the Union, its adverse possession for that time would have ripened into title. And, by that token, the United States would be denied relief for laches, long sleeping on its "rights."
The decision ambiguous and far-fetched
Not only was the defense of California brushed aside as of no effect, but the United States made no motion, as before said, to show how it got title (not "paramount rights"), which Justice Frankfurter urged as necessary. The decision was cluttered with citations of what Justice Frankfurter called "the tenuous writings of publicists," to the disregard of judicial decisions on the subject and the constitutional provisions governing. Referring to a decision (262 U. S. 100) respecting rum running at sea during the term of the Eighteenth Amendment, the opinion said:"That the political agencies of this Nation both claim and exercise broad dominion and control over our three-mile marginal belt is now a settled fact."
Freedom of seas not muniment of title
But that had no bearing on the title to lands under the tidewaters. The opinion lugged in also "the freedom of the seas"; but as the decisions on the subject point out, the ownership of the land by the State is subject to navigation. There is no record that the ownership of tidelands by States ever interfered with the operations of the United States in peace or war. Even if there were interference, the United States would have to acquire title, not seize possession.In a decision of the Court written by Chief Justice Taney in 1842 the law was stated (16 Peters 367) as follows, and it has remained unchanged (italics inserted):
Law respecting tidelands long undisputed
In 1873 the Supreme Court, Justice Field writing (18 Wallace 57), followed the decision of Taney in stating the rights of California itself (italics inserted):"Upon the admission of California into the Union upon equal footing with the original States, absolute property in, and dominion and sovereignty over, all soils under the tide-waters within her limits passed to the State," subject only to navigation.
The cases cited here, and others urged by California, were not overruled. They are still the law. Justice Black gave much attention to a case decided (3 Howard 212) in 1845 respecting tidelands in Mobile Bay and said that the principle applying to "inland waters" could not be extended seaward. The decree entered by the Chief Justice against California was made to deal with lands "outside of inland waters," which seems to show the only reason that the Court could find for not following the decisions by Taney and Field just before presented. However, the subject matter is tidelands, not waters inside or outside. Whether inside or outside, the land belongs to the State when the tide of the ocean covers it.
International law rewritten by the Court
Justice Black and those concurring were in what is known in the American vernacular as "a hard row of stumps." They left unexplained where the Court got authority to rewrite international law -- defined in the administration of George Washington between England and the United States -- by drawing a distinction between tidelands in the open and tidelands in an arm of the ocean.As international law has been a build-up under practices by the executive departments of governments, and by treaties covering points agreed to, the making of it necessarily lies beyond the jurisdiction of courts.
Constitutional limitations also by-passed
The wise men at Philadelphia wrote into the Constitution their objections to the ownership of lands in a State by the United States except in instances specified. In next to the last paragraph of section 8 of Article I, carefully specifying and limiting the powers to Congress, the Legislative Department is given the right "to exercise like authority [as over the District of Columbia] over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other useful Buildings."It was undoubtedly with reference to that language that the Supreme Court said (3 Howard 212) in 1845 (italics inserted):
"The United States has no constitutional capacity to exercise jurisdiction, sovereignty, or eminent domain within the limits of a State or elsewhere, except in the cases in which it is expressly granted."
Tenth Amendment supported title of California
Following that forceful implication in the first article of the Constitution, that territory even for the governmental purposes of the Nation can be acquired in a State only by its consent, the Tenth Amendment, the last article in the Bill of Rights, added this buttress against National encroachment:"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States [as are powers of coinage, treaties, war], are reserved to the States respectively or to the people."
In the States is a vast reservoir of powers not surrendered, and the Sovereignty is withholding many more.
The official report of the decision in the case against California does not show that the Court was asked to explain how the National Government could vault those obstructions to its getting title -- or even "paramount rights" -- in a State. The first question that should have been elucidated -- Where did the United States get any "rights," and how, to tidelands in California? -- remains a deep mystery.
What "precipitated" this
conflict of Republics?
In the opinion of the Court it is said that by giving leases to these lands, California "precipitated this extremely important controversy.""Precipitate" imports sudden action. But the law of California authorizing the leasing was passed in 1921, a quarter of a century before the United States awoke to the invasion of its "paramount rights." The conflict between the States -- for interior as well as maritime States intervened in support of California and the Constitution -- and the Nation was "precipitated" in 1936 by the introduction of a bill by a senator destitute of any conception of the constitutional position of the States in the Union.
Near mania of Congressmen to break States
As often pointed out herein, members of Congress have long seemed to be possessed of a near mania to break down their States. To be sure, the schools and universities gave them no constitutional education, and to a degree they are to be pitied rather than blamed.The bill of the unschooled senator declared the tide-lands to be part of the public domain of the United States. Title by ipse dixit! It was remodeled into a joint resolution directing the Attorney General to assert and establish the title of the United States to tidelands and petroleum deposits. The resolution passed the Senate by unanimous consent, but the House took no action. The Secretary of the Navy, whose Department got a sniff of petroleum during the dispute about the Teapot Dome in the Harding and Coolidge administrations, filed a brief in the Senate in support of the movement. While a number of maneuvers immaterial here were in progress, this suit was brought, and the attorneys general of 46 States filed a brief in opposition to it. That was an amazing awakening of the States from protracted slumber.
Two Presidents encouraged
the illegal scheme
A Joint resolution of Congress of July, 1946, quieting title in the States was vetoed by President Truman, who, as a recent senator, had been favorable to the action against the States.The Secretary of the Interior testified before a congressional committee that in a talk with President Roosevelt in April, 1937, the Chief Executive raised the question of the ownership of oil in the tidelands. That was shortly after the senator had "precipitated" the controversy. He authorized the litigation. After his death in April, 1945, President Truman did likewise.
Thus, the whole administration, the Executive Department, the Legislative Department, the Navy, and the Judicial Department, all concurred in this attempt upon the property of the States.
The worst imaginable can happen here
The facts related show the origin and development of a plot by one Republic to seize illegally the lands of other Republics, such as might have been hatched in Moscow against Poland. Administrations calling themselves the "New Deal" and the "Fair Deal" did that!Quite a change in the American governmental mind has taken place since England attempted to "move over" and occupy some gold-bearing lands in Venezuela and was stopped by the Cleveland administration.
What has been shown is a demonstration that anything may happen here.
But, of a certainty, it is within the power of the States in Congress to override this startling decision and clear their lands of the cloud which it put upon title to them.
Interpretative amendments to
the Constitution suggested
Chisholm sued the State of Georgia and recovered a judgment which the Supreme Court sustained (2 Dallas, 419) in 1793. As it is against ancient principle for sovereignty to be sued without its consent (as the United States consents to be sued in specified instances in its Court of Claims), a great commotion followed the decision, and in the next year what became the Eleventh Amendment was proposed to the States for ratification. It provided, briefly, that "the Judicial power shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity" against a State.Again, in 1933, what became the Twenty-first Amendment, repealing the Eighteenth (Prohibitory) Amendment, was proposed and it was adopted in the short space of nine months and fifteen days. After 13 years and .10 months of trial and controversy, the Prohibitory Amendment went out and carried with it the coercive legislation and some fantastic judicial decisions which it had engendered. In one case it was held that a man on an interstate journey by railroad with a flask of liquor in his valise was "transporting" intoxicating drink in "interstate commerce" in violation of governmental command!
In like manner, curative amendments should be proposed to the States revoking all the acts of Congress and the judicial decisions applying the Taxing Clause, the Commerce Clause, and the General Welfare Clause of the Constitution where they were not intended to be operative. It may be asked, for example: How can the National Labor Relations Act and all that has been done under it be unscrambled? The answer is that the States can resume the police power which they abandoned, but of which they could not divest themselves constitutionally, over their labor conditions and over all the needs of the people. Already that sentiment has found expression in many States.
In December, 1949, the State of Michigan had formally "seceded" from the District of Columbia. Its legislature had enacted a law forbidding strikes until a vote of the workers has been taken in accordance with specifications laid down. In the month named, the Department of Justice went into the Supreme Court of the United States to ask that the law of Michigan be restrained from operation, as the National Government had "preempted" that field, having reference to the unconstitutional National Labor Relations Act of Congress. But it has been shown from the Constitution and other authorities that the United States cannot take over a field inherently in the States and not susceptible of surrender by them.
The battle of the States for taking back their Union is opening up. They can win it easily. The whole power respecting the subject resides in them.
The interpretative amendment or amendments might declare that the grant of power to Congress by section 8 of Article I "to lay and collect . . . Taxes to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States" shall be strictly construed as limiting expenditures for the Nation, at home and abroad, as a member of the family of nations, and shall not be taken to authorize the Government to engage in the manufacture of electric power, or to provide rural electrification, or to engage in any kind of industry or trade, or to provide aid to any class of individuals, who are protected by the inherent police power of the States.
Two clauses most wrongfully used
Second, the Commerce Clause shall be strictly construed to mean regulation of interstate (not intrastate) commerce as commerce was understood in the Constitutional Convention and as the word was applied by the courts and the Interstate Commerce Commission down to the 1930s; and it shall not be held to give jurisdiction to Congress of workers throughout the country except those engaged in commerce across State lines and with foreign countries; and it shall not be construed to authorize the engaging in commerce of any kind by Government by any means, direct or indirect.Third, the General Welfare Clause shall be strictly construed to mean the welfare of the United States as a political entity, and as specified in the grant of powers in section 8 of Article I; and it shall not be taken to mean the welfare of persons as to health, safety, morals, education, and general well-being, matters of which the States have inherent jurisdiction by virtue of their police power, no part of which they surrendered to the Nation when they drew the Constitution. They adopted the Bill of Rights in further protection of that power.
Those suggestions are merely outlines of what should be developed in thorough detail in Congress for amendments to restore the Union to the States comprising it.
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THE COURSE OF PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS DURING THE LAST FORTY YEARS HAS MADE CLEAR THAT THE SAFETY OF THE REPUBLIC REQUIRES RETURN TO STRICT CONFORMITY WITH THE DIRECTIONS OF THE CONSTITUTION
1 comment:
natives have all been enslaved by capitalism. example-
GOD, a prince; a ruler; magistrate or judge; an angel.
God, a corporate government.
god, almighty god.
last time me got invited to court was january 2012. showed up with in a chair so me didn't have to obey the first order, all rise. when called, wheeled up to the bar and stated, we conffest, we do recognize you and by the grace of god we will be forgiven, amen. me was the last one called. judge threw the papers at the female clerk and left the courthouse. wheeled out to the clerk's office, was told that the case disappeared.
capital letters, capital punishment, beheaded. no meaning whatsoever.
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