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Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Congress's Power To Enforce Fourteenth Amendment Rights: Lessons From Federal Remedies The Framers Enacted , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Professor Robert Kaczorowski argues for an expansive originalist interpretation of Congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment. Before the Civil War Congress actually exercised, and the Supreme Court repeatedly upheld plenary Congressional power to enforce the constitutional rights of slaveholders. After the Civil War, the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment copied the antebellum statutes and exercised plenary power to enforce the constitutional rights of all American citizens when they enacted the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and then incorporated the Act into the Fourteenth Amendment. The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment thereby exercised the plenary power the Rehnquist Court claims the …
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Chase Court And Fundamental Rights: A Watershed In American Constitutionalism, The , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
Three weeks before he died in May 1873, the frail and ailing Salmon P. Chase joined three of his brethren in dissent in one of the most important cases ever decided by the United States Supreme Court, the Slaughter-House Cases.1 This decision was a watershed in United States constitutional history for several reasons. Doctrinally, it represented a rejection of the virtually unanimous decisions of the lower federal courts upholding the constitutionality of revolutionary federal civil rights laws enacted in the aftermath of the Civil War. Institutionally, it was an example of extraordinary judicial activism in overriding the legislative will of …
Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Revolutionary Constitutionalism In The Era Of The Civil War And Reconstruction , Robert J. Kaczorowski
Faculty Scholarship
The meaning and scope of the fourteenth amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866 remain among the most controversial issues in American constitutional law. Professor Kaczorowski contends that the issues have generated more controversy than they warrant, in part because scholars analyzing the legislative history of the amendment and statute have approached their task with preconceptions reflecting twentieth century legal concerns. He argues that the most important question for the framers was whether national or state governments possessed primary authority to determine and secure the status and rights of American citizens. Relying on records of the congressional debates as …