Law Commons^™

The Uneasy Partnership: The Balance Of Power Between Congress And The Supreme Court In Interpretation Of The Civil War Amendments, Emil Lippe Jr.

Akron Law Review

The basic thesis of this article is that the enforcement clauses of the thirteenth,' fourteenth, 2 and fifteenth 3 amendments have imposed strong affirmative duties upon the United States Congress and the Supreme Court. These duties, due to their very nature, must be exercised in tandem with each other toward the overall goal of the Civil War Amendments: the guarantee that the civil rights of no American be denied him on the basis of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In addition, a special type of constitutional stare decisis operates to prevent both branches from contracting the rights guaranteed …

Teaching Slavery In American Constitutional Law, Paul Finkelman

Akron Law Review

From 1787 until the Civil War, slavery was probably the single most important economic institution in the United States. On the eve of the Civil War, slave property was worth at least two billion dollars. In the aggregate, the value of all the slaves in the United States exceeded the total value of all the nations railroads or all its factories. Slavery led to two major political compromises of the antebellum period, as well as to the most politically divisive Supreme Court decision in our history. Vast amounts of political and legal energy went into dealing with the institution. It …

The Fourteenth Amendment: The Great Equalizer Of The American People, Abel A. Bartley

Akron Law Review

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which was ratified on July 28, 1868, demonstrated the change in attitude, which hit many Americans after the chaotic Civil War. It was America’s first attempt to legally challenge White supremacist ideas by creating a truly equal multiracial society. With its emphasis on equal protection and equal justice, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to be the great equalizer of American people, legally changing African American men into White men so that they could enjoy all the rights, privileges, and immunities of United States citizenship. However, determining the meaning of equality uncovered the …

John Bingham And The Background To The Fourteenth Amendment, Paul Finkelman

Akron Law Review

Legal scholars have long debated the “original intent” of the Fourteenth Amendment, especially Section one, which has been the driving engine of the national expansion of civil rights and civil liberties for the past half century or more. Lawyers comb the records of the Thirty-ninth Congress, certain they will find some Rosetta stone that will explain such terms as “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,” “due process of law” or “equal protection of the laws.”

While exploring the records of Congress can be useful, the debates in Congress do not tell the whole story of the origin …

John A. Bingham And The Story Of American Liberty: The Lost Cause Meets The "Lost Clause", Michael Kent Curtis

Akron Law Review

Nations have stories too. Ours is a story about the American Revolution against monarchy and aristocracy, a revolution based on the faith that all people are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The revolution espoused the ideal that legitimate governmental power comes only from the consent of the governed.

In the old world, kings were sovereign. In America, the sovereign was “the people.” That ideal appeared in the preamble of the Constitution—a preamble that declared (somewhat inaccurately) that the Constitution came from “we the people” and was designed to assure liberty and justice. Though we …

The Use Of The Fourteenth Amendment By Salmon P. Chase In The Trial Of Jefferson Davis, C. Ellen Connally

Akron Law Review

The resulting decision in The Slaughterhouse Cases is one that is still debated and stands as a primary example of an unintended consequence of a constitutional amendment. Although historians and legal scholars have considered a number of the unintended consequences of the Fourteenth Amendment, one result, unforeseen by its proponents, has been totally overlooked... In the legal proceedings that came to be known as United States v. Jefferson Davis, a legal determination was required to determine whether or not Section 3 imposed a simple disqualification or an actual punishment...Could those who pushed for the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, those …

The 39th Congress (1865-1867) And The 14th Amendment: Some Preliminary Perspectives, Richard L. Aynes

Akron Law Review

This article is a preliminary effort to tell the story of the people who brought the nation the 14th Amendment, the 39th Congress...I want to suggest that when someone creates the Hall of Fame of the Congresses we need to include the 39th Congress.

Infinite Hope - Introduction To The Symposium: The 140th Anniversary Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Elizabeth Reilly

Akron Law Review

This symposium celebrates the 140th anniversary of ratification. The anniversary provides us with a fruitful occasion to reflect upon the meaning of the Amendment to its Framers in Congress and as it was initially interpreted by the United States Supreme Court and the public, and to examine the lasting impacts of both conceptions...Therefore, our participants explicitly discuss applying their understanding of history to the modern implications of the Fourteenth Amendment and current law. Understanding the Amendment, especially because of its early reception by the Court, requires looking at law, history, political science, and sociology, among other disciplines, to try to …

Still Too Close To Call? Rethinking Stampp's "The Concept Of A Perpetual Union", Daniel W. Hamilton

Akron Law Review

In a classic article in the Journal of American History, which was based on his presidential address to the Organization of American Historians in 1978, the great Civil War historian Kenneth Stampp made the claim that the arguments in favor of the constitutionality of secession made by the Southern states were as strong, if not stronger than the constitutional arguments made, then and now, in opposition to secession. Stampp is to my mind the greatest Civil War historian of the 20th century and his views on secession remain required reading and are cited routinely today. This is not to say …

Robert Cumming Schenck: Ohio's Bitter, Fearless Fighter, Devin C. Capece

The 39th Congress Project

No abstract provided.

The 39th Congress (1865-1867) And The 14th Amendment: Some Preliminary Perspectives, Richard L. Aynes

The 39th Congress Project

No abstract provided.