armoredman
New member
Ah, thank you. I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
The great body of evidence seems to be that the 39th Congress intended the 14th to cover the same ground as the Civil Rights Act.
...and the last time I stayed in a Holiday Inn was in '97!armoredman said:I am not a lawyer, nor do I play one on TV.
Antipitas said:The language used is clear.
There are differences. First off, we have a larger mountain of irrefutable textual and historic evidence on our side. Second, we've got support from both sides of the political spectrum.The right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
That language is clear too, and look at the trouble we're having defining what "infringed" means.
I think so. I have not read Fairman, but I have a book which contains all of the congressional debates over the reconstruction amendments, and I have read enough to believe that the 39th Congress did not and would not have passed something which made the USBOR binding against the States. I don't seem to find any debate over the subject, just a couple of radicals saying that they thought the 14th should make the USBOR binding against the States. The Amendment came out of a committee of fifteen, and I find it hard to believe that the committee intended to make the USBOR binding upon the States when they didn't discuss it or draft the amendment so that it declared it. I am not aware that it was discussed in the House, or the Senate, or that the States discussed making the USBOR binding against the States when (supposedly) ratifying the amendment. In general, I think the evidence against incorporation completely outweighs the evidence for it.Are there still contemporary arguments against the idea?
I think it was well understood to mean something different.the phrase is a term of art. It was well understood to mean those rights that are political (Privileges) and those rights that are natural (Immunities).
You may need to broaden your sources a bit.I've read Bradfords Original Intentions which firmed up my impression, and I've read enough of Berger's Government by Judiciary to wonder how I could have ever believed that the 14th was intended to make the USBOR binding against the States.
While the amendments to the Constitution of the United States were primarily intended to be restrictive upon the powers of the General Government, and not the Legislatures of the several States--yet they are "declaratory" of great principles of civil liberty, which neither the national nor the State governments can infringe.
Hugh Damnright said:We say that the RKBA is not a privilege but a right, and then we turn around and say that the RKBA comes under the 14th's "privileges or immunities". It seems inconsistent to me.
If you support measures to reduce gun violence, as this page does, it's tempting to hope that the court will rule that states aren't bound by the 2nd Amendment. The problem is that allowing states (and cities) to ignore this part of the Bill of Rights could undermine the requirement that they abide by others. (...) This is no time for the court to start picking and choosing when it comes to the Bill of Rights.
Thanks, but I have a book which contains the congressional debates over the reconstruction amendments. I'm only on page 525, but it's a big book with tiny print ... I figure it's about a million words that I've read so far. My view is based upon my study of the congressional record. And also it helped me to read a couple of books about the reconstruction era so I could better understand what the 39th Congress was up to.the 39th Congressional Globe is available online in full
The legislative history that I remember reading shows that the term began as "civil rights and immunties" and was changed to "privileges and immunities" to ensure that it was not construed so as to include political rights.the reason the "privileges and immunities" language was used was because one of the explicit stated purposes was to overturn the decision in Dred Scott. The drafters of the 14th Amendment used the same exact language the Supreme Court used
If the 14th Amendment wasn't designed to apply the Bill to the States, then what was it for?