Chicago gun case could restore other civil rights

Las Vegas Review-Journal ^ | Feb. 26, 2010 | CLARK NEILY

[Free ThinkerNY]

Gun owners aren't the only ones who should pay close attention to the "McDonald" Chicago gun-ban case, which will be argued before the U.S. Supreme Court March 2. If properly decided, the case could restore an important legal tool to protect the rights of small business owners and homeowners who face oppressive state and local government regulations.

Because the Supreme Court in McDonald may consider reinvigorating what is known as the "Privileges or Immunities clause" of the 14th Amendment, those engaged in civil rights battles nationwide may soon have a new arrow in their quiver to better defend the rights of homeowners and entrepreneurs. The clause states "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."

The phrase "privileges or immunities" may be unfamiliar today, but 19th-century Americans used it interchangeably with a term modern Americans know very well: rights.

After the Civil War, officials throughout the South systematically violated the rights of newly freed blacks and white abolitionists in their states and sought to keep them in abject poverty and terror. The whole point in amending the Constitution to add the 14th Amendment -- with its Privileges or Immunities clause -- was to end the pervasive culture of oppression and tyranny by state and local governments, thereby protecting through federal law those rights that are necessary to be a full and self-sustaining member of society.

Two rights the 14th Amendment was clearly intended to protect were armed self-defense and economic liberty. A federal constitutional amendment was passed to ensure that all Americans, regardless of which state they lived in, enjoyed these rights.

[Ken H]

The best discussion of the Privileges or Immunities Clause I have come across is the dissent by Justice Thomas in Saenz v Roe. Excerpt:

Because I believe that the demise of the Privileges or Immunities Clause has contributed in no small part to the current disarray of our Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudence, I would be open to reevaluating its meaning in an appropriate case.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0526_0489_ZD1.html

[marktwain]

Exactly. You cannot read the plain meaning of the 14th amendment, and then read the history of the slaughterhouse cases and the violation of our rights as individuals and citizens since then, without cringing at the gross conspiracy of those in power to deny us our natural rights in order to maintain government power at both the State and Federal levels.