Posted on 04/04/2006 11:24:00 AM PDT by Merchant Seaman
What is wrong with the Second Sentence of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment" That sentence reads as follows:
“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Why is the United States missing from the prohibitive declaration, "No State shall"?
The 13th certainly wasn't.
I confess that I cannot see the connection between the 14th Amendment and the gun rights issues that continue to arise. What on earth did the 14th Amendment have to do with that. As for the dissolution of the various state militias, that was simply an outgrowth of the South's defeat. Would have been pretty stupid to permit those states to keep their militias after what they did with them. But today each state has its national guard, and unofficially, there are many militia groups in existence.
Actually they would have continued to be occupied until a government accepting of the Constitution was elected. Secession would of course, never have been acceptable. They would simply have been treated more as a territory than a state, and would have been unable to participate in the national congress.
Seems to me a fundamental principle in law is that any contract entered into through coercion on one party is, by definition, null and void.
For all intents and purposes, the 14th Amendment was ratified through pressure, but it has been considered constitutional nonetheless, because by that time, most in the South wanted back into the Union, and wanted to participate in the legislative process.
The 14th Amendment itself has nothing to do with the "gun rights" issue, except that the successful implementation of gun control laws at the state level in the immediate aftermath of the ratification of the 14th Amendment -- despite the fact that these laws are blatantly unconstitutional -- is irrefutable proof that the 14th Amendment was a complete farce.
Some selected reading:
http://www.kennedytwins.com/publications.htm
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565540247/qid=1017979684/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-6912821-3550540?n=283155
http://southernevents.org/why_the_south_was_right.htm
http://www.fff.org/freedom/1100f.asp
"Incorporation" is the process by which rights applied against the federal government in the various Amendments constituting Bill of Rights are additionally applied against the States via the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Our poster doth protest what had been called "reverse incorporation," - which is usually associated with the 1954 decision Bolling v. Sharpe - which applies the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause (and, by the same reasoning, other 14th Amendment liberties liberties) against the Federal Government.
At this point, I'm guess I'm should say that any lover of liberty is pretty happy about of the 14th Amendment, which codified the liberties for which so many died in the Civil War. The Constitution would be deficient without it.
By devious means the modern American corporation was found to be a legal person under the Fourteenth Amendment. The corporation has the right to own other corporations, which seems a violation of the XIVth Amendment giving citizenship and abolishing slavery, and does not have the right to vote, which is about the only kind of person that lacks sufferage. By way of compensation, the corporation can own property and has eternal life. What!? That's a strange duck.
Provided, of course, that the superior government is actually given this power by some positive provision, and/or not restricted by a negative provision. In other words, the 14th amendment does not in any way enlarge the powers of the federal government by implication.
Isn't the Fifth Amendment a prohibitive declaration against the Executive and Judicial Branches of the U.S. Government?
And isn't the Fourteenth Amendment a prohibitive declaration against the Legislative and Executive Branches of State Governments?
The provision within the 14th amendment that mirrors that of the 5th - the due process clause - applies to the same branches of state government that the identical provision in the 5th applies to in the federal government. They're worded the same way, except that the provision in the 5th is written in the passive voice. But the shift from passive to active voice in no way implies a shift in meaning.
Supreme Court decisions during most of the 20th Century are full of 14th Amendment arguments. So it is far from being a farce, and in fact is probably the single most referred to "rights amendment" in case law. As for the 2d Amendment, it has had its gains and losses, but simply because of the language of the Amendment itself, not as a result of any other amendment. I'm sure the ratifiers of the BOR would now wish that the recognition of the right itself had not been linked to a condition, which should not be decisive as to whether a right exists or does not exist, but has been the one "loophole" that gun control advocates cling to.
They already seem to occupy most seats in congress. I guess they are alive.
Of course they did. That was the basic purpose of the 14th Amendment -- to serve as an all-encompassing justification for any expansion of Federal powers at the expense of state's rights.
Uhhhhh...
I still maintain that the 5th is directed to the Executive and Judicial branches of the FedGov and to the State governments through the 14th. And I maintain that the 14th is directed to the Legislative branch of the State governments.
I'm struggling with this but that is how I read it.
Uhhhhh...
I still maintain that the 5th is directed to the Executive and Judicial branches of the FedGov and to the State governments through the 14th. And I maintain that the 14th is directed to the Legislative branch of the State governments.
I'm struggling with this but that is how I read it.
Even ACLU will defend property rights of corporations sometimes. Corporations are also where the civil rights, EEO, environmental regulations, and human rights are most vociferously advocated and enforced. It's like a nation within a nation.
I'm sure you don't believe that a state can withhold anyone's natural rights? In any case, states cannot have rights, they have powers. And either a person has a right or he does not. A right cannot exist at the federal level, but not at the state level. If so, it is not a right, but a privelige.
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