Penguin Guide to the United States Constitution: A Fully Annotated Declaration of Independence
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The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.
When the framers of the Constitution devised the complicated process by which presidential electors would select the nation’s president and vice president, they assumed that those electors would run for their offices as individuals, and that the voters would select them on the basis of their individual merits. In that original notion of the way the electoral system would work, it was expected that the electors would each cast two ballots, with no distinction between a presidential and a vice-presidential ballot, and that the person receiving the greatest number of votes would be elected president and the person receiving the next largest number of votes vice president.
The framers of the Constitution did not anticipate the emergence of an organized political party system in which two extra-constitutional political parties, the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, would organize electors (or, in some states, slates of electors) pledged in advance to vote for presidential and vice-presidential candidates as part of a party “ticket.” In the election of 1800, the party ticket of Thomas Jefferson (the person whom the Republicans intended as their presidential candidate) and Aaron Burr (the person whom the Republicans intended as their vice-presidential candidate) received a majority of electoral votes. In fact, though, party discipline was so great that the electors cast their votes on their two ballots in such a way that Jefferson and Burr had an equal number of votes, with no constitutional mechanism for deciding which of the candidates was intended to be the presidential candidate and which the vice-presidential candidate. As a consequence, the election was thrown into the House of Representatives, where, after a great deal of intrigue, Jefferson was selected as president and Burr the vice president.
The adoption of the Twelfth Amendment was a necessary adjustment to the way in which the American party system had transformed America’s presidential elections. Although the provisions of the Twelfth Amendment are as mind-numbingly complicated as the original provisions of Article II, Section 1, the essential feature of the amendment was that henceforth electors would vote separately for the president and vice president. And while the original language in Article II, Section 1, stipulated that the House of Representatives would choose among the five leading candidates should no one receive a majority of electoral votes, the new provision in the Twelfth Amendment narrowed the choice to the top three candidates.
AMENDMENT XIII (1865)
SECTION 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
SECTION 2
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Thirteenth Amendment was passed by Congress in 1861, as the Southern states were seceding from the union, but not ratified until 1865, after the South had accepted defeat in the Civil War. It marked the first important step in bringing American constitutional practice into harmony with American libertarian values. Although there had been previous, private attempts to eliminate slavery, usually accompanied by promises of compensation for the value of the “property” lost as a consequence of the emancipation of slaves, the Thirteenth Amendment unequivocally abolished slavery, providing for the immediate emancipation of all slaves in the United States, without compensation to their owners. It also gave to Congress the power to enforce the emancipation of slaves, a power that it exercised in the Civil Rights Act of 1866.
AMENDMENT XIV (1868)
SECTION 1
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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.
SECTION 2
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
SECTION 3
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
SECTION 4
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
SECTION 5
The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Perhaps the most significant and far-reaching amendment to the Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment is viewed by many scholars and jurists as the provision of the Constitution that has brought the principles enunciated in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence into the realm of constitutional law. The words of the preamble of the Declaration—“that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”—are purely exhortatory; they were important rhetorically in defining American purposes as they declared the colonies’ independence from Great Britain, but they do not have the force of law. At the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment is the stipulation that all Americans born or naturalized in the United States, including the newly freed slaves, are citizens of the United States, and that no state may make or enforce any law that shall infringe on the rights of American citizens, including those unalienable rights of “life, liberty or property” without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment’s promise that all persons are guaranteed “equal protection of the laws” would prove an important mechanism by which the Supreme Court, in a series of rulings in the twentieth century, would articulate a uniform standard by which many of the rights spelled out in the Bill of Rights would be guaranteed to all citizens in each of the states.
Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment had a more specific intent. It effectively repealed the three-fifths compromise by which slaves were counted as three-fifths of a
person in the apportionment of representation and taxation, and stipulates that any state that attempts to deny the right to vote to any male United States citizen over the age of twenty-one will have its representation in Congress and the electoral college reduced proportionally to the number of citizens so disenfranchised. This part of Section 2 was clearly intended by the members of Congress who drafted it as a means of protecting the newly freed slaves’ right to vote. It is notable that the only exception to this protection of the right to vote is in the case of individuals who have participated “in rebellion, or other crime.” This exception not only applied to convicted criminals (who are still denied the right to vote in most states) but also to large numbers of Americans who had participated in the Southern “rebellion” during the Civil War.
Section 3 of the amendment explicitly excluded former Southern rebels from serving in any federal or state office until Congress, by a two-thirds vote, removed that prohibition. This constitutional device effectively turned over control of the “reconstruction” of the former secessionist states to individuals who had remained loyal to the union during the Civil War.
Section 4 of the amendment absolved the federal government of any responsibility for the debts incurred by the Southern states or by the Confederacy during the Civil War.
Finally, Section 5 granted to Congress broad authority to proceed with legislation that would enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the immediate aftermath of the adoption of the amendment, Congress passed seven statutes aimed at guaranteeing civil rights to freed slaves as well as imposing conditions for readmission to the union on the states that had seceded from it. Over the course of the next two decades, many of the provisions of those statutes would be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, which adopted an increasingly narrow interpretation of the rights granted by the Fourteenth Amendment.
AMENDMENT XV (1870)
SECTION 1
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
SECTION 2
The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
While the Fourteenth Amendment punished states that deprived newly freed slaves of the right to vote by reducing their representation in the House of Representatives, the Fifteenth Amendment categorically prohibits the denial of the right to vote on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Notably, the amendment does not mention gender, which, to the dismay of advocates of women’s suffrage, meant that although newly freed male slaves were guaranteed a right to vote, women of all races were denied that right. In spite of the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, the states of the former Confederacy managed to find ways to continue to drastically curtail the right of African Americans to vote, through the use of poll taxes, literacy tests, and other discriminatory devices. It was not until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that African Americans have had equal access to the polling place.
AMENDMENT XVI (1913)
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
Although the original version of the Constitution gave Congress the power to levy direct taxes, such taxation was only to be levied on the states themselves, in direct proportion to their population. Although Congress during the Civil War was able to levy a direct tax on individuals as part of a wartime measure, the Supreme Court, in an 1895 ruling (Pollock v. Farmers Loan and Trust Co.), ruled that taxing the property of individuals was unconstitutional. The Sixteenth Amendment effectively reversed that ruling. It is silent on what the rate of taxation might be (for example, it does not speak to whether all individuals should be taxed at an equal rate or whether the rate of taxation should be progressively higher on higher incomes). Congress, which enacted a federal income tax law in October 1913, just seven months after the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment, opted for a modestly progressive tax rate. The rate of taxation imposed on the top taxation bracket has varied from 7 percent in 1913 to a high of 92 percent in 1952-53. The current rate of taxation in the top bracket is 38.6 percent, nearer the low end of that continuum.
AMENDMENT XVII (1913)
The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.
When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.
This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.
When the Constitution was first drafted, the framers believed that the Senate, the upper house, should be the repository of superior wisdom and virtue and, toward that end, stipulated that senators should be elected by the legislatures of each of the states, whose members would presumably be able to make a wiser choice than the people at large. As one of a series of reforms during the Progressive Era, Congress proposed, and the states endorsed, an amendment calling for direct, popular election of senators.
AMENDMENT XVIII (1919)
SECTION 1
After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
SECTION 2
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
SECTION 3
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
Most of the amendments to the Constitution seek to grant specific rights to the people by placing restraints on the actions of the government. The Eighteenth Amendment is the only amendment that has sought to restrict the rights of the people—in this case the right to manufacture, sell, or transport “intoxicating liquors” within the United States. Interestingly, it does not prevent the consumption of liquor. Though liquor consumption declined markedly during the years when the amendment was in force, it certainly did not cease. Indeed, as people turned to illegal sources for their alcoholic beverages, the operation of the Eighteenth Amendment served to encourage otherwise law-abiding people to break the law and bolster the activities of organized crime.
AMENDMENT XIX (1920)
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Nineteenth Amendment was the culmination of more than three-quarters of a century of dedicated work by advocates of female suffrage. Although some states had passed legislation allowing women the right to vote prior to 1920, that right was not extended to all women until the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment. Unlike the operation of the Fifteenth Amendment, which was thwarted by states that found ways to continue to deny the vote to African Americans, the amendment granting women the right to vote encountered little resistance in the aftermath of its passage.
AMENDMENT XX (1933)
SECTION 1
The terms of the President and Vice President shall end a
t noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.
SECTION 2
The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.
SECTION 3
If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President elect shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.