Contemporary American History, 1877-1913 — John Shaqi
Contemporary American History, 1877-1913Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
History
Contemporary American History, 1877-1913
Beard, Charles A. (Charles Austin)
United States -- History -- 1865-1921
Under this strict interpretation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth
amendments, all the fundamental rights of persons and property remained
subject to the state governments substantially in the same way as before
the Civil War. The Supreme Court thus could not become the final arbiter
and control the social and economic legislation of states at every
point. Those champions of the amendments who looked to them to establish
Federal judicial supremacy for the defense of corporations and business
enterprises everywhere throughout the American empire were sadly
disappointed.
Nowhere was that disappointment more effectively and more cogently
stated than in the opinions of the judges who dissented from the
doctrines announced by the majority of the court. Chief Justice Chase
and Justices Field, Bradley, and Swayne refused to accept the
interpretation and the conclusions reached by the majority, and the last
three judges wrote separate opinions of their own expressing their
grounds for dissenting. The first of these, Justice Field, contended
that the Louisiana statute in question could not legitimately come under
the police power and was in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment,
inasmuch as it denied to citizens of the United States the fundamental
rights which belonged to citizens of all free governments--protection
against monopolies and equality of rights in the pursuit of the ordinary
avocations of life. In his opinion, the privileges and immunities put
under the supervision of the Federal Government by the Fourteenth
Amendment comprised generally "protection by the government, the
enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess
property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety,
subject, nevertheless, to such restraint as the government may justly
prescribe for the general good of the whole." In other words, Justice
Field would have carried the Amendment beyond the specific enumeration
of any definitely ascertained legal rights into the field of moral law,
which, in final analysis, would have meant the subjection of the state
legislation solely to the discretion of the judicial conscience. The
future, as we shall see, was with Justice Field.
In the opinion of Justice Bradley, the Louisiana statute not only
deprived persons of the equal protection of the laws, but also of
liberty and property--the right of choosing, in the adoption of lawful
employments, being a portion of their liberty, and their occupation
being their property. In the opinion of Mr. Justice Swayne, who
dissented also, the word liberty as used in the Fourteenth Amendment
embodied freedom from all restraints except such as were "justly"
imposed by law. In his view, property included everything that had an
exchange value, including labor, and the right to make property
available was next in importance to the rights of life and liberty.
_The Granger Cases_
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