passed the most stringent laws--operating directly and primarily upon States and their officers and agents, as well as upon individuals--in vindication of slavery and the right of the master, it may not now, by legislation of a like primary and direct character, guard, protect, and secure the freedom established, and the most essential right of the citizenship granted, by the constitutional amendments." It did not seem to Justice Harlan that the fact that, by the second clause of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, the States are expressly prohibited from making or enforcing laws abridging the rights and immunities of citizens of the United States, furnished any sufficient reason for upholding or maintaining that the amendment was intended to deny Congress the power, by general, primary, and direct legislation, of protecting citizens of the several States, being also citizens of the United States, against all discrimination, in respect of their rights as citizens, which is founded on "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." "Such an interpretation," thought he, "is plainly repugnant to its fifth section, conferring upon Congress power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce not merely the provisions containing prohibitions upon the States, but all of the provisions of the amendment, including the provisions, express and implied, in the first clause of the first section of the article granting citizenship." The prohibition of the State laws could have been negatived by judicial interpretation without the Fourteenth Amendment on the ground that they would have conflicted with the Constitution. The court said the Fourteenth Amendment was not intended to enact a municipal code for the States. No one will gainsay this. This Amendment, moreover, is not altogether for the benefit of the Negro. It simply interferes with the local laws when they operate so as to discriminate against persons or permit agents of the States to discriminate against persons of any race on account of color or previous condition of servitude. Of what benefit was it if it did not do this? The constitutions of the several States had already secured all persons against deprivation of life, liberty or property otherwise than by due process of law, and in some form recognized the right of all persons to the equal protection of the laws. If this be the correct interpretation even, it does not follow that privileges which have been granted by the nation, may not be protected by primary legislation upon the part of Congress. Justice Harlan pointed out that it is for Congress not the judiciary, to say that legislation is appropriate, for that would be sheer usurpation of the functions of a coordinate department. Why should these rules of interpretation be abandoned in the case of maintaining the rights of the Negro guaranteed by the Constitution?