The Southern Case for School SegregationKilpatrick, James Jackson
History
The Southern Case for School Segregation
Kilpatrick, James Jackson
African Americans -- Segregation; Segregation -- Southern States
Section 10 follows with fourteen prohibitions the States agreed to
put upon themselves by the Constitution. No State may (1) enter into
a treaty or confederation; (2) grant letters of marque and reprisal;
(3) coin money; (4) emit bills of credit; (5) make anything but gold
and silver coin legal tender; (6) pass any bill of attainder or (7)
ex post facto law or (8) law impairing the obligation of contracts;
(9) grant any title of nobility; or, without the consent of the
Congress, (10) lay any duty on imports or exports; (11) lay any duty
of tonnage; (12) keep troops or ships of war in time of peace; (13)
enter into any compact with another State, or (14) engage in war
unless actually invaded or in such imminent danger as will not admit
of delay.
_Article II._ The provisions of the Constitution dealing with the
election and office of the President are significant in this brief
review because of the indispensable function that is assigned to the
States as States, even in the choice of a President. As a matter of
law, the popular vote that is cast for presidential candidates in
the Republic as a whole is meaningless. What counts, plainly, is
the vote within each State, for this choice by the people within
their State by custom governs the action of presidential electors
who are appointed in each State “in such manner as the legislature
thereof may direct.” And should the presidential electors fail to
give any one candidate a majority of their votes, the election goes
immediately to the House of Representatives where the votes shall be
taken “by States, the representation from each State having one vote.”
The federal nature of our Union also is made apparent in the
provisions of Section 2, which leave to the States the command of
their own militia except “when called into the actual service of the
United States,” and vest in the Senate a powerful control upon the
executive power of the President. It is only with the advice and
consent of the Senate that the President may make treaties, appoint
ambassadors, and name judges of the Supreme Court and other officers.
And the consent of Senators, to repeat, in a very real sense is the
consent of the States as such.
_Article III._ The Constitution vests the judicial power of the
United States (with such exceptions, and under such regulations as
the Congress shall make) in one Supreme Court and in the inferior
tribunals established by law. The chief point the advocate of
States’ rights might emphasize here is that the high court’s power is
entirely _judicial_ in nature; its jurisdiction extends to cases in
law and equity arising under the Constitution, under Federal law, and
under treaties made under the authority of the United States, and to
“controversies” in which a State as such, or diversity of citizenship
on the part of litigants, may play a part.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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