Balkinization  

Wednesday, January 17, 2024

Treat Section Three Like Section One

Gerard N. Magliocca

I want to flag a common mistake in some of the Section Three analysis. The mistake is treating Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment very differently from Section One. Here are three examples:

1. "Only an event as bad as the Civil War can be a Section Three insurrection." George Will makes this error in his column today. Why is this an error? In part, because Section One is not read this way.

Suppose in the affirmative action last year a lawyer for UNC made the following argument: "My client's use of racial preferences for admissions is not as bad as the Black Codes of 1865-1866. Thus, the UNC policy is unconstitutional." I think we would all agree that this logic would be laughed out of court. The meaning of any given provision is not confined to the mischief that prompted its proposal and ratification.

2. "Section Three is too ambiguous to apply."

Suppose a lawyer got up and said "Section One is too ambiguous to apply." That line of thought would cut down scores of decisions incorporating the Bill of Rights, striking down laws prohibiting interracial and same-sex marriage, and so on To be fair, Charles Fairman did famously argue (in the 1940s) that Section One was too ambiguous to support incorporation. But the Court and most scholars eventually rejected that view. "Equal protection" and "due process of law" are no more ambiguous than "engaged in insurrection." 

3. "Section Three requires an Act of Congress to apply."

I've spilled a lot of ink on this one before, but Section One contains no such requirement.


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