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Enforcing the Rights of Due Process: the Original Relationship Between the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act Kurt T

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Enforcing the Rights of Due Process: the Original Relationship Between the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act Kurt T University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Law Faculty Publications School of Law 2018 Enforcing the Rights of Due Process: The Original Relationship between the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act Kurt T. Lash University of Richmond, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.richmond.edu/law-faculty-publications Part of the Civil Rights and Discrimination Commons, Constitutional Law Commons, and the Fourteenth Amendment Commons Recommended Citation Kurt T. Lash, Enforcing the Rights of Due Process: The Original Relationship between the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act, 106 Geo. L.J. 1389 (2018). This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the School of Law at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Law Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Enforcing the Rights of Due Process: The Original Relationship Between the Fourteenth Amendment and the 1866 Civil Rights Act KURT T. LASH* For more than a century, legal scholars have looked to the 1866 Civil Rights Act for clues regarding the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Because the 1866 version of the Act protected only citizens of the United States, most scholars believe that the Act should be used as a guide to understanding the FourteenthAmendment's citizenship-based Privileges or Immunities Clause. A closer look at the original sources, however, reveals that the 1866 Civil Rights Act protected rights then associated with the requirements of due process. John Bingham, the man who drafted Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment, expressly described the 1866 Civil Rights Act as protecting the natural and equal right to due process in matters relating to life, liberty, and property. Believing that Congress at that time lacked the constitutional power to enforce the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, Bingham proposed a Fourteenth Amendment that expressly protected every per- son's right to due process and granted Congress the power to enforce the same. Following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress repassed the Civil Rights Act and extended the majority of its protections to "all persons." This final version of the Civil Rights Act cannot be viewed as an enforcement of the rights of citizenship. Instead, it links the Civil Rights Act to the Due Process Clause and to the rights of all persons. Understanding the link between the 1866 Civil Rights Act and the 1868 Due Process Clause sheds important light on the original mean- ing of Section One of the FourteenthAmendment. First, it suggests that scholars have erred in trying to use the Civil Rights Act as a guide for understanding the original meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause. Although citizens enjoyed the equal rights of person and prop- erty protected by the Act, such enjoyment was only because all persons held such due process-related rights. The particular Privileges or * E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law. 0 2018, Kurt T. Lash. The author thanks Lawrence Solum, Randy Barnett, John Harrison, Jeff Pojanowski, Hank Chambers, and Kevin Walsh for their helpful comments on various drafts of the Article. I am especially grateful for the suggestions and encouraging words by participants at the London Roundtable on Constitutional Interpretation (hosted by Notre Dame Law School), the University of Richmond Law School faculty colloquium, and the University of San Diego's Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism Works-in-Progress Conference. Finally, a special thanks to Elizabeth Farrington for her research and editorial assistance in the preparation of this Article. 1389 1390 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 106:1389 Immunities of Citizens of the United States involved a different cate- gory of rights-rights that men like John Bingham and Jacob Howard identified as those actually enumerated in the Constitution. Second, understanding the link between the Civil Rights Act and the 1868 Due Process Clause reveals an underappreciated equal rights principle within both the federal Due Process Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause. This principle not only appropri- ately informs due process constraints on federal activity in places like the District of Columbia, but it also implicates broad congressional power to enforce the equal due process rights of all persons in the states regardless of citizenship. TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION. .................................................... 1391 A QUICK WORD ABOUT METHODOLOGY............................ 1395 1. THE LEGAL AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTEXT OF THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS....................................................... 1396 A. RADICAL, CONSERVATIVE, AND MODERATE REPUBLICANS IN THE THIRTY-NINTH CONGRESS .................................. 1396 B. THE DUE PROCESS CRITIQUE OF SLAVERY ...................... 1398 C. THE FREEDMEN'S BUREAU BILL.............................. 1404 1. Debating the Freedmen's Bureau Bill in the Senate ..... .1406 2. The House: Bingham's Proposed Amendment & Debating the Freedmen's Bill ..................... 1410 3. Initial Vote and President Johnson's Veto ............ 1412 II. THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL ........................................ 1414 A. NARROWING THE SCOPE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL .............. 1416 B. PROMOTING THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL AS AN ENFORCEMENT OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF DUE PROCESS........................... 1417 C. JOHN BINGHAM'S CALL FOR A DUE PROCESS AMENDMENT......... .. 1428 D. FEDERALISM AND REMOVING THE LANGUAGE "CIVIL RIGHTS AND IM M UNITIES".............................................. 1430 E. THE DUE PROCESS OBJECTIONS OF JOHN BINGHAM............... 1434 F. JOHNSON'S VETO AND CONGRESSIONAL OVERRIDE............... 1441 2018] ENFORCING THE RIGHTS OF DUE PROCESS 1391 III. THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. .............................. 1447 A. DISCONNECTING THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT FROM THE PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES CLAUSE ...................................... 1447 B. JOHN BINGHAM'S AMENDMENT ............................. 1449 C. THE SPEECH OF JACOB HOWARD ............................ 1451 D. POST-RATIFICATION REPASSAGE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT ........ 1454 IV. IMPLICATIONS ............................................ 1458 A. ON DUE PROCESS AND EQUAL PROTECTION.................... 1463 B. DUE PROCESS AND THE RIGHT TO POSSESS AND ACQUIRE PROPERTY .............................................. 1464 CONCLUSION ...................................................... 1466 INTRODUCTION Scholars have long looked to the 1866 Civil Rights Act for clues to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Both legal documents were drafted and passed within weeks of each other by the same members of the Thirty-Ninth Congress and both involve the protection of individual rights against state abridg- ment.' Congress also repassed the Civil Rights Act following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment,2 suggesting that Congress understood that the Amendment gave it the power to pass the Act. What remains unclear, however, is exactly which provision in the Fourteenth Amendment provided the power to pass legislation like the 1866 Civil Rights Act. The Amendment itself is five sections long. Section One contains multiple provisions, beginning with a definition of citizenship, followed by the protection of the "privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," and ending with a declaration that all persons are to be protected in their rights of due process and the equal protection of the law.3 To date, most scholars assume that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the Privileges or Immunities Clause to retroactively constitutionalize the 1866 Civil Rights Act.4 Many of these same scholars believe the framers intended the 1866 Civil Rights Act to enforce the "privileges and immunities of 1. See Civil Rights Act of 1866, ch. 31, 14 Stat. 27 (vetoed by President Johnson); J. Res. 48, 39th Cong. (1866) (enacted). 2. Enforcement Act of 1870, ch. 114, 16 Stat. 140. 3. U.S. CONST. amend. XIV, § 1 (emphasis added). 4. See AKHIL REED AMAR, AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION: A BIOGRAPHY 389-90 (2005); RANDY E. BARNETT, RESTORING THE LosT CONSTITUTION: THE PRESUMPTION OF LIBERTY 60 (2004); RAOUL BERGER, GOVERNMENT BY JUDICIARY: THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT 20-51 (1977); CHRISTOPHER R. GREEN, EQUAL CITIZENSHIP, CIvIL RIGHTS, AND THE CONSTITUTION: THE 1392 THE GEORGETOWN LAw JouRNAL [Vol. 106:1389 citizens in the several states" as described by Justice Bushrod Washington in the antebellum case Corfield v. Coryell.i If correct, this view suggests that the Privileges or Immunities Clause nationalized a host of "fundamental" property and economic rights, as well as the right "to pursue and obtain happiness and safety."6 A closer look at the original sources, however, suggests that the 1866 Civil Rights Act is best understood as an attempt to protect the due process rights of all persons, and not the special privileges or immunities of United States citizens. Throughout the congressional debates, members linked rights protected under the Civil Rights Act with rights traditionally associated with the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. According to James Wilson, the Bill's sponsor in the House ORIGINAL SENSE OF THE PRIVILEGES OR IMMUNITIES CLAUSE 44 (2015); MICHAEL J. PERRY, THE CONSTITUTION IN
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