I know this has been tried before - could some one please explain the verdict to me? What reasoning held that the draft does not constitute involuntary servitude?
Please note, I don’t want to debate the topic - I’m trying to understand the findings of the Supreme Court, which I assume would be a question with a factual answer. Thank you!
The Master’s brief analysis: Here.
In Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366 (1918), the Supreme Court said:
In other words, the draft just simply ain’t “involuntary servitude” within the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment.
The draft doesn’t even require a formal declaration of war by “the great representative body of the people.” During the Vietnam War, which was never an actual declared war, the Court upheld a conviction for burning a draft card and declared that the power to classify and conscript manpower for military service was "beyond question.’’ United States v. O’Brien, 391 U.S. 367, 377 (1968).
See also US v. Holmes, 387 F.2d 781, 784 (7th Cir. 1968).
In other words, the Supreme Court knows perfectly well that the authors of the 13th Amendment didn’t intend to ban compulsory national service, and we’ll have no unintended consequences here, thank you very much.
Good reasoning – pity they didn’t apply it to the 14th, too.
I’m reminded of Cecil’s comment in his “Ohio Argument” column: “Just one problem. The Porth decision didn’t specifically address the Ohio argument. It just sort of spluttered that attacks on the 16th Amendment were stupid.”
It would appear that sputtering is one of the building blocks of American Constitutional Law.
The rulings boiling down to that the purpose was a ban on the imposition upon a person of the civil condition of chattel slave, landbound serf, or indentured servant (of a private patron). You can be pressed into public service, but it has to be for a term, in exchange for compensation, and under certain due process rights. Think of it as an eminent-domain “taking” of your time and labor.
That term can be pretty indefinite. For example, in WWII the term for both draftees and enlistees was the “duration of the war plus 6 months.” And the war wasn’t officially over until the government said it was. I.e. a formal treaty would end it but such treaties are often not formalized until long after the conflict has ended.
Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution gives Congress the power “to raise and support” a military force, and the Supreme Court has not been anxious to define how the military force can be “raised.”