What is the argument here? This was mentioned on a political site for angry Obama haters.
Have they got any cause for this other than “I don’t like it, so it didn’t really happen”?
What reasoning do they present to back this up? I’ve got my copy of the US Constitution here and it says that Amendment XIV was ratified July 9, 1868. Is it just some wingnut posting “The 14th Amendment was never properly ratified!” or is there some indication of the line of thought behind that?
Since that amendment sets down who is a citizen of the US (amongst other things), if it wasn’t properly ratified then no previous President was a citizen either and thus they’ve all been ineligible to hold office as well.
Sort of tangential, but relevant. This is a technique that the right-wing nut cases have used before. They claimed the 16th Amendment wasn’t properly ratified, as well, and Cecil addressed it: Is U.S. income tax invalid because Ohio wasn’t legally a state when the 16th amendment was ratified? - The Straight Dope
It was a statement that it wasn’t ratified with no explanation.
Wikipedia says the Ohio tried to withdraw their ratification (and they weren’t a state anyway lol).
The argument was whether states can make gun laws, and whether the 2nd amendment applies to them.
Wesley Snipes is a right-wing nutcase?
Nah, he’s a nebech. But his lawyers/tax advisers were obviously such. At least to me.
I’ve heard all sorts of claims of amendments not properly ratified, and amendments that were ratified, but the powers that be refused to recognize them.
One of the favorites is the alleged Titles of Nobility amendment. If someone takes a title, then they lose their citizenship. This means that all lawyers aren’t citizens because they have the title Esquire! That means all the laws enacted in the last 150 years are all illegal!
You’ve got to believe me! The Pod people are here!
Okay, cut to the chase: The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were approved by the Northern states, but not the Southern states which were under reconstruction, and the Southern states were not allowed to leave reconstruction until they approved these amendments. One could argue that these amendments required 3/4ths of the states, and since none of the Southern states originally approved for these amendments, and only approved these amendments under duress, that they weren’t officially approved.
As my History professor said, Lee v. Grant (1865) settled the legality of many of these issues. Plus, there are two ways of understanding legal issues: One is archaic legal theory and the other is legal practice. You can create all the archaic legal theory you want, but it’s what is actually practiced that counts.
So far, all three branches of government acts as if these amendments are official. The Supreme Court has officially based cases upon them, Congress passes laws based upon them, and no President has questioned them. In fact, all people who have appeared in court questioning these amendments have usually lost their cases. So, as far as the real world is concerned, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are part of the U.S. Constitution.
Besides, what do you want to do? Allow slavery? Allow states to refuse citizenship to people based upon race? Not allow blacks to vote? It’s pretty difficult to understand exactly what people who complain about these amendments actually want to accomplish.
There is a deep dark conspiracy theory about how the 14th amendment created a corporate citizenship to supplement the natural citizenship. These usually involve deep dark secrets that the United States is technically a British colony, and went bankrupt and is now owned by the Federal Reserve Board which is controlled by the Queen of England. Only by insisting on keeping your natural, common law citizenship instead of your strawman 14th amendment citizenship, can you truly be free.
(A side note: One conspiracy page talked about how the U.S. is being run by a secret cabal on the top floor of 55 Water Street, New York NY. I found this quite amusing because I was part of a Unix Administrators group that met monthly on the top floor of 55 Water Street.)
True freedom involves refusing to use the zip codes, getting fussy about the capitalization of your name, and adding random punctuation marks in your name. If you do these things, you are not subject to the corporate United States, Inc. law, but the natural laws. Of course, the courts don’t understand that because they use the gold fringed flag of admiralty which means they’re not true courts. But, they know they’re the true Americans fighting the New World Order and someday, the true patriots will once again rule!
I’m from Texas, and I actually know a lot of these people.
Aha! I knew it; you’re part of the cover-up!!!oneone 
If you’re curious, here’s the argument as to why the 14th amendment was never properly ratified (in PDF):
Basically, you’re dealing with the hypocracy of the Congress after the Civil War. The Southern States were considered part of the United States except when inconvienent (such as representation in Congress). Congress declared the 14th Amendment passed when 3/4 of the non-seceding states passed it. Andrew Johnson would publicly state that this amendment was illegally ratified and it was this charge (disparaging the laws passed by Congress) that was the first charge the Senate voted on because the House managers thought it was a guarantied conviction.
The point is moot because even if SCOTUS ruled that ratification illegal, the fact that the Reconstructionist governments ratified it made it legal.
Most emphatically not true. In fact, the necessity of securing ratification by the former Confederate states was one of the primary motives for enfranchising African Americans in the South via the Reconstruction Acts of 1867.
Again, not true. The Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t ratified until after Johnson was acquitted. The articles on which the Senate took votes dealt primarily with Johnson violating the Tenure of Office Act.
If it weren’t actually ratified, I’d think that someone would have noticed by now.
The SCOTUS wouldn’t use it as a basis for decisions, etc…
All the arguments presented have been presented before and have all been put through legal trials. If any of them held water, we’d have one less amendment.
To answer the OP: You don’t provide any links or quotes, so we can’t know whom you’re addressing. But the most common “argument” against the Fourteenth Amendment is that it was originally rejected by the Southern legislatures, and ratified only after Congress intervened to mandate African American suffrage.
In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the Southern states held whites-only elections of constitutional conventions and new legislatures and governors. These legislatures recognized the abolition of slavery, but enacted “black codes” to keep black people in a condition as close to slavery as possible. When Congress passed the Fourteenth Amendment, designed to protect the rights of former slaves (and ban “black codes”), ten of the 11 legislatures in the former Confederate states rejected it, by overwhelming majorities.
There were at that time 36 states in the Union, with 27 required to ratify, so the ten recalcitrant states could block ratification by themselves. (In addition four Northern states in which Democrats controlled at least one house of the legislature rejected ratification.)
In response, Congress restarted Reconstruction via new constitutional conventions, this time with black people allowed to vote. The newly elected, biracial conventions granted black people the vote in state elections, and the Southern states then elected new, biracial legislatures which were happy to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment. When it achieved three fourths of all the states, Congress declared the amendment ratified.
Southern whites were never happy about this, but became reconciled to it over time, as they realized that the Fourteenth (and Fifteenth) Amendments could be circumvented and they could act as the pleased in racial matters. In modern times the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were revived, and formed the basis of federal legislation and litigation during the Civil Rights Movement. In response, opponents revived the argument that it had never been properly ratified because . . . well, basically, because black people were allowed to vote, by federal mandate.
It was also sent through Congress when the southern Senate and House seats were vacant.
Look up Article XI of the impeachment charges: Denying the validity of the laws passed by the 39th Congress
This charge was all about the 14th Amendment. Johnson opposed this amendment, and when the Southern states that Johnson had readmitted to the US voted against it, it died . . . but did it? The Radical Republicans claimed that those states had not yet re-entered the Union, therefore they did not have voting rights. Thus by Congress’ calculation, the Amendment had the necessary 3/4 votes of the states to pass AND that Johnson exceeded his authority in readmitting the former Confederate States. Johnson did not hide his feelings on this issue.
As for the timeline, you did catch me on an error of verbiage. Johnson was impeached for objecting to the illegal passage of the 14th Amendment in Congress. On May 16,1868 the Senate voted on Article XI. The vote failed to receive 2/3 of the votes needed for conviction by 1 vote (35-19). This devastated the hopes of the Radical Republicans. Article I was then read but Senator Williams (who voted for conviction) asked for an adjournment. The Senate reconvened on May 26,1868. Chief Justice Chase allowed the impeachment articles to be read out of order and Article II was read and voted on. Again the vote was 35-19. Article III was read and voted on with the vote 34-16. Realizing that there was no hope of conviction, Sen. Williams asked for adjournment “sine die” [indefinitely]. This adjourment was approved and the trial was over.
In any event the Union, having fought a bloody expensive civil war to deny that the states could break up the union, pretty much took the political line that the actions of the federal government couldn’t be declared illegitimate or void because the rebel states hadn’t participated in the government for four years. Victor’s rules sure, but logically the Union couldn’t say otherwise- it would have given the rebel states more power in defeat than they’d had in rebellion.
You misspelled “invariably.”
Article XI did indeed cite Johnson’s allegations about the illegitimacy of Congress, although his objection at that time was to the manner in which the Fourteenth Amendment (and other laws) was proposed, not the manner in which it was ratified. The charge wasn’t “all about the Fourteenth Amendment”, however. The substance of Article XI was that Johnson had failed to execute the Tenure of Office Act, the Army Appropriations Act, and the Reconstruction Act of 1867, and it was the substance that was covered in testimony, in debate, and in the Senators published justifications of their votes.
The managers and pro-removal Senators did arrange for the Senate to vote first on Article XI, in the belief that it was a better bet for conviction than the more narrowly tailored earlier articles. The key difference, however, wasn’t that Article XI included the remarks about the Fourteenth Amendment; it was that it cited other violations of law besides the dismissal of Secretary of War Stanton.
There was another article specifically concerned with what Johnson said about Congress: Article X. It accused Johnson of attempting to bring Congress into “disgrace, ridicule, hatred, and contempt”. The managers recognized it as a clunker, since it alleged words and not actions, and the Senate never bothered to vote on it.