This language is part of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26th Amendments. (And the defunct 18th Amendment, fwiw.)
The factual question: has the Supreme Court ever ruled on the meaning of ‘appropriate’ in this context? And what did it say?
I don’t know whether there are any specific cases at hand, but my gut feeling is that even if asked, the Supreme Court would refuse to define “appropriate” in this context, leaving it up to Congress to decide what that means.
Yes, of course, there have been many, many cases challenging whether legislation enacted under the grants of power within each of the amendments was “appropriate”. One early case, concerning the Fourteenth Amendment, was ex parte Virginia. The case concerned a federal law prohibiting states from discriminating in jury selection, which moved the Court to a concise statement about “appropriate”:
Thanks, Freddy. That was exactly the sort of thing I was looking for.
IOW, common ordinary words such as appropriate have their common ordinary meaning which is a well-settled principle of law.
“Whatever legislation is appropriate, that is, adapted to carry out the objects the amendments have”
And I thought appropriate legislation would have nothing to do with the amendment.
So for example while it is obvious that putting us on the gold standard would not be appropriate to a flag burning amendment it would be appropriate for a balanced budget amendment?
Let’s ignore for a moment that putting us on the gold standard would be Constitutional in either case.
We are shortly going to find out. It appears that five Justices do want to strike down the Voting Rights Act of 1965, enacted under such a grant of power to Congress to enact “appropriate” legislation to enforce the 15th Amendment guarantees of equal voting rights. The Court can’t just say “We find, as a factual matter, that the South is no longer as discriminatory as it was decades ago, and therefore we do not think this is sound policy anymore” because that would be legislating, not ruling judicially. To strike it down they have to say it is beyond the power of the Congress to legislate as they have, which is going to take some novel interpretation of the word “appropriate”.
Bob X says: "they have to say it is beyond the power of the Congress to legislate as they have, which is going to take some novel interpretation of the word “appropriate”. "
Not at all, in such an argument the definition of the word appropriate needn’t be at issue at all.
If ceratin enactments are beyond the power of Congress to legisdlate, it would not matter at all if those enactments are appropriate to their purpose. To put it in leaglese, they would be void ab initio, never valid at all therefore appropriate or inappropriate doesn’t matter.
But the 15th Amendment explicitly says, “CONGRESS SHALL HAVE THE POWER” to enforce equal voting rights by “appropriate” legislation. So, if the Court is going to find this beyond the grant of power, they have to say that this legislation is not “appropriate” to the purpose of enforcing the 15th amendment.
Not necessarily. The 14th Amendment already has a mechanism for ensuring the vote in taking away representation. We can argue how it should be interpreted as it only accounts for male citizens over 21 and we can argue the politics of actually implementing it but SCOTUS can say “Not our problem. That’s how the legislature wrote the amendment and if they want something different they can change it.” and rule that the only “appropriate” law is one that implements that part of the amendment.
For the 15th Amendment, all I have to do is let everyone vote. Nothing says they have to be fairly represented. While I agree that racial gerrymandering probably goes against the spirit of the 15th Amendment, it does not violate the letter of the amendment. And as Shaw and Miller show it is really hard to balance fair representation with racism (both pro-majority and pro-minority) under the 15th Amendment.
For these reasons, I think the pre-clearance could easily be ruled unconstitutional considering there is always recourse in the courts.
This is my thinking. If, for example, the black citizens of Mississippi’s 4th congressional district feel that voting laws are discriminating against them, they can sue to change things. It would not be inappropriate for the Supreme Court to declare that now, in the year 2013, it is no longer necessary or proper to allow some nameless federal beurocrats to micromanage state-level activities.
In my view – which disagrees sharply with Saint Cad on the substantive question – this is more of a GD topic.
Seeing that the Southern states were willing to take that hit, a further amendment saying that discrimination on racial basis simply could not be allowed at all, and that Congress had specific authority to enforce that by legislation.
They DID, by proposing the 15th Amendment, which has been ratified and is now also the supreme law of the land.
This is not principally about the gerrymandering of districts, but about a variety of ruses to make it more difficult for black people to vote at all.
But the Amendment specifically gives CONGRESS, not the courts, the enforcement authority.
That is up to Congress to determine. If the 15th Amendment only contained section 1, you would have a reasonable argument; but the intent of the Amendment clearly was that it should not be the burden of the black citizens to fight in court, but for the federal government to enforce their rights in whatever manner the Congress legislatively provides. If you do not think that federal bureaucrats should be micromanaging anymore, then you have the right to vote for Congressmen who would change or completely repeal the Voting Rights Act.