Which Article of the US Constitution did Amendment XV actually revise? Article I? I haven’t been able to find an article to which it refers.
Amendments don’t have to revise any Article. They can just add stuff, which is what Article XV does. I think that’s actually true of most of the Amendments.
Thanks gdave. That solves that question.
I think that the 15th amended the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th.
The Dredd Scott decision held that the word “citizen” in the Constitution meant whites-only.
The 14th amended that interpretation of “citizen”. Under the 14th, anyone born in the US is a citizen.
But, that left open the option of restricting the rights of citizens to vote. For a non-racial example, women were citizens of the US, but could not vote, and that wasn’t a breach of the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court held that denial of the right to vote based on sex wasn’t a breach of the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th amendment:
The 15th Amendment pre-empted that argument from being made with respect to race, colour, or previous condition of servitude.
So I would say that the the 15th modified the definition of “citizen” in the privileges and immunities clause of the 14th by stating that a citizen’s right to vote could not be restricted based on race.
I think you can make an argument that it revised the 10th Amendment. Prior to the enactment of the 15th Amendment, states could (and did) deny voting rights to some people based on their race and the federal government did not have the authority to override the states on this issue. The 15th Amendment delegated the power to legislate against this to the federal government (along with the obligation to do so).
Yes, that’s a fair point as well.
I’m not following you. Children and convicted felons are certainly citizens of the United States but may lawfully be denied the right to vote. If an amendment passes that mandates that children be permitted to vote, that doesn’t change their citizenship.
And that’s a difference to the amendment processes in most (by far not all) other countries, where a constitutional amendment usually takes the form of a direct rewrite of the existing text. Such amendments will look like “In Article x paragraph y, replace the word ‘gadget’ with ‘widget’ and remove the sentence '…”". In American constitutional law, amending the constitution is rather an act of appending something to it rather than changing existing wording.
Of course, in countries that follow the model described above, it’s also possible to create new Articles. But these will typically be inserted somewhere within the existing constitutional text, rather than appended at the end; so an amendment might take the form of “Between Articles 67 and 68, insert the following new Article 67a”.
Which articles did the Bill of Rights amend?
It seems that the 21st Amendment is the only one to directly mention an article of the constitution or a previous amendment. It explicitly repeals the 18th Amendment (Prohibition).
It added limitations and clarifications to the powers of Congress, the procedures of Courts, and the scope of powers and rights of states and citizens, so they are supplementary to Articles I, III and IV.
In the US most of the Amendments do not quite “amend” but rather add to, expand, clarify, restrict or supercede prior language.
Thus for instance the 13th by banning slavery renders moot any language previously in the Constitution or laws regarding the legal status of slavery, without stating “delete sentence X in paragraph Y of Article Z, Section W”. The language in the 14th that refers to protecting the rights of male citizens over 21 to vote, is expanded by the 19th by extending the right to women, and by the 26th by extending the voting age to 18. And so on and so forth.
Yes, that was my point.
The 12th Amendment repealed part of Article 2. And the 20th Amendment later repealed part of the 12th Amendment. I’ll grant that the word “repeal” wasn’t used but the new text said the old text was no longer in effect and saying a law is no longer in effect is a repeal.
As far as I can see, the 12th and 20th amendments don’t explicitly say that the older text is no longer in effect. They just contain new provisions that contradict the provisions of the older text. The repeal is only implied by the contradiction.
Whereas the 21st actually says “The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.”
I disagree. That contradiction you note is the repeal.
If Kamala Harris, for example, had claimed that she had received the same number of electoral college votes as Joe Biden and therefore the House of Representatives had to choose which of them was President under the terms of Article II, Section 1, Clause 3 , she would have been told that section of the Constitution was no longer in effect.
A law that says another law is no longer in effect is a repeal of that law, even if it doesn’t use the word repeal.
Of course the 12th amendment repeals parts of article 2, and the 20th amendment repeals parts of the 12th. I’m not arguing that. I’ll remind you that my original post said (emphasis added):
It seems that the 21st Amendment is the only one to directly mention an article of the constitution or a previous amendment.
All I’m saying is the 21st amendment has an in-text reference directly naming what it is repealing/amending. Whereas the others repeal provisions of the older text by implication, without actually referring in the text to those older provisions.
Then I have been misunderstanding your posts. I thought you were saying that the explicit repeal of the 21st Amendment had a different legal significance than the implied repeal of other amendments like the 12th.