Surprised you are surprised. How long have I been on this message board? Around as long as you.
Old acquaintances.
Senile?
Why does the 13th Amendment (prohibiting slavery) have a section sayin congress can prohibit slavery
Huh…seems you are right.
Seems weird to have 50 different (or however many have bothered) laws defining slander/libel but that’s what we got.
Learned something. Thanks.
Oh, I recognize your name, just not your location. I’m surprised a US citizen seems to apparently be unfamiliar with the separation of powers in the Constitution, or other aspects of federal law. These are questions that I would expect more from a Canadian or someone from the UK.
Hey, I’m not the one who wasn’t paying attention in high school civics class.
Maybe they learned from the constitution and those amendments to be more explicit. How much consternation is there over the fact that while emoluments are prohibited, there is no penalty, enforcement, or even authorization to enforce that constitutional stipulation?
Maybe the people writing the amendment had more foresight than those who wrote the constitution and bill of rights.
Well they definitely had nearly a century’s experience of racist fucking state and local governments doing everything in their power to deny people equal protection of the law and other rights that the bill of rights was meant to guarantee.
That’s one of the biggest lessons of our own history, that state and local governments are where the worst mischief happens.
The first eleven amendments all represent limitations on Federal power, and the 12th changes the way the President and Vice President are elected. The first eleven were also all ratified before the principle of judicial review of the constitutionality of federal laws was established by Marbury vs Madison in 1803.
Later amendments often extended the power of the Federal government into new areas. The 13th was passed more than sixty years after the 12th. In the intervening time, it became clearer that explicit authority for enforcement should be included in amendments.
The first eleven amendments all represent limitations on Federal power, and the 12th just changes the way the President and Vice President are elected. The first eleven were also all ratified before the principle of judicial review of the constitutionality of federal laws was established by Marbury vs Madison in 1803.
Later amendments often extended the power of the Federal government into new areas. The 13th was passed more than sixty years after the 12th. In the intervening time, it became clearer that explicit authority for enforcement should be included in amendments in order to avoid possible conflicts between federal and state powers.
As someone who has been on this board as long as I have I am surprised you have not learned that the separation of powers between the federal government and the states is nothing like as imagined in 1789.
And again, it is weird to write a prohibition into law that is not enforceable unless you say it is enforceable. Seems to me it should go without saying that if you write a law that says “X” is not permissible you should not have to write another law that says the legislature is allowed to enforce the law you just wrote. Seems to be implied to me that a law written is meant to be enforced.
The UK maybe. However, the rights of the Canadian government vs. the provinces have been explicit since the BNA Act in 1867, so we’re very familiar with the concept of who gets to do what, and the weird roads it leads down.
For example - education is a provincial matter, and the federal government must keep its nose out, except when handing out money. More succinctly than the USA, criminal law is the purview of the feds, so it’s uniform across the country. None of this 51-plus different laws on the same thing.
We do this in the US too.
When the feds wanted the drinking age to be 21 years of age in the US they were not allowed to pass a law to do that (was up to the states).
So the feds said to the states if you want highway money from the fed (which was substantial) you (the states) had better make your drinking age 21. All the states (eventually) capitulated.
Go to the blackboard and write 100 times:
The Constitution is not a collection of laws. It is the framework upon which laws are written.
How many times do you have to be told this? The Constitution does not write laws. Congress writes laws. Get that straight and the clouds part, the sun shines, and your high school teachers stop rolling in their graves.
Really?
What part of “supreme law of the land” is unclear to you?
The US Constitution is not a list of guidelines they hope we will follow. It is the law…the SUPREME law no less. Says so right in the part I just quoted.
Maybe if you write it 100 times you will get it.
It’s not that it’s not enforceable.
The question is: who should enforce the law banning slavery - making it a criminal offence, creating civil actions for people held in slavery, and so on?
Should it be the States, with a history over two centuries of writing laws to make slavery legal? Places like Virginia, Alabama and Georgia?
Or should it be the federal Congress, which just fought a war and passed a constitutional amendment to prohibit slavery?
The drafters of the 13th Amendment went with Congress.
Thanks. This makes sense although is there any reason the US congress couldn’t have made laws regarding this without that clause?
Can’t help myself…
Where are the other, presumably numerous, times I was told this?
At that time, the governing interpretation of the US Constitution was much stricter limits on the federal legislative power. Property laws, criminal laws, and so on were mainly seen as an area of state power, not federal. Nothing in Article I, section 8, gave Congress power to regulate these areas at local levels. Section 2 of the 13th Amendment expanded the legislative powers of Congress.
Understood.
This is just me arguing out loud and not taking exception to your post (which I agree with):
I would argue that Article VI of the constitution gives congress the power to make such laws…
*“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof;…”
*
What could be more in the wheelhouse of the US legislature than making a law in pursuance of the laws promulgated in the constitution?
Let’s read the actual words of Article IV.
Two things are mentioned, “the Constitution” and “the laws of the United States”. (Actually, three, but we can ignore treaties for the moment.) The judges are bound by those laws because the laws, the stuff passed by Congress or state legislatures, can only be legitimate if they are also constitutional. (Here’s a working definition of a law: something that can be declared unconstitutional. Can any part of the Constitution be declared unconstitutional? No. It can only be amended.) The two things work together to form the supreme law. That is not the same as saying that the two things are identical.
If you want to play this game of what the Founders meant, define “more perfect union.” Then we can get interesting and try to define “emolument,” “office,” “money,” “advice and consent,” and “religious test.”
(Article VI)
It really is not hard despite Scalia levels of warping what is written:
*
“This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land;”*
The semicolon is effectively a period.
We can read that sentence as separate pieces, one of which is:
“This Constitution shall be the supreme law of the land;”
That is a 100% correct reading of what is there. There is no ambiguity. The US Constitution is not a list of ideas, it is the law. The literal supreme law of the land.
Period. Full stop.
The preamble is not law by the way so “more perfect union” has no effect.
I’m not sure how this quibbling addresses the actual subject of this thread.