Doug Kendall: Obama is just the latest person to get the history of the Constitution wrong by ignoring the Reconstruction amendments
[Doug Kendall is the founder and executive director of Community Rights Counsel, a public interest law firm that promotes constitutional principles.]
The American conversation right now suffers from an odd pathology--our tendency to leave the fundamental changes to our Constitution made after the Civil War out of discussions of our nation's most important document. At the Supreme Court last week, the justices endlessly debated what the Second Amendment meant in 1789. But, as Charles Lane wrote recently, the 14th Amendment, which was not even mentioned by the justices, is the essential bridge between the 2nd Amendment's militias and the modern day invocation of the right to self-defense that was at the heart of the case before the Supreme Court. The same day, in his majestic speech on race, Barack Obama left the Reconstruction Amendments out of his recitation of the history of race and the Constitution.
Speaking at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Obama told a familiar story of how "statesmen and patriots" met in that city in 1787, and, though they compromised on slavery, created a document that "embedded ... at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law." These "words on a parchment," Obama explained, "would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part--through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk--to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."
This is a standard and inspiring tale, taught at law schools around the country, but it suffers from a slight problem. It isn't true. In fact, the "words on a parchment" in the 1787 Constitution embedded slavery far more securely than equality. It took the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, to put "equal citizenship" at our Constitution's core. As Yale Law School's Akhil Amar wrote in America's Constitution, "it would be nice to think that the Founding Fathers designed a document whose arc would inexorably bend towards freedom and equality. Alas, the facts do not bear out this comfortable thought."
Great as it was in many ways, our 1787 Constitution produced over 70 years of sectional conflict that was ultimately resolved in one of history's bloodiest wars. That Civil War, and the Union victory in that war, is what paved the way for the Constitution we celebrate today. With the 13th Amendment, a document that bent toward slavery became stridently anti-slavery. The 14th Amendment guaranteed equal citizenship, civil rights, and due process for all Americans and gave Congress vast new power to enforce these mandates. The 15th Amendment and subsequent measures extending the franchise to women and young Americans made the right to vote a fundamental constitutional value....
Read entire article at New Republic
The American conversation right now suffers from an odd pathology--our tendency to leave the fundamental changes to our Constitution made after the Civil War out of discussions of our nation's most important document. At the Supreme Court last week, the justices endlessly debated what the Second Amendment meant in 1789. But, as Charles Lane wrote recently, the 14th Amendment, which was not even mentioned by the justices, is the essential bridge between the 2nd Amendment's militias and the modern day invocation of the right to self-defense that was at the heart of the case before the Supreme Court. The same day, in his majestic speech on race, Barack Obama left the Reconstruction Amendments out of his recitation of the history of race and the Constitution.
Speaking at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Obama told a familiar story of how "statesmen and patriots" met in that city in 1787, and, though they compromised on slavery, created a document that "embedded ... at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law." These "words on a parchment," Obama explained, "would not be enough to deliver slaves from bondage, or provide men and women of every color and creed their full rights and obligations as citizens of the United States. What would be needed were Americans in successive generations who were willing to do their part--through protests and struggle, on the streets and in the courts, through a civil war and civil disobedience and always at great risk--to narrow that gap between the promise of our ideals and the reality of their time."
This is a standard and inspiring tale, taught at law schools around the country, but it suffers from a slight problem. It isn't true. In fact, the "words on a parchment" in the 1787 Constitution embedded slavery far more securely than equality. It took the 14th Amendment, passed after the Civil War, to put "equal citizenship" at our Constitution's core. As Yale Law School's Akhil Amar wrote in America's Constitution, "it would be nice to think that the Founding Fathers designed a document whose arc would inexorably bend towards freedom and equality. Alas, the facts do not bear out this comfortable thought."
Great as it was in many ways, our 1787 Constitution produced over 70 years of sectional conflict that was ultimately resolved in one of history's bloodiest wars. That Civil War, and the Union victory in that war, is what paved the way for the Constitution we celebrate today. With the 13th Amendment, a document that bent toward slavery became stridently anti-slavery. The 14th Amendment guaranteed equal citizenship, civil rights, and due process for all Americans and gave Congress vast new power to enforce these mandates. The 15th Amendment and subsequent measures extending the franchise to women and young Americans made the right to vote a fundamental constitutional value....