The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery, and the Fifteenth Amendment protected the right to vote from discrimination based on race. The Fourteenth Amendment contained a number of important provisions. Section one of the Fourteenth Amendment first made clear that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens both of the United States and the States where they reside. Then it provided three restrictions on the states. It was claimed that the protections of the Bill of Rights were the most basic privileges and immunities of citizenship.
The Supreme Court rejected this view in the Slaughterhouse Cases of , giving a very narrow interpretation of this clause that has never been overruled. Although some justices have taken the position that the entire Bill of Rights should be deemed incorporated, the Court has consistently held that each right must be examined separately to see if it so fundamental that it should be incorporated.
Nonetheless, most of the important rights contained in the Bill of Rights have been incorporated under this theory. Only a few have been held not to apply, such as the right to bear arms, the right to a grand jury indictment, and the right to a jury trial in civil cases. The State Action Doctrine. Although the coverage of most of the Bill of Rights has been expanded to the actions of state and local governments, it does not generally apply to private conduct.
With some exceptions, private persons and organizations do not have to comply with the Constitution. For example, while a public university cannot unduly restrict the free speech rights of its students, private universities are not subject to this rule.
Local governments are considered arms of the states for this purpose. Fighting at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill had already broken out between the colonists and British troops. Even so, most in Congress wanted to work out some mutual agreement with the mother country. Soon after Jefferson arrived in Philadelphia, Congress assigned him to draft a document explaining why the colonists had taken up arms against England. Even at this late date, the Congress still blamed only Parliament and the king's government ministers, not King George himself, for the growing conflict.
Jefferson's Declaration of the Causes and Necessity for Taking Up Arms stopped short of declaring independence, but pointed out the folly of governing the American colonies from England. Neither Parliament nor King George, however, were interested in negotiations to prevent all-out war. In August , King George issued a proclamation charging that the Americans "had proceeded to open and avowed rebellion.
This act allowed the seizing of American ships, justified the burning of colonial towns, and led to sending war ships and troops, including foreign mercenaries, to put down the rebellion. Meanwhile, the royal governor of Virginia offered freedom to slaves who joined the British cause.
These actions by the British king and government inflamed Americans who were undecided about independence and made war with England all but certain. In May , the Continental Congress took a fateful step and passed a resolution that attacked King George himself. This was not the first time in English history that such a thing had occurred. This led to the so-called Glorious Revolution , which drove James off the throne. Now, almost years later, a formal declaration of independence by the Continental Congress was the only thing standing in the way of a complete break with King George.
Even before the Continental Congress declared independence, most colonies along with some towns, counties, and even private organizations had issued their own declarations. In most cases, these statements detailed British abuses of power and demanded the right of self-government. On June 8, , the Continental Congress voted to write a declaration of independence and quickly appointed a committee to draft a formal document. But the job of actually writing the draft fell to Thomas Jefferson, mainly because John Adams and other committee members were busy trying to manage the rapidly escalating war with England.
Working off and on while attending to other duties, Jefferson completed his draft of the declaration in a few days. He argued in his opening two paragraphs that a people had the right to overthrow their government when it abused their fundamental natural rights over a long period of time.
Then in a direct attack on King George, Jefferson listed 20 instances when the king violated the rights of the American colonists. Having thoroughly laid out his proof that the king was a "tyrant" who was "unfit to be the ruler of a people," Jefferson continued on to condemn the British people.
Jefferson ended his draft by stating, "we do assert and declare these colonies to be free and independent states. When Jefferson submitted his draft to the Congress on June 28, the delegates spent little time on his opening paragraphs, which today are the most famous parts of the Declaration of Independence. Instead, they concentrated on Jefferson's list of grievances against King George and the British people. The delegates made some small changes to improve the Declaration's clarity and accuracy.
The Court does not give advisory opinions; rather, its function is limited only to deciding specific cases. The Justices must exercise considerable discretion in deciding which cases to hear, since approximately 7,, civil and criminal cases are filed in the Supreme Court each year from the various state and federal courts. The Supreme Court also has "original jurisdiction" in a very small number of cases arising out of disputes between States or between a State and the Federal Government.
When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court. However, when the Court interprets a statute, new legislative action can be taken. Chief Justice Marshall expressed the challenge which the Supreme Court faces in maintaining free government by noting: "We must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.
Toggle navigation. The Court and Constitutional Interpretation. Today all of the states have provisions in their constitutions that protect these or similar rights, and in some cases offer greater protection for speech, press, and assembly rights than those based on the U. The history and relationship between rights protected under federal and various state constitutions provide important insights into federalism.
The Virginia Declaration of Rights is often credited with being the source or inspiration for the amendments James Madison offered to the Constitution in Those ten that originally passed came to be known as the Bill of Rights.
Although state bills of rights had inspired the construction of federal constitutional rights, recourse to state constitutions as an independent source of protection for expressive rights was not common until the later s. Instead, because the supremacy clause of the U. Constitution takes precedence over state law and constitutions, and because the Warren Court used its powers to incorporate many provisions of the Bill of Rights to apply to the states, there was little incentive or opportunity for state courts to reference their constitutions to protect individual expressive rights.
This situation changed in , when Justice William J. Brennan Jr. According to the principles of federalism and rules of abstention, if a state court uses its own constitution as the basis of a decision, such as in a case addressing freedom of speech, the U. Supreme Court lacks the jurisdiction or authority either to hear or to overturn that decision as long as it meets the federal minimums. Thus, nothing prevents a state court from finding that its own constitution offers more protection for any rights, including expressive rights, in comparison to those found in the U.
Constitution or Bill of Rights. In many instances since the late s and early s state courts have used their own constitutions to offer protection to expressive freedoms independently of the U.
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