ADAMSON v. CALIFORNIA
No. 102
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
332 U.S. 46; 67 S. Ct. 1672; 1947 U.S. LEXIS 2876; 91 L.
Ed. 1903; 171 A.L.R. 1223
January 15-16, 1947, Argued
June 23, 1947, Decided
SUBSEQUENT HISTORY: As Amended.
PRIOR HISTORY: APPEAL FROM THE SUPREME COURT OF CALIFORNIA.
OPINION:
[*47] [**1673] MR. JUSTICE REED delivered the opinion
of the Court.
The appellant, Adamson, a citizen of the United States, was convicted, without
recommendation for mercy, by a jury in a Superior Court of the State of
California of [*48] murder in the first degree. n1 After
considering the same objections to the conviction that are pressed here, the
sentence of death was affirmed by the Supreme Court of the state. 27 Cal. 2d
478, 165 P. 2d 3. Review of that judgment by this Court was sought and allowed
under Judicial Code § 237; 28 U. S. C. § 344. n2 The provisions of California [***4]
law which were challenged in the state proceedings as invalid under the
Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution are those of the state
constitution and penal code in the margin. They permit the failure of a
defendant to explain or to deny evidence against him to be commented upon by
court and by counsel [**1674] and to be considered by court and
jury. n3 The defendant did not testify. As the trial court gave its
instructions and the District Attorney argued the case in accordance with the
constitutional and statutory provisions just referred to, we have
[*49] for decision the question of their constitutionality in these
circumstances under the limitations of § 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. n4
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n1 There was also a conviction for first degree burglary. This requires no
discussion.
n2 This section authorizes appeal to this Court from the final judgment of a
state when the validity of a state statute is questioned on the ground of its
being repugnant to the Constitution of the United States. The section has been
applied so as to cover a state constitutional provision. Railway Express
Agency, Inc. v. Virginia, 282 U.S. 440; King Mfg. Co. v.
Augusta, 277 U.S. 100. [***5]
n3 Constitution of California, Art. I, § 13:
". . . No person shall be twice put in jeopardy for the same offense; nor
be compelled, in any criminal case, to be a witness against himself; nor be
deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; but in any
criminal case, whether the defendant testifies or not, his failure to explain
or to deny by his testimony any evidence or facts in the case against him may
be commented upon by the court and by counsel, and may be considered by the
court or the jury. . . ."
Penal Code of California, § 1323: "A defendant in a criminal action or
proceeding cannot be compelled to be a witness against himself; but if he
offers himself as a witness, he may be cross-examined by the counsel for the
people as to all matters about which he was examined in chief. The failure of
the defendant to explain or to deny by his testimony any evidence or facts in
the case against him may be commented upon by counsel."
n4 "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of
law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws."
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[***6]
The appellant was charged in the information with former convictions for
burglary, larceny and robbery and pursuant to § 1025, California Penal Code,
answered that he had suffered the previous convictions. This answer barred
allusion to these charges of convictions on the trial. n5 Under California's
interpretation of § 1025 of the Penal Code and § 2051 of the Code of Civil
Procedure, however, if the defendant, after answering affirmatively charges
alleging prior convictions, takes the witness stand to deny or explain away
other evidence that has been introduced "the commission of these crimes
could have been revealed to the jury on cross-examination to impeach his
testimony." People v. Adamson, 27 Cal. 2d 478, 494, 165
P. 2d 3, 11; People v. Braun, 14 Cal. 2d 1, 6, 92 P. 2d 402,
405. This forces an accused who is a repeated offender to choose between the
risk of having his prior offenses disclosed to the jury or of having it draw
harmful inferences from uncontradicted evidence that can only be denied or
explained by the defendant.
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n5 Penal Code of California, § 1025: ". . . In case the defendant pleads
not guilty, and answers that he has suffered the previous conviction, the
charge of the previous conviction must not be read to the jury, nor alluded to
on the trial."
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[***7]
In the first place, appellant urges that the provision of the Fifth Amendment
that no person "shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness
against himself" is a fundamental national privilege or immunity protected
[*50] against state abridgment by the Fourteenth Amendment or a
privilege or immunity secured, through the Fourteenth Amendment, against
deprivation by state action because it is a personal right, enumerated in the
federal Bill of Rights.
Secondly, appellant relies upon the due process of law clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment to invalidate the provisions of the California law, set out in note 3
supra, and as applied (a) because comment on failure to testify is
permitted, (b) because appellant was forced to forego testimony in person
because of danger of disclosure of his past convictions through
cross-examination, and (c) because the presumption of innocence was infringed
by the shifting of the burden of proof to appellant in permitting comment on
his failure to testify.
[1]
We shall assume, but without any intention thereby of ruling upon the issue, n6
that permission by law to the court, counsel and jury to comment upon and
consider [**1675] the failure of defendant [***8]
"to explain or to deny by his testimony any evidence or facts in the case against
him" would infringe defendant's privilege against self-incrimination under
the Fifth Amendment if this were a trial in a court of the United States under
a similar law. Such an assumption does not determine appellant's rights under
the Fourteenth Amendment. It is settled law that the clause [*51]
of the Fifth Amendment, protecting a person against being compelled to be a
witness against himself, is not made effective by the Fourteenth Amendment as a
protection against state action on the ground that freedom from testimonial
compulsion is a right of national citizenship, or because it is a personal
privilege or immunity secured by the Federal Constitution as one of the rights
of man that are listed in the Bill of Rights.
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n6 The California law protects a defendant against compulsion to testify,
though allowing comment upon his failure to meet evidence against him. The
Fifth Amendment forbids compulsion on a defendant to testify. Boyd v. United
States, 116 U.S. 616, 631, 632; cf. Davis v. United States,
328 U.S. 582, 587, 593. A federal statute that grew out of the extension of
permissible witnesses to include those charged with offenses negatives a
presumption against an accused for failure to avail himself of the right to
testify in his own defense. 28 U. S. C. § 632; Bruno v. United
States, 308 U.S. 287. It was this statute which is interpreted to protect
the defendant against comment for his claim of privilege. Wilson v. United
States, 149 U.S. 60, 66; Johnson v. United States, 318
U.S. 189, 199.
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[***9]
[2]
The reasoning that leads to those conclusions starts with the unquestioned
premise that the Bill of Rights, when adopted, was for the protection of the
individual against the federal government and its provisions were inapplicable
to similar actions done by the states. Barron v. Baltimore, 7
Pet. 243; Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 490. With the
adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, it was suggested that the dual
citizenship recognized by its first sentence n7 secured for citizens federal
protection for their elemental privileges and immunities of state citizenship.
The Slaughter-House Cases n8 decided, contrary to the suggestion, that
these [*52] rights, as privileges and immunities of state
citizenship, remained under the sole protection of the state governments. This
Court, without the expression of a contrary view upon that phase of the issues
before the Court, has approved this determination. Maxwell v. Bugbee,
250 U.S. 525, 537; Hamilton v. Regents, 293 U.S. 245, 261.
The power to free defendants in state trials from self-incrimination was
specifically determined to be beyond the scope of the privileges and immunities
clause [***10] of the Fourteenth Amendment in Twining v. New
Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, 91-98. "The privilege against self-incrimination
[**1676] may be withdrawn and the accused put upon the stand as a
witness for the state." n9 The Twining case likewise disposed of
the contention that freedom from testimonial compulsion, being specifically
granted by the Bill of Rights, is a federal privilege or immunity that is protected
by the Fourteenth Amendment against state invasion. This Court held that the
inclusion in the Bill of Rights of this protection against the power of the
national government did not make the privilege a federal privilege or immunity
secured to citizens by the Constitution against state action. Twining
v. New Jersey, supra, at 98-99; Palko v. Connecticut,
supra, at 328. After declaring that state and national citizenship coexist
in the same person, the Fourteenth Amendment forbids a state from abridging the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States. As a matter of
words, this leaves a state free to abridge, within the limits of the due
process clause, the privileges and immunities flowing from state citizenship.
This reading of the [*53] Federal [***11] Constitution
has heretofore found favor with the majority of this Court as a natural and
logical interpretation. It accords with the constitutional doctrine of
federalism by leaving to the states the responsibility of dealing with the
privileges and immunities of their citizens except those inherent in national
citizenship. n10 It is the construction placed upon the amendment by justices
whose own experience had given them contemporaneous knowledge of the purposes
that led to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment. This construction has
become embedded in our federal system as a functioning element in preserving
the balance between national and state power. We reaffirm the conclusion of the
Twining and Palko cases that protection against
self-incrimination is not a privilege or immunity of national citizenship.
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n7 "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State
wherein they reside."
n8 16 Wall. 36. The brief of Mr. Fellows for the plaintiff in error set out the
legislative history in an effort to show that the purpose of the first section
of the Fourteenth Amendment was to put the "Rights of Citizens" under
the protection of the United States. It was pointed out, p. 12, that the
Fourteenth Amendment was needed to accomplish that result. After quoting from
the debates, the brief summarized the argument, as follows, p. 21:
"As the result of this examination, the only conclusion to be arrived at,
as to the intention of Congress in proposing the amendments, and especially the
first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, and the interpretation universally put
upon it by every member of Congress, whether friend or foe, the interpretation
in which all were agreed, was, in the words of Mr. Hale, 'that it was intended
to apply to every State which has failed to apply equal protection to life,
liberty and property;' or in the words of Mr. Bingham, 'that the protection
given by the laws of the States shall be equal in respect to life, liberty and
property to all persons;' or in the language of Mr. Sumner, that it abolished
'oligarchy, aristocracy, caste, or monopoly with peculiar privileges and
powers.'" [***12]
n9 Snyder v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105; Palko
v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 324; Twining v. New Jersey,
supra, 114.
n10 See Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83, 90, and cases cited;
and see the concurring opinions in Edwards v. California, 314
U.S. 160, and the opinion of Stone, J., in Hague v. C. I. O.,
307 U.S. 496, 519.
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[3]
Appellant secondly contends that if the privilege against self-incrimination is
not a right protected by the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment against state action, this privilege, to its full scope under the
Fifth Amendment, inheres in the right to a fair trial. A right to a fair trial
is a right admittedly protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment. n11 Therefore, appellant argues, the due process clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment protects his privilege against self-incrimination. The due
process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, however, does not draw all the
rights of the federal Bill of Rights under its protection. That contention was
made and rejected in Palko [***13] v. Connecticut,
302 U.S. 319, 323. It was rejected with citation of the cases excluding several
of the rights, protected by the Bill of Rights, against infringement by the
National Government. [*54] Nothing has been called to our attention
that either the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment or the states that adopted
intended its due process clause to draw within its scope the earlier amendments
to the Constitution. Palko held that such provisions of the Bill of
Rights as were "implicit in the concept of ordered liberty," p. 325,
became secure from state interference by the clause. But it held nothing more.
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n11 Moore v. Dempsey, 261 U.S. 86, 91; Chambers v. Florida,
309 U.S. 227, 238; Buchalter v. New York, 319 U.S. 427.
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[4]
[5]
Specifically, the due process clause does not protect, by virtue of its mere
existence, the accused's freedom from giving testimony by compulsion in state
trials that is secured to him against federal interference by the Fifth
Amendment. Twining [**1677] v. New Jersey,
[***14] 211 U.S. 78, 99-114; Palko v. Connecticut,
supra, p. 323. For a state to require testimony from an accused is not
necessarily a breach of a state's obligation to give a fair trial. Therefore,
we must examine the effect of the California law applied in this trial to see
whether the comment on failure to testify violates the protection against state
action that the due process clause does grant to an accused. The due process
clause forbids compulsion to testify by fear of hurt, torture or exhaustion.
n12 It forbids any other type of coercion that falls within the scope of due
process. n13 California follows Anglo-American legal tradition in excusing defendants
in criminal prosecutions from compulsory testimony. Cf. VIII Wigmore on
Evidence (3d ed.) § 2252. That is a matter of legal policy and
[*55] not because of the requirements of due process under the
Fourteenth Amendment. n14 So our inquiry is directed, not at the broad question
of the constitutionality of compulsory testimony from the accused under the due
process clause, but to the constitutionality of the provision of the California
law that permits comment upon his failure to testify. It is, of course,
logically [***15] possible that while an accused might be required,
under appropriate penalties, to submit himself as a witness without a violation
of due process, comment by judge or jury on inferences to be drawn from his
failure to testify, in jurisdictions where an accused's privilege against
self-incrimination is protected, might deny due process. For example, a statute
might declare that a permitted refusal to testify would compel an acceptance of
the truth of the prosecution's evidence.
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n12 White v. Texas, 310 U.S. 530; Brown v. Mississippi,
297 U.S. 278; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 154; Ashcraft
v. Tennessee, 327 U.S. 274.
n13 See Malinski v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, concurring op. at
414, dissent at 438; Buchalter v. New York, supra, at 429; Palko
v. Connecticut, supra, at 325; Carter v. Illinois,
329 U.S. 173.
State action must "be consistent with the fundamental principles of liberty
and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions
and not infrequently are designated as 'law of the land.'" Hebert
v. Louisiana, 272 U.S. 312, 316. [***16]
n14 Twining v. New Jersey, supra, pp. 110-12.
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[6]
Generally, comment on the failure of an accused to testify is forbidden in
American jurisdictions. n15 This arises from state constitutional or statutory
provisions similar in character to the federal provisions. Fifth Amendment and
28 U. S. C. § 632. California, however, is one of a few states that permit
limited comment upon a defendant's failure to testify. n16 That permission is
narrow. The California law is set out in note 3 and authorizes comment by court
and counsel upon the "failure of the defendant to explain or to deny by
his testimony any evidence [*56] or facts in the case against
him." This does not involve any presumption, rebuttable or irrebuttable,
either of guilt or of the truth of any fact, that is offered in evidence.
Compare Tot v. United States, 319 U.S. 463, 470. It allows
inferences to be drawn from proven facts. Because of this clause, the court can
direct the jury's attention to whatever evidence there may be that a defendant
could deny and the prosecution [**1678] can argue as to inferences
that may be drawn [***17] from the accused's failure to testify.
Compare Caminetti v. United States, 242 U.S. 470, 492-95; Raffel
v. United States, 271 U.S. 494, 497. There is here no lack of power in
the trial court to adjudge and no denial of a hearing. California has
prescribed a method for advising the jury in the search for truth. However
sound may be the legislative conclusion that an accused should not be compelled
in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, we see no reason why
comment should not be made upon his silence. It seems quite natural that when a
defendant has opportunity to deny or explain facts and determines not to do so,
the prosecution should bring out the strength of the evidence by commenting
upon defendant's failure to explain or deny it. The prosecution evidence may be
of facts that may be beyond the knowledge of the accused. If so, his failure to
testify would have little if any weight. But the facts may be such as are
necessarily in the knowledge of the accused. In that case a failure to explain
would point to an inability to explain.
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n15 VIII Wigmore, supra, p. 412. [***18]
n16 The cases and statutory references are collected in VIII Wigmore, supra,
at pp. 413 et seq. New Jersey, Ohio and Vermont permit comment. The
question of permitting comment upon the failure of an accused to testify has
been a matter for consideration in recent years. See Reports of American Bar
Association (1931) 137; Proceedings, American Law Institute, 1930-31, 202;
Reeder, Comment Upon Failure of Accused to Testify, 31 Mich. L. Rev.
40; Bruce, The Right to Comment on the Failure of the Defendant to Testify,
Id., 226.
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Appellant sets out the circumstances of this case, however, to show coercion
and unfairness in permitting comment. The guilty person was not seen at the
place and time of the crime. There was evidence, however, that entrance to the
place or room where the crime was committed might have been obtained through a
small door. It was freshly broken. Evidence showed that six fingerprints
[*57] on the door were petitioner's. Certain diamond rings were
missing from the deceased's possession. There was evidence that appellant,
sometime after the crime, asked [***19] an unidentified person
whether the latter would be interested in purchasing a diamond ring. As has
been stated, the information charged other crimes to appellant and he admitted
them. His argument here is that he could not take the stand to deny the
evidence against him because he would be subjected to a cross-examination as to
former crimes to impeach his veracity and the evidence so produced might well
bring about his conviction. Such cross-examination is allowable in California. People
v. Adamson, 27 Cal. 2d 478, 494, 165 P. 2d 3, 11. Therefore, appellant
contends the California statute permitting comment denies him due process.
It is true that if comment were forbidden, an accused in this situation could
remain silent and avoid evidence of former crimes and comment upon his failure
to testify. We are of the view, however, that a state may control such a
situation in accordance with its own ideas of the most efficient administration
of criminal justice. The purpose of due process is not to protect an accused
against a proper conviction but against an unfair conviction. When evidence is
before a jury that threatens conviction, it does not seem unfair to require
[***20] him to choose between leaving the adverse evidence
unexplained and subjecting himself to impeachment through disclosure of former
crimes. Indeed, this is a dilemma with which any defendant may be faced. If
facts, adverse to the defendant, are proven by the prosecution, there may be no
way to explain them favorably to the accused except by a witness who may be
vulnerable to impeachment on cross-examination. The defendant must then decide
whether or not to use such a witness. The fact that the witness may also be the
defendant [*58] makes the choice more difficult but a denial of due
process does not emerge from the circumstances. n17
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n17 Comment here did not follow a grant of privilege that carried immunity from
comment. The choice between giving evidence and remaining silent was an open
choice. There was no such possible misleading of the defendant as we condemned
in Johnson v. United States, 318 U.S. 189, 195-99.
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[7]
There is no basis in the California law for appellant's objection on due
process or [***21] other grounds that the statutory authorization
to comment on the failure to explain or deny adverse testimony shifts the
burden [**1679] of proof or the duty to go forward with the
evidence. Failure of the accused to testify is not an admission of the truth of
the adverse evidence. Instructions told the jury that the burden of proof
remained upon the state and the presumption of innocence with the accused.
Comment on failure to deny proven facts does not in California tend to supply
any missing element of proof of guilt. People v. Adamson, 27
Cal. 2d 478, 489-95, 165 P. 2d 3, 9-12. It only directs attention to the
strength of the evidence for the prosecution or to the weakness of that for the
defense. The Supreme Court of California called attention to the fact that the
prosecutor's argument approached the borderline in a statement that might have
been construed as asserting "that the jury should infer guilt solely from
defendant's silence." That court felt that it was improbable the jury was
misled into such an understanding of their power. We shall not interfere with
such a conclusion. People v. Adamson, 27 Cal. 2d 478, 494-95,
165 P. 2d 3, 12.
[8]
Finally, appellant [***22] contends that due process of law was
denied him by the introduction as evidence of tops of women's stockings that
were found in his room. The claim is made that such evidence inflamed the jury.
The lower part of a woman's stocking was found under the victim's body. The top
was not found. The corpse was barelegged. The tops from defendant's room did
not [*59] match the lower part found under the dead body. The
California court held that the tops were admissible as evidence because this
"interest in women's stocking tops is a circumstance that tends to
identify defendant" as the perpetrator of the crime. We do not think the
introduction of this evidence violated any federal constitutional right.
We find no other error that gives ground for our intervention in California's
administration of criminal justice.
Affirmed.
CONCURBY: FRANKFURTER
CONCUR: MR. JUSTICE FRANKFURTER, concurring.
Less than ten years ago, Mr. Justice Cardozo announced as settled
constitutional law that while the Fifth Amendment, "which is not directed
to the states, but solely to the federal government," provides that no
person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself,
the process [***23] of law assured by the Fourteenth Amendment does
not require such immunity from self-crimination: "in prosecutions by a
state, the exemption will fail if the state elects to end it." Palko
v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 322, 324. Mr. Justice Cardozo spoke for
the Court, consisting of Mr. Chief Justice Hughes, and McReynolds, Brandeis,
Sutherland, Stone, Roberts, Black, JJ. (Mr. Justice Butler dissented.) The
matter no longer called for discussion; a reference to Twining v. New
Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, decided thirty years before the Palko case,
sufficed.
Decisions of this Court do not have equal intrinsic authority. The Twining
case shows the judicial process at its best -- comprehensive briefs and
powerful arguments on both sides, followed by long deliberation, resulting in
an opinion by Mr. Justice Moody which at once gained and has ever since
retained recognition as one of the outstanding opinions in the history of the
Court. After [*60] enjoying unquestioned prestige for forty years,
the Twining case should not now be diluted, even unwittingly, either
in its judicial philosophy or in its particulars. As the surest way of keeping
the Twining case [***24] intact, I would affirm this case
on its authority.
The circumstances of this case present a minor variant from what was before the
Court in Twining v. New Jersey, supra. The attempt to inflate
the difference into constitutional significance was adequately dealt with by
Mr. Justice Traynor in the court below. People v. Adamson, 27
Cal. 2d 478, 165 P. 2d 3. The matter lies within a very narrow compass. The
point is made that a defendant who has a vulnerable record would, by taking the
stand, subject himself to having his credibility impeached [**1680]
thereby. See Raffel v. United States, 271 U.S. 494, 496-97.
Accordingly, under California law, he is confronted with the dilemma, whether
to testify and perchance have his bad record prejudice him in the minds of the
jury, or to subject himself to the unfavorable inference which the jury might
draw from his silence. And so, it is argued, if he chooses the latter
alternative, the jury ought not to be allowed to attribute his silence to a
consciousness of guilt when it might be due merely to a desire to escape
damaging cross-examination.
This does not create an issue different from that settled in the Twining
[***25] case. Only a technical rule of law would exclude from
consideration that which is relevant, as a matter of fair reasoning, to the
solution of a problem. Sensible and just-minded men, in important affairs of
life, deem it significant that a man remains silent when confronted with
serious and responsible evidence against himself which it is within his power
to contradict. The notion that to allow jurors to do that which sensible and
right-minded men do every day violates the "immutable principles of
justice" as conceived by a civilized society is to trivialize the
importance of "due process." Nor does it [*61] make any
difference in drawing significance from silence under such circumstances that
an accused may deem it more advantageous to remain silent than to speak, on the
nice calculation that by taking the witness stand he may expose himself to
having his credibility impugned by reason of his criminal record. Silence under
such circumstances is still significant. A person in that situation may express
to the jury, through appropriate requests to charge, why he prefers to keep
silent. A man who has done one wrong may prove his innocence on a totally
different charge. To deny [***26] that the jury can be trusted to
make such discrimination is to show little confidence in the jury system. The
prosecution is frequently compelled to rely on the testimony of shady
characters whose credibility is bound to be the chief target of the defense. It
is a common practice in criminal trials to draw out of a vulnerable witness'
mouth his vulnerability, and then convince the jury that nevertheless he is
telling the truth in this particular case. This is also a common experience for
defendants.
For historical reasons a limited immunity from the common duty to testify was
written into the Federal Bill of Rights, and I am prepared to agree that, as
part of that immunity, comment on the failure of an accused to take the witness
stand is forbidden in federal prosecutions. It is so, of course, by explicit
act of Congress. 20 Stat. 30; see Bruno v. United States, 308
U.S. 287. But to suggest that such a limitation can be drawn out of "due
process" in its protection of ultimate decency in a civilized society is
to suggest that the Due Process Clause fastened fetters of unreason upon the
States. (This opinion is concerned solely with a discussion of the Due Process
Clause [***27] of the Fourteenth Amendment. I put to one side the
Privileges or Immunities Clause of that Amendment. For the mischievous uses to
which that clause would lend itself if its scope were not confined to that
given it by all but [*62] one of the decisions beginning with the Slaughter-House
Cases, 16 Wall. 36, see the deviation in Colgate v. Harvey,
296 U.S. 404, overruled by Madden v. Kentucky, 309 U.S. 83.)
Between the incorporation of the Fourteenth Amendment into the Constitution and
the beginning of the present membership of the Court -- a period of seventy
years -- the scope of that Amendment was passed upon by forty-three judges. Of
all these judges, only one, who may respectfully be called an eccentric
exception, ever indicated the belief that the Fourteenth Amendment was a
shorthand summary of the first eight Amendments theretofore limiting only the
Federal Government, and that due process incorporated those eight Amendments as
restrictions upon the powers of the States. Among these judges were not only
those [**1681] who would have to be included among the greatest in
the history of the Court, but -- it is especially relevant to note -- they
included those [***28] whose services in the cause of human rights
and the spirit of freedom are the most conspicuous in our history. It is not
invidious to single out Miller, Davis, Bradley, Waite, Matthews, Gray, Fuller,
Holmes, Brandeis, Stone and Cardozo (to speak only of the dead) as judges who
were alert in safeguarding and promoting the interests of liberty and human
dignity through law. But they were also judges mindful of the relation of our
federal system to a progressively democratic society and therefore duly
regardful of the scope of authority that was left to the States even after the
Civil War. And so they did not find that the Fourteenth Amendment, concerned as
it was with matters fundamental to the pursuit of justice, fastened upon the
States procedural arrangements which, in the language of Mr. Justice Cardozo,
only those who are "narrow or provincial" would deem essential to
"a fair and enlightened system of justice." Palko v. Connecticut,
302 U.S. 319, 325. To suggest that it is inconsistent with a truly free
[*63] society to begin prosecutions without an indictment, to try
petty civil cases without the paraphernalia of a common law jury, to take into
consideration that [***29] one who has full opportunity to make a
defense remains silent is, in de Tocqueville's phrase, to confound the familiar
with the necessary.
The short answer to the suggestion that the provision of the Fourteenth
Amendment, which ordains "nor shall any State deprive any person of life,
liberty, or property, without due process of law," was a way of saying
that every State must thereafter initiate prosecutions through indictment by a
grand jury, must have a trial by a jury of twelve in criminal cases, and must
have trial by such a jury in common law suits where the amount in controversy
exceeds twenty dollars, is that it is a strange way of saying it. It would be
extraordinarily strange for a Constitution to convey such specific commands in
such a roundabout and inexplicit way. After all, an amendment to the
Constitution should be read in a "'sense most obvious to the common
understanding at the time of its adoption.' . . . For it was for public
adoption that it was proposed." See Mr. Justice Holmes in Eisner
v. Macomber, 252 U.S. 189, 220. Those reading the English language
with the meaning which it ordinarily conveys, those conversant with the
political and legal history [***30] of the concept of due process,
those sensitive to the relations of the States to the central government as
well as the relation of some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the
process of justice, would hardly recognize the Fourteenth Amendment as a cover
for the various explicit provisions of the first eight Amendments. Some of
these are enduring reflections of experience with human nature, while some
express the restricted views of Eighteenth-Century England regarding the best
methods for the ascertainment of facts. The notion that the Fourteenth
Amendment was a covert way of imposing upon the [*64] States all
the rules which it seemed important to Eighteenth Century statesmen to write
into the Federal Amendments, was rejected by judges who were themselves
witnesses of the process by which the Fourteenth Amendment became part of the
Constitution. Arguments that may now be adduced to prove that the first eight
Amendments were concealed within the historic phrasing * of the Fourteenth
Amendment were not unknown at the time of its adoption. A surer estimate of
their bearing was possible for judges at the time than distorting distance is
likely to vouchsafe. Any evidence [***31] of design or purpose not
contemporaneously known could hardly have influenced those who ratified the
[**1682] Amendment. Remarks of a particular proponent of the
Amendment, no matter how influential, are not to be deemed part of the
Amendment. What was submitted for ratification was his proposal, not his
speech. Thus, at the time of the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment the
constitutions of nearly half of the ratifying States did not have the rigorous
requirements of the Fifth Amendment for instituting criminal proceedings
through a grand jury. It could hardly have occurred to these States that by
ratifying the Amendment they uprooted their established methods for prosecuting
crime and fastened upon themselves a new prosecutorial system.
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* "The prohibition against depriving the citizen or subject of his life,
liberty, or property without due process of law, is not new in the constitutional
history of the English race. It is not new in the constitutional history of
this country, and it was not new in the Constitution of the United States when
it became a part of the fourteenth amendment, in the year 1866." Davidson
v. New Orleans, 96 U.S. 97, 101.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[***32]
Indeed, the suggestion that the Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the first
eight Amendments as such is not unambiguously urged. Even the boldest innovator
would shrink from suggesting to more than half the States that
[*65] they may no longer initiate prosecutions without indictment
by grand jury, or that thereafter all the States of the Union must furnish a
jury of twelve for every case involving a claim above twenty dollars. There is
suggested merely a selective incorporation of the first eight Amendments into
the Fourteenth Amendment. Some are in and some are out, but we are left in the
dark as to which are in and which are out. Nor are we given the calculus for
determining which go in and which stay out. If the basis of selection is merely
that those provisions of the first eight Amendments are incorporated which
commend themselves to individual justices as indispensable to the dignity and happiness
of a free man, we are thrown back to a merely subjective test. The protection
against unreasonable search and seizure might have primacy for one judge, while
trial by a jury of twelve for every claim above twenty dollars might appear to
another as an ultimate need in a free [***33] society. In the
history of thought "natural law" has a much longer and much better
founded meaning and justification than such subjective selection of the first
eight Amendments for incorporation into the Fourteenth. If all that is meant is
that due process contains within itself certain minimal standards which are
"of the very essence of a scheme of ordered liberty," Palko
v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 325, putting upon this Court the duty of
applying these standards from time to time, then we have merely arrived at the
insight which our predecessors long ago expressed. We are called upon to apply
to the difficult issues of our own day the wisdom afforded by the great
opinions in this field, such as those in Davidson v. New Orleans,
96 U.S. 97; Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U.S. 22; Hurtado
v. California, 110 U.S. 516; Holden v. Hardy, 169
U.S. 366; Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, and Palko
v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319. This guidance bids us to be duly mindful
of the heritage of the past, with its great lessons of how liberties are won
and [*66] how they are lost. As judges charged with the delicate
task of subjecting the [***34] government of a continent to the
Rule of Law we must be particularly mindful that it is "a constitution
we are expounding," so that it should not be imprisoned in what are merely
legal forms even though they have the sanction of the Eighteenth Century.
It may not be amiss to restate the pervasive function of the Fourteenth
Amendment in exacting from the States observance of basic liberties. See Malinski
v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, 412 et seq.; Louisiana v. Resweber,
329 U.S. 459, 466 et seq. The Amendment neither comprehends the
specific provisions by which the founders deemed it appropriate to restrict the
federal government nor is it confined to them. The Due Process Clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment has an independent potency, precisely as does the Due
Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment in relation to the Federal Government. It
ought not to require argument to reject the notion that due process of law
meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth. The Fifth
Amendment specifically [**1683] prohibits prosecution of an
"infamous crime" except upon indictment; it forbids double jeopardy;
it bars compelling a person to be a witness against [***35] himself
in any criminal case; it precludes deprivation of "life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law . . . ." Are Madison and his
contemporaries in the framing of the Bill of Rights to be charged with writing
into it a meaningless clause? To consider "due process of law" as
merely a shorthand statement of other specific clauses in the same amendment is
to attribute to the authors and proponents of this Amendment ignorance of, or
indifference to, a historic conception which was one of the great instruments
in the arsenal of constitutional freedom which the Bill of Rights was to
protect and strengthen.
[*67] A construction which gives to due process no independent function
but turns it into a summary of the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights
would, as has been noted, tear up by the roots much of the fabric of law in the
several States, and would deprive the States of opportunity for reforms in
legal process designed for extending the area of freedom. It would assume that
no other abuses would reveal themselves in the course of time than those which
had become manifest in 1791. Such a view not only disregards the historic
meaning of "due process." It leads [***36] inevitably to
a warped construction of specific provisions of the Bill of Rights to bring
within their scope conduct clearly condemned by due process but not easily
fitting into the pigeon-holes of the specific provisions. It seems pretty late
in the day to suggest that a phrase so laden with historic meaning should be
given an improvised content consisting of some but not all of the provisions of
the first eight Amendments, selected on an undefined basis, with improvisation
of content for the provisions so selected.
And so, when, as in a case like the present, a conviction in a State court is
here for review under a claim that a right protected by the Due Process Clause
of the Fourteenth Amendment has been denied, the issue is not whether an
infraction of one of the specific provisions of the first eight Amendments is
disclosed by the record. The relevant question is whether the criminal
proceedings which resulted in conviction deprived the accused of the due
process of law to which the United States Constitution entitled him. Judicial
review of that guaranty of the Fourteenth Amendment inescapably imposes upon
this Court an exercise of judgment upon the whole course of the
[***37] proceedings in order to ascertain whether they offend those
canons of decency and fairness which express the notions of justice of
English-speaking peoples even toward [*68] those charged with the
most heinous offenses. These standards of justice are not authoritatively
formulated anywhere as though they were prescriptions in a pharmacopoeia. But
neither does the application of the Due Process Clause imply that judges are
wholly at large. The judicial judgment in applying the Due Process Clause must
move within the limits of accepted notions of justice and is not to be based
upon the idiosyncrasies of a merely personal judgment. The fact that judges
among themselves may differ whether in a particular case a trial offends
accepted notions of justice is not disproof that general rather than
idiosyncratic standards are applied. An important safeguard against such merely
individual judgment is an alert deference to the judgment of the State court
under review.
DISSENTBY:
BLACK; MURPHY
DISSENT: [**1684contd]
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The page numbers of this document may appear to be out of
sequence; however, this pagination accurately reflects the pagination of the
original published documents.]
MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting.
The appellant was tried for murder in a California state court. He did not take
the stand as a witness in his own behalf. The prosecuting attorney, under
purported authority [***38] of a California statute, Cal. Penal
Code, § 1323 (Hillyer-Lake, 1945), argued to the jury that an inference of
guilt could be drawn because of appellant's failure to deny evidence offered
against him. The appellant's contention in the state court and here has been
that the statute denies him a right guaranteed by the Federal Constitution. The
argument is that (1) permitting comment upon his failure to testify has the
effect of compelling him to testify so as to violate that provision of the Bill
of Rights contained in the Fifth Amendment that "No person . . . shall be
compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself"; and (2)
although this provision of the Fifth Amendment originally applied only as a
restraint upon federal courts, Barron v. Baltimore, 7 Pet.
243, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to, and did, make the prohibition
against compelled testimony applicable to trials in state courts.
[*69] The Court refuses to meet and decide the appellant's first
contention. But while the Court's opinion, as I read it, strongly
[**1685] implies that the Fifth Amendment does not, of itself, bar
comment upon failure to testify in federal courts, the Court nevertheless
[***39] assumes that it does in order to reach the second
constitutional question involved in appellant's case. I must consider the case
on the same assumption that the Court does. For the discussion of the second
contention turns out to be a decision which reaches far beyond the relatively
narrow issues on which this case might have turned.
This decision reasserts a constitutional theory spelled out in Twining
v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78, that this Court is endowed by the
Constitution with boundless power under "natural law" periodically to
expand and contract constitutional standards to conform to the Court's
conception of what at a particular time constitutes "civilized
decency" and "fundamental liberty and justice." n1 Invoking this
Twining rule, the Court concludes that although comment upon testimony
in a federal court would violate the Fifth Amendment, identical comment in a
state court does not violate today's fashion in civilized decency and
fundamentals and is therefore not prohibited by the Federal Constitution as
amended.
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n1 The cases on which the Court relies seem to adopt these standards. Malinski
v. New York, 324 U.S. 401, concurring opinion, 412-417; Buchalter
v. New York, 319 U.S. 427, 429; Hebert v. Louisiana,
272 U.S. 312, 316.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[***40]
The Twining case was the first, as it is the only, decision of this
Court which has squarely held that states were free, notwithstanding the Fifth
and Fourteenth Amendments, to extort evidence from one accused of crime. n2 I
[*70] agree that if Twining be reaffirmed, the result
reached might appropriately follow. But I would not reaffirm the Twining
decision. I think that decision and the "natural law" theory of the
Constitution upon which it relies degrade the constitutional safeguards of the
Bill of Rights and simultaneously appropriate for this Court a broad power
which we are not authorized by the Constitution to exercise. Furthermore, the Twining
decision rested on previous cases and broad hypotheses which have been undercut
by intervening decisions of this Court. See Corwin, The Supreme Court's
Construction of the Self-Incrimination Clause, 29 Mich. L. Rev. 1, 191, 202. My
reasons for believing that the Twining decision should not be
revitalized can best be understood by reference to the constitutional,
judicial, and general history that preceded and followed the case. That reference
must be abbreviated far more than is justified but for the necessary
[***41] limitations of opinion-writing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n2 "The question in the case at bar has been twice before us, and been
left undecided, as the cases were disposed of on other grounds." Twining
v. New Jersey, supra, 92. In Palko v. Connecticut,
302 U.S. 319, relied on by the Court, the issue was double jeopardy and not
enforced self-incrimination.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The first ten amendments were proposed and adopted largely because of fear that
Government might unduly interfere with prized individual liberties. The people
wanted and demanded a Bill of Rights written into their Constitution. The
amendments embodying the Bill of Rights were intended to curb all branches of
the Federal Government in the fields touched by the amendments -- Legislative,
Executive, and Judicial. The Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments were pointedly
aimed at confining exercise of power by courts and judges within precise
boundaries, particularly in the procedure used for the trial of criminal cases.
n3 Past history provided [**1686] strong reasons [*71]
for [***42] the apprehensions which brought these procedural
amendments into being and attest the wisdom of their adoption. For the fears of
arbitrary court action sprang largely from the past use of courts in the
imposition of criminal punishments to suppress speech, press, and religion.
Hence the constitutional limitations of courts' powers were, in the view of the
Founders, essential supplements to the First Amendment, which was itself
designed to protect the widest scope for all people to believe and to express
the most divergent political, religious, and other views.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n3 The Fifth Amendment requires indictment by a Grand Jury in many criminal
trials, prohibits double jeopardy, self incrimination, deprivation of life,
liberty or property without due process of law or the taking of property for
public use without just compensation.
The Sixth Amendment guarantees to one accused of crime a speedy, public trial
before an impartial jury of the district where the crime was allegedly
committed; it requires that the accused be informed of the nature of the charge
against him, confronted with the witnesses against him, have compulsory process
to obtain witnesses in his favor, and assistance of counsel.
The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, fines and cruel and unusual
punishments.
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[***43]
But these limitations were not expressly imposed upon state court action. In
1833, Barron v. Baltimore, supra, was decided by this Court.
It specifically held inapplicable to the states that provision of the Fifth
Amendment which declares: "nor shall private property be taken for public
use, without just compensation." In deciding the particular point raised,
the Court there said that it could not hold that the first eight amendments
applied to the states. This was the controlling constitutional rule when the
Fourteenth Amendment was proposed in 1866. n4
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n4 See Appendix, infra, pp. 97-98.
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My study of the historical events that culminated in the Fourteenth Amendment,
and the expressions of those who sponsored and favored, as well as those who
opposed its submission and passage, persuades me that one of the chief objects
that the provisions of the Amendment's first section, separately, and as a
whole, were intended to accomplish was to make the Bill of Rights, applicable
to the [*72] states. n5 With [***44] full knowledge of
the import of the Barron decision, the framers and backers of the
Fourteenth Amendment proclaimed its purpose to be to overturn the
constitutional rule that case had announced. This historical purpose has never
received full consideration or exposition in any opinion of this Court
interpreting the Amendment.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n5 Another prime purpose was to make colored people citizens entitled to full
equal rights as citizens despite what this Court decided in the Dred Scott
case. Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393.
A comprehensive analysis of the historical origins of the Fourteenth Amendment,
Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment (1908) 94, concludes that
"Congress, the House and the Senate, had the following objects and motives
in view for submitting the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the
States for ratification:
"1. To make the Bill of Rights (the first eight Amendments) binding upon,
or applicable to, the States.
"2. To give validity to the Civil Rights Bill.
"3. To declare who were citizens of the United States."
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[***45]
In construing other constitutional provisions, this Court has almost uniformly
followed the precept of Ex parte Bain, 121 U.S. 1, 12, that "It
is never to be forgotten that, in the construction of the language of the
Constitution . . . , as indeed in all other instances where construction
becomes necessary, we are to place ourselves as nearly as possible in the
condition of the men who framed that instrument." See also Everson
v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 8, 28, 33; Thornhill v. Alabama,
310 U.S. 88, 95, 102; Knowlton v. Moore, 178 U.S. 41, 89,
106; Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 162; Barron
v. Baltimore, supra at 250-251; Cohens v. Virginia,
6 Wheat. 264, 416-420.
Investigation of the cases relied upon in Twining v. New Jersey
to support the conclusion there reached that neither the Fifth Amendment's
prohibition of compelled testimony, nor any of the Bill of Rights, applies to
the States, reveals an unexplained departure from this salutary
[*73] practice. Neither the briefs nor opinions in any of these
cases, except Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581,
[**1687] make reference to the legislative and contemporary
[***46] history for the purpose of demonstrating that those who
conceived, shaped, and brought about the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
intended it to nullify this Court's decision in Barron v. Baltimore,
supra, and thereby to make the Bill of Rights applicable to the States. In
Maxwell v. Dow, supra, the issue turned on whether the Bill
of Rights guarantee of a jury trial was, by the Fourteenth Amendment, extended
to trials in state courts. In that case counsel for appellant did cite from the
speech of Senator Howard, Appendix, infra, p. 104, which so
emphatically stated the understanding of the framers of the Amendment -- the
Committee on Reconstruction for which he spoke -- that the Bill of Rights was
to be made applicable to the states by the Amendment's first section. The
Court's opinion in Maxwell v. Dow, supra, 601, acknowledged
that counsel had "cited from the speech of one of the Senators," but
indicated that it was not advised what other speeches were made in the Senate
or in the House. The Court considered, moreover, that "What individual
Senators or Representatives may have urged in debate, in regard to the meaning
to be given to a proposed [***47] constitutional amendment, or bill
or resolution, does not furnish a firm ground for its proper construction, nor
is it important as explanatory of the grounds upon which the members voted in
adopting it." Id. at 601-602.
In the Twining case itself, the Court was cited to a then recent book,
Guthrie, Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution (1898). A few pages of that
work recited some of the legislative background of the Amendment, emphasizing
the speech of Senator Howard. But Guthrie did not emphasize the speeches of
Congressman Bingham, nor the part he played in the framing and adoption of the
first section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yet Congressman [*74]
Bingham may, without extravagance, be called the Madison of the first section
of the Fourteenth Amendment. In the Twining opinion, the Court
explicitly declined to give weight to the historical demonstration that the
first section of the Amendment was intended to apply to the states the several
protections of the Bill of Rights. It held that that question was "no
longer open" because of previous decisions of this Court which, however,
had not appraised the historical evidence on that subject. Id. at
[***48] 98. The Court admitted that its action had resulted in
giving "much less effect to the Fourteenth Amendment than some of the
public men active in framing it" had intended it to have. Id. at
96. With particular reference to the guarantee against compelled testimony, the
Court stated that "Much might be said in favor of the view that the
privilege was guaranteed against state impairment as a privilege and immunity
of National citizenship, but, as has been shown, the decisions of this court
have foreclosed that view." Id. at 113. Thus the Court declined,
and again today declines, to appraise the relevant historical evidence of the
intended scope of the first section of the Amendment. Instead it relied upon
previous cases, none of which had analyzed the evidence showing that one
purpose of those who framed, advocated, and adopted the Amendment had been to
make the Bill of Rights applicable to the States. None of the cases relied upon
by the Court today made such an analysis.
For this reason, I am attaching to this dissent an appendix which contains a
resume, by no means complete, of the Amendment's history. In my judgment that
history conclusively demonstrates that the [***49] language of the
first section of the Fourteenth Amendment, taken as a whole, was thought by
those responsible for its submission to the people, and by those who opposed
its submission, sufficiently explicit to guarantee that thereafter no state
[*75] could deprive its citizens of the privileges and protections
of the Bill of Rights. Whether this Court ever will, or whether it now should,
in the light of past decisions, give full effect to what the Amendment was
intended [**1688] to accomplish is not necessarily essential to a
decision here. However that may be, our prior decisions, including Twining,
do not prevent our carrying out that purpose, at least to the extent of making
applicable to the states, not a mere part, as the Court has, but the full
protection of the Fifth Amendment's provision against compelling evidence from
an accused to convict him of crime. And I further contend that the
"natural law" formula which the Court uses to reach its conclusion in
this case should be abandoned as an incongruous excrescence on our
Constitution. I believe that formula to be itself a violation of our
Constitution, in that it subtly conveys to courts, at the expense of
legislatures, ultimate [***50] power over public policies in fields
where no specific provision of the Constitution limits legislative power. And
my belief seems to be in accord with the views expressed by this Court, at
least for the first two decades after the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.
In 1872, four years after the Amendment was adopted, the Slaughter-House
cases came to this Court. 16 Wall 36. The Court was not presented in that case
with the evidence which showed that the special sponsors of the Amendment in
the House and Senate had expressly explained one of its principal purposes to
be to change the Constitution as construed in Barron v. Baltimore,
supra, and make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. n6 Nor
[*76] was there reason to do so. For the state law under
consideration in the Slaughter-House cases was only challenged as one
which authorized a monopoly, and the brief for the challenger properly conceded
that there was "no direct constitutional provision against a
monopoly." n7 [*77] The argument did not invoke any specific
[**1689] provision of the Bill of Rights, but urged that the state
monopoly statute violated "the natural right of a person" to do
business and [***51] engage in his trade or vocation. On this
basis, it was contended that "bulwarks that have been erected around the
investments of capital are impregnable against State legislation." These
natural law arguments, so suggestive of the premises on which the present due
process formula rests, were flatly rejected by a majority of the Court in the Slaughter-House
cases. What the Court did hold was that the privileges and immunities clause of
the Fourteenth Amendment only protected from state invasion such rights as a
person has because he is a citizen of the United States. The Court enumerated
some, but refused to enumerate all of these national rights. The majority of
the Court emphatically declined the invitation of counsel to hold that the
Fourteenth Amendment subjected all state regulatory legislation to continuous
censorship by this Court in order for it to determine whether it collided with
this Court's opinion of "natural" right and justice. In effect, the Slaughter-House
cases rejected the very [*78] natural justice formula the Court
today embraces. The Court did not meet the question of whether the safeguards
of the Bill of Rights were protected against state invasion [***52]
by the Fourteenth Amendment. And it specifically did not say as the Court now
does, that particular provisions of the Bill of Rights could be breached by
states in part, but not breached in other respects, according to this Court's
notions of "civilized standards," "canons of decency," and
"fundamental justice."
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n6 It is noteworthy that before the Twining decision Justices Bradley,
Field, Swayne, Harlan, and apparently Brewer, although they had not been
presented with and did not rely upon a documented history of the Fourteenth
Amendment such as is set out in the Appendix, infra, nevertheless
dissented from the view that the Fourteenth Amendment did not make provisions of
the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. In the attached Appendix (at pp.
120-123) I have referred to some cases evidencing their views, and set out some
expressions of it.
A contemporary comment illustrates that the Slaughter-House
interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment was made without full regard for the
congressional purpose or popular understanding.
"It must be admitted that the construction put upon the language of the
first section of this amendment by the majority of the court is not its primary
and most obvious signification. Ninety-nine out of every hundred educated men,
upon reading this section over, would at first say that it forbade a state to
make or enforce a law which abridged any privilege or immunity whatever of one
who was a citizen of the United States; and it is only by an effort of
ingenuity that any other sense can be discovered that it can be forced to bear.
It is a little remarkable that, so far as the reports disclose, no one of the
distinguished counsel who argued this great case (the Slaughter-House Cases),
nor any one of the judges who sat in it, appears to have thought it worth while
to consult the proceedings of the Congress which proposed this amendment, to
ascertain what it was that they were seeking to accomplish. Nothing is more
common than this. There is hardly a question raised as to the true meaning of a
provision of the old, original Constitution that resort is not had to Elliott's
Debates, to ascertain what the framers of the instrument declared at the time
that they intended to accomplish. . . ." Royall, The Fourteenth
Amendment: The Slaughter-House Cases, 4 So. L. Rev. (N. S.) 558, 563
(1879).
For a collection of other comments on the Slaughter-House cases, see 2
Warren, The Supreme Court in United States History (1937) c. 32.
[***53]
n7 The case was not decided until over two years after it was submitted. In a
short brief filed some two years after the first briefs, one of the counsel
attacking the constitutionality of the state statute referred to and cited part
of the history of the Fourteenth Amendment. The historical references made were
directed only to an effort to show that a purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment
was to protect freedom of contract against monopoly since monopolies interfered
with the freedom of contract and the right to engage in business. Nonetheless
some of these references would have supported the theory, had it been in
question there, that a purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to make the Bill
of Rights applicable to the states. For counsel quoted a statement by
Congressman Bingham that ". . . it is . . . clear by every construction of
the Constitution, its continued construction, legislative, executive and
judicial, that these great provisions of the Constitution, this immortal bill
of rights embodied in the Constitution, rested for its execution and
enforcement hitherto upon the fidelity of the States. The House knows, the
country knows . . . , that the legislative, executive and judicial officers of
eleven States within this Union, within the last five years, have utterly
disregarded the behest." But since there was no contention that the Bill
of Rights Amendment prohibited monopoly, this statement, in the context in
which it was quoted, is hardly an indication that the Court was presented with
documented argument on the question of whether the Fourteenth Amendment made
the Bill of Rights applicable to the States.
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[***54]
Later, but prior to the Twining case, this Court decided that the
following were not "privileges or immunities" of national
citizenship, so as to make them immune against state invasion: the Eighth
Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, In re Kemmler,
136 U.S. 436; the Seventh Amendment's guarantee of a jury trial in civil cases,
Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U.S. 90; the Second Amendment's
"right of the people to keep and bear Arms . . . ," Presser
v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252; the Fifth and Sixth Amendments'
requirements for indictment in capital or other infamous crimes, and for trial
by jury in criminal prosecutions, Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S.
581. While it can be argued that these cases implied that no one of the
provisions of the Bill of Rights was made applicable to the states as
attributes of national citizenship, no one of them expressly so decided. In
fact, the Court in Maxwell v. Dow, supra at 597-598,
concluded no more than that "the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the United States do not necessarily include all the rights protected by the
first eight amendments to the Federal Constitution against the powers
[***55] of the Federal Government." Cf. Palko v. Connecticut,
302 U.S. 319, 329.
After the Slaughter-House decision, the Court also said that states
could, despite the "due process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,
take private property without just compensation, Davidson v. New
Orleans, 96 U.S. 97, 105; [*79] Pumpelly v. Green
Bay Co., 13 Wall., 166, 176-177; abridge the freedom of assembly
guaranteed [**1690] by the First Amendment, United States
v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542; see also Prudential Ins. Co. v. Cheek,
259 U.S. 530, 543; Patterson v. Colorado, 205 U.S. 454; cf.
Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652, 666 (freedom of speech);
prosecute for crime by information rather than indictment, Hurtado v. People
of California, 110 U.S. 516; regulate the price for storage of grain in
warehouses and elevators, Munn v. Illinois, 94 U.S. 113. But
this Court also held in a number of cases that colored people must, because of
the Fourteenth Amendment, be accorded equal protection of the laws. See, e.
g., Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303; cf. Virginia
v. Rives, 100 U.S. 313; see also Yick Wo v. Hopkins,
[***56] 118 U.S. 356.
Thus, up to and for some years after 1873, when Munn v. Illinois,
supra, was decided, this Court steadfastly declined to invalidate states'
legislative regulation of property rights or business practices under the
Fourteenth Amendment unless there were racial discrimination involved in the
state law challenged. The first significant breach in this policy came in 1889,
in Chicago, M. & St. P. R. Co. v. Minnesota, 134 U.S.
418. n8 A state's railroad rate regulatory statute was there stricken as
violative of the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This was
accomplished by reference to a due process formula which did not necessarily
operate so as to protect the Bill of Rights' personal liberty safeguards, but
which gave a new and hitherto undiscovered scope for the Court's use of the due
process clause to protect property rights under natural law concepts. And in
1896, in Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S.
226, [*80] this Court, in effect, overruled Davidson v. New
Orleans, supra, by holding, under the new due process-natural law formula,
that the Fourteenth Amendment forbade a state from taking private property
[***57] for public use without payment of just compensation. n9
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n8 See San Mateo County v. Southern P. R. Co., 116 U.S. 138; Santa
Clara County v. Southern P. R. Co., 118 U.S. 394, 396; Graham,
The "Conspiracy Theory" of the Fourteenth Amendment, 47 Yale L. J.
371, 48 Yale L. J. 171.
n9 This case was decided after Hurtado but before Twining. It
apparently was the first decision of this Court which brought in a Bill of
Rights provision under the due process clause. In Davidson v. New
Orleans, 96 U.S. 97, 105 the Court had refused to make such a holding,
saying that "it must be remembered that, when the Fourteenth Amendment was
adopted, the provision on that subject [just compensation], in immediate
juxtaposition in the fifth amendment with the one we are now construing [due
process], was left out, and this [due process] was taken." Not only was
the just compensation clause left out, but it was deliberately left out. A
Committee on Reconstruction framed the Fourteenth Amendment, and its Journal
shows that on April 21, 1866, the Committee by a 7 to 5 vote rejected a
proposal to incorporate the just compensation clause in the Fourteenth
Amendment. Journal of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, 39th Cong., 1st
Sess. (1866), reprinted as Sen. Doc. No. 711, 63d Cong., 3d Sess. (1915) 29. As
shown by the history of the Amendment's passage, however, the Framers thought
that in the language they had included this protection along with all the other
protections of the Bill of Rights. See Appendix, infra.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[***58]
Following the pattern of the new doctrine formalized in the foregoing
decisions, the Court in 1896 applied the due process clause to strike down a
state statute which had forbidden certain types of contracts. Allgeyer
v. Louisiana, 165 U.S. 578. Cf. Hoopeston Canning Co. v. Cullen,
318 U.S. 313, 316, 318-319. In doing so, it substantially adopted the rejected
argument of counsel in the Slaughter-House cases, that the Fourteenth
Amendment guarantees the liberty of all persons under "natural law"
to engage in their chosen business or vocation. In the Allgeyer
opinion, id. [**1691] at 589, the Court quoted with
approval the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley in a second Slaughter-House
case, Butchers' Union Co. v. Crescent City Co., 111 U.S. 746,
762, 764, 765, which closely followed [*81] one phase of the
argument of his dissent in the original Slaughter-House cases -- not
that phase which argued that the Bill of Rights was applicable to the States.
And in 1905, three years before the Twining case, Lochner v. New
York, 198 U.S. 45, followed the argument used in Allgeyer to hold
that the due process clause was violated by a state [***59] statute
which limited the employment of bakery workers to sixty hours per week and ten
hours per day.
The foregoing constitutional doctrine, judicially created and adopted by
expanding the previously accepted meaning of "due process," marked a
complete departure from the Slaughter-House philosophy of judicial
tolerance of state regulation of business activities. Conversely, the new
formula contracted the effectiveness of the Fourteenth Amendment as a
protection from state infringement of individual liberties enumerated in the
Bill of Rights. Thus the Court's second-thought interpretation of the Amendment
was an about-face from the Slaughter-House interpretation and
represented a failure to carry out the avowed purpose of the Amendment's
sponsors. n10 This reversal is dramatized by the fact that the Hurtado
case, which had rejected the due process clause as an instrument
[*82] for preserving Bill of Rights liberties and privileges, was
cited as authority for expanding the scope of that clause so as to permit this
Court to invalidate all state regulatory legislation it believed to be contrary
to "fundamental" principles.
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n10 One writer observed, "That the Supreme Court has, on the one hand,
refused to give this Amendment its evident meaning and purpose -- thus
completely defeating the intention of the Congress that framed it and of the
people that adopted it. But, on the other hand, the Court has put into it a
meaning which had never been intended either by its framers or adopters -- thus
in effect adopting a new Amendment and augmenting its own power by constituting
itself that 'perpetual censor upon all legislation of the state,' which Mr.
Justice Miller was afraid the Court would become if the Fourteenth Amendment
were interpreted according to its true meaning and given the full effect
intended by the people when they adopted it." 2 Boudin, Government by
Judiciary (1932) 117. See also Haines, The Revival of Natural Law Concepts
(1930) 143-165; Fairman, Mr. Justice Miller and the Supreme Court (1939) c.
VIII.
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[***60]
The Twining decision, rejecting the compelled testimony clause of the
Fifth Amendment, and indeed rejecting all the Bill of Rights, is the end
product of one phase of this philosophy. At the same time, that decision
consolidated the power of the Court assumed in past cases by laying broader
foundations for the Court to invalidate state and even federal regulatory
legislation. For the Twining decision, giving separate consideration
to "due process" and "privileges or immunities," went all
the way to say that the "privileges or immunities" clause of the
Fourteenth Amendment "did not forbid the States to abridge the personal
rights enumerated in the first eight Amendments . . . ." Twining
v. New Jersey, supra, 99. And in order to be certain, so far as
possible, to leave this Court wholly free to reject all the Bill of Rights as
specific restraints upon state action, the decision declared that even if this
Court should decide that the due process clause forbids the states to infringe
personal liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, it would do so, not
"because those rights are enumerated in the first eight Amendments, but
because they are of such a nature that [***61] they are included in
the conception of due process of law." Ibid.
At the same time that the Twining decision held that the states need
not conform to the specific provisions of the Bill of Rights, it consolidated
the power that the Court had assumed under the due process clause by laying
even broader foundations for the Court to invalidate state and even
[**1692] federal regulatory legislation. For under the Twining
formula, which includes non-regard for the first eight amendments, what are
"fundamental rights" and in accord with "canons of
decency," as the Court [*83] said in Twining, and
today reaffirms, is to be independently "ascertained from time to time by
judicial action . . . ." Id. at 101; "what is due process of
law depends on circumstances." Moyer v. Peabody, 212
U.S. 78, 84. Thus the power of legislatures became what this Court would
declare it to be at a particular time independently of the specific guarantees
of the Bill of Rights such as the right to freedom of speech, religion and
assembly, the right to just compensation for property taken for a public
purpose, the right to jury trial or the right to be secure against unreasonable
searches [***62] and seizures. Neither the contraction of the Bill
of Rights safeguards n11 nor the invalidation of regulatory laws n12 by this
Court's appraisal of "circumstances" would readily be classified as
the most satisfactory contribution of this Court to the nation. In 1912, four
years after the Twining case was decided, a book written by Mr.
Charles Wallace Collins gave the history of this Court's interpretation and
application of the Fourteenth Amendment up to that time. It is not necessary
for one fully to agree with all he said in [*84] order to appreciate
the sentiment of the following comment concerning the disappointments caused by
this Court's interpretation of the Amendment.
". . . It was aimed at restraining and checking the powers of wealth and
privilege. It was to be a charter of liberty for human rights against property
rights. The transformation has been rapid and complete. It operates to-day to
protect the rights of property to the detriment of the rights of man. It has
become the Magna Charta of accumulated and organized capital." Collins,
The Fourteenth Amendment and the States, (1912) 137-8.
That this feeling was shared, at least in part, by members [***63]
of this Court is revealed by the vigorous dissents that have been written in
almost every case where the Twining and Hurtado doctrines
have been applied to invalidate state regulatory laws. n13
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n11 See cases collected pp. 78-79 supra. Other constitutional rights
left unprotected from state violation are, for example, right to counsel, Betts
v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455; privilege against self-incrimination, Feldman
v. United States, 322 U.S. 487, 490.
n12 Examples of regulatory legislation invalidated are: state ten-hour law for
bakery employees, Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45; cf.
Muller v. Oregon, 208 U.S. 412; District of Columbia minimum wage
for women, Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U.S. 525; Morehead
v. New York, 298 U.S. 587; but cf. West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish,
300 U.S. 379; state law making it illegal to discharge employee for membership
in a union, Coppage v. Kansas, 236 U.S. 1; cf. Adair
v. United States, 208 U.S. 161; state law fixing price of gasoline, Williams
v. Standard Oil Co., 278 U.S. 235; state taxation of bonds, Baldwin
v. Missouri, 281 U.S. 586; state law limiting amusement ticket
brokerage, Ribnik v. McBride, 277 U.S. 350; law fixing size
of loaves of bread to prevent fraud on public, Jay Burns Baking Co. v.
Bryan, 264 U.S. 504; cf. Schmidinger v. Chicago, 226
U.S. 578. [***64]
n13 See particularly dissents in cases cited notes 11 and 12, supra.
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Later decisions of this Court have completely undermined that phase of the Twining
doctrine which broadly precluded reliance on the Bill of Rights to determine
what is and what is not a "fundamental" right. Later cases have also
made the Hurtado case an inadequate support for this phase of the Twining
formula. For [**1693] despite Hurtado and Twining,
this Court has now held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects from state
invasion the following "fundamental" rights safeguarded by the Bill
of Rights: right to counsel in criminal cases, Powell v. Alabama,
287 U.S. 45, 67, limiting the Hurtado case; see also Betts v.
Brady, 316 U.S. 455, and De Meerleer v. Michigan,
329 U.S. 663; freedom of assembly, De Jonge v. Oregon, 299
U.S. 353, 364; at the very least, certain types of cruel and unusual punishment
and former jeopardy, State of Louisiana ex rel. Francis v. Resweber,
329 U.S. 459; the right of an accused in a criminal case to be informed
[*85] of the charge against [***65] him, see Snyder
v. Massachusetts, 291 U.S. 97, 105; the right to receive just
compensation on account of taking private property for public use, Chicago,
B. & Q. R. Co. v. Chicago, 166 U.S. 226. And the Court has
now through the Fourteenth Amendment literally and emphatically applied the
First Amendment to the States in its very terms. Everson v. Board
of Education, 330 U.S. 1; Board of Education v. Barnette,
319 U.S. 624, 639; Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, 268.
In Palko v. Connecticut, supra, a case which involved former jeopardy
only, this Court re-examined the path it had traveled in interpreting the
Fourteenth Amendment since the Twining opinion was written. In Twining
the Court had declared that none of the rights enumerated in the first eight
amendments were protected against state invasion because they were incorporated
in the Bill of Rights. But the Court in Palko, supra, at 323, answered
a contention that all eight applied with the more guarded statement, similar to
that the Court had used in Maxwell v. Dow, supra at 597, that
"there is no such general rule." Implicit in this statement, and in
[***66] the cases decided in the interim between Twining
and Palko and since, is the understanding that some of the eight
amendments do apply by their very terms. Thus the Court said in the Palko
case that the Fourteenth Amendment may make it unlawful for a state to abridge
by its statutes the "freedom of speech which the First Amendment
safeguards against encroachment by the Congress . . . or the like freedom of
the press . . . or the free exercise of religion . . . , or the right of
peaceable assembly . . . or the right of one accused of crime to the benefit of
counsel . . . . In these and other situations immunities that are valid as
against the federal government by force of the specific pledges of particular
amendments have been found to be implicit in the concept of ordered
[*86] liberty, and thus, through the Fourteenth Amendment, become
valid as against the states." Id. at 324-325. The Court went on
to describe the Amendments made applicable to the States as "the
privileges and immunities that have been taken over from the earlier articles
of the federal bill of rights and brought within the Fourteenth Amendment by a
process of absorption." Id. at 326. In [***67] the Twining
case fundamental liberties were things apart from the Bill of Rights. Now it
appears that at least some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights in their
very terms satisfy the Court as sound and meaningful expressions of fundamental
liberty. If the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination be such
an expression of fundamental liberty, I ask, and have not found a satisfactory
answer, why the Court today should consider that it should be
"absorbed" in part but not in full? Cf. Warren, The New
"Liberty" under the Fourteenth Amendment, 39 Harv. L. Rev. 431,
458-461 (1926). Nothing in the Palko opinion requires that when the
Court decides that a Bill of Rights' provision is to be applied to the States,
it is to be applied piecemeal. [**1694] Nothing in the Palko
opinion recommends that the Court apply part of an amendment's established
meaning and discard that part which does not suit the current style of
fundamentals.
The Court's opinion in Twining, and the dissent in that case, made it clear
that the Court intended to leave the states wholly free to compel confessions,
so far as the Federal Constitution is concerned. Twining v. New
Jersey, [***68] supra, see particularly pp. 111-114, 125-126.
Yet in a series of cases since Twining this Court has held that the
Fourteenth Amendment does bar all American courts, state or federal, from
convicting people of crime on coerced confessions. Chambers v. Florida,
309 U.S. 227; Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143, 154-155,
and cases cited. Federal courts cannot do so because of the Fifth Amendment.
[*87] Bram v. United States, 168 U.S. 532, 542,
562-563. And state courts cannot do so because the principles of the Fifth
Amendment are made applicable to the States through the Fourteenth by one formula
or another. And taking note of these cases, the Court is careful to point out
in its decision today that coerced confessions violate the Federal Constitution
if secured "by fear of hurt, torture or exhaustion." Nor can a state,
according to today's decision, constitutionally compel an accused to testify
against himself by "any other type of coercion that falls within the scope
of due process." Thus the Court itself destroys or at least drastically
curtails the very Twining decision it purports to reaffirm. It
repudiates the foundation of that opinion, [***69] which presented
much argument to show that compelling a man to testify against himself does not
"violate" a "fundamental" right or privilege.
It seems rather plain to me why the Court today does not attempt to justify all
of the broad Twining discussion. That opinion carries its own
refutation on what may be called the factual issue the Court resolved. The
opinion itself shows, without resort to the powerful argument in the dissent of
Mr. Justice Harlan, that outside of Star Chamber practices and influences, the
"English-speaking" peoples have for centuries abhorred and feared the
practice of compelling people to convict themselves of crime. I shall not
attempt to narrate the reasons. They are well known and those interested can
read them in both the majority and dissenting opinions in the Twining
case, in Boyd v. United States, 116 U.S. 616, and in the
cases cited in notes 8, 9, 10, and 11 of Ashcraft v. Tennessee,
supra. Nor does the history of the practice of compelling testimony in
this country, relied on in the Twining opinion, support the degraded
rank which that opinion gave the Fifth Amendment's privilege against compulsory
self-incrimination. [***70] I think the history there recited by the
Court belies its conclusion.
[*88] The Court in Twining evidently was forced to resort
for its degradation of the privilege to the fact that Governor Winthrop in
trying Mrs. Anne Hutchinson in 1637 was evidently "not aware of any
privilege against self-incrimination or conscious of any duty to respect
it." Id. at 103-104. Of course not. n14 Mrs. Hutchinson was
tried, if trial it can be called, for holding unorthodox [**1695]
religious views. n15 People with a consuming belief that their religious convictions
must be forced on others rarely ever believe that the unorthodox have any
rights which should or can be rightfully respected. As a result of her trial
and compelled admissions, Mrs. Hutchinson was found guilty of unorthodoxy and
banished from Massachusetts. The lamentable experience of Mrs. Hutchinson and
others, contributed to the overwhelming sentiment that demanded adoption
[*89] of a Constitutional Bill of Rights. The founders of this
Government wanted no more such "trials" and punishments as Mrs.
Hutchinson had to undergo. They wanted to erect barriers that would bar
legislators from passing laws that encroached on the [***71] domain
of belief, and that would, among other things, strip courts and all public
officers of a power to compel people to testify against themselves. See
Pittman, supra at 789.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n14 Actually it appears that the practice of the Court of Star Chamber of
compelling an accused to testify under oath in Lilburn's trial, 3 Howell's
State Trials 1315; 4 id., 1269, 1280, 1292, 1342, had helped bring to
a head the popular opposition which brought about the demise of that engine of
tyranny. 16 Car. I, cc. 10, 11. See 8 Wigmore, Evidence (1940) pp. 292, 298;
Pittman, The Colonial and Constitutional History of the Privilege Against
Self-incrimination, 21 Va. L. Rev. 763, 774 (1935). Moreover, it has been
pointed out that seven American state constitutions guaranteed a privilege
against self-incrimination prior to 1789. Pittman, supra, 765; Md.
Const. (1776), 1 Poore Constitutions (1878) 818; Mass. Const. (1780), id.
at 958; N. C. Const. (1776), 2 id. at 1409; N. H. Const. (1784), id.
at 1282; Pa. Const. (1776), id. at 1542; Vt. Const. (1777), id.
at 1860; Va. Bill of Rights (1776), id. at 1909.
By contrast it has been pointed out that freedom of speech was not protected by
colonial or state constitutions prior to 1789 except for the right to speak
freely in sessions of the legislatures. See Warren, The New "Liberty"
under the Fourteenth Amendment, 39 Harv. L. Rev. 431, 461 (1926).
[***72]
n15 For accounts of the proceedings against Mrs. Hutchinson, see 1 Hart,
American History Told by Contemporaries, 382 ff. (1897); Beard, The Rise of
American Civilization (1930) 57; 1 Andrews, The Colonial Period of American
History, 485 (1934).
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I cannot consider the Bill of Rights to be an outworn 18th Century "strait
jacket" as the Twining opinion did. Its provisions may be thought
outdated abstractions by some. And it is true that they were designed to meet
ancient evils. But they are the same kind of human evils that have emerged from
century to century wherever excessive power is sought by the few at the expense
of the many. In my judgment the people of no nation can lose their liberty so
long as a Bill of Rights like ours survives and its basic purposes are
conscientiously interpreted, enforced and respected so as to afford continuous
protection against old, as well as new, devices and practices which might
thwart those purposes. I fear to see the consequences of the Court's practice
of substituting its own concepts of decency and fundamental justice for the
language of the Bill [***73] of Rights as its point of departure in
interpreting and enforcing that Bill of Rights. If the choice must be between
the selective process of the Palko decision applying some of the Bill
of Rights to the States, or the Twining rule applying none of them, I
would choose the Palko selective process. But rather than accept
either of these choices, I would follow what I believe was the original purpose
of the Fourteenth Amendment -- to extend to all the people of the nation the complete
protection of the Bill of Rights. To hold that this Court can determine what,
if any, provisions of the Bill of Rights will be enforced, and if so to what
degree, is to frustrate the great design of a written Constitution.
[*90] Conceding the possibility that this Court is now wise enough
to improve on the Bill of Rights by substituting natural law concepts for the
Bill of Rights, I think the possibility is entirely too speculative to agree to
take that course. I would therefore hold in this case that the full protection
of the Fifth Amendment's proscription against compelled testimony must be
afforded by California. This I would do because of reliance upon the original
purpose of [***74] the Fourteenth Amendment.
It is an illusory apprehension that literal application of some or all of the
provisions of the Bill of Rights to the States would unwisely increase the sum
total of the powers of this Court to invalidate state legislation. The Federal
Government has not been harmfully burdened by the requirement that enforcement
of federal laws affecting civil liberty conform literally to the Bill of
Rights. Who would advocate its repeal? It must be conceded, of course, that the
natural-law-due-process formula, which the Court today reaffirms, has been
interpreted to limit substantially this Court's power to prevent state
violations of the individual civil liberties guaranteed by the Bill of Rights.
n16 But this formula also has [**1696] been used in the past, and
can be used in the future, to license this Court, in considering regulatory
legislation, to roam at large in the broad expanses of policy and morals and to
trespass, all too freely, on the legislative domain of the States as well as
the Federal Government.
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n16 See, e. g., Betts v. Brady, 316 U.S. 455; Feldman
v. United States, 322 U.S. 487.
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[***75]
Since Marbury v. Madison, 1 Cranch 137, was decided, the
practice has been firmly established, for better or worse, that courts can
strike down legislative enactments which violate the Constitution. This
process, of course, involves interpretation, and since words can have many
meanings, interpretation obviously may result in contraction or extension of
the original purpose of a constitutional [*91] provision, thereby
affecting policy. But to pass upon the constitutionality of statutes by looking
to the particular standards enumerated in the Bill of Rights and other parts of
the Constitution is one thing; n17 to invalidate statutes because of
application of "natural law" deemed to be above and undefined by the
Constitution is another. n18 "In the one instance, courts proceeding
within [*92] clearly marked constitutional boundaries seek to
execute policies written into the Constitution; in the other, they roam at will
in the limitless area of their own beliefs as to reasonableness and actually
select policies, a responsibility which the Constitution entrusts to the
legislative representatives of the people." Federal Power Commission
v. Pipeline Co., 315 U.S. [***76] 575, 599, 601, n. 4.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n17 See Chambers v. Florida, 309 U.S. 227; Polk Co.
v. Glover, 305 U.S. 5, 12-19; McCart v. Indianapolis
Water Co., 302 U.S. 419, 423, 428; Milk Wagon Drivers v. Meadowmoor
Dairies, 312 U.S. 287, 299, 301; Betts v. Brady, 316
U.S. 455, 474; International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U.S.
310, 322, 324-326; Feldman v. United States, 322 U.S. 487,
494, 495; Federal Power Comm'n v. Hope Natural Gas Co., 320
U.S. 591, 619, 620; United Gas Co. v. Texas, 303 U.S. 123,
146, 153; Gibbs v. Buck, 307 U.S. 66, 79.
n18 An early and prescient expose of the inconsistency of the natural law
formula with our constitutional form of government appears in the concurring
opinion of Mr. Justice Iredell in Calder v. Bull, 3 Dall.
386, 398, 399: "If any act of Congress, or of the Legislature of a state,
violates . . . constitutional provisions, it is unquestionably void; though, I
admit, that as the authority to declare it void is of a delicate and awful
nature, the Court will never resort to that authority, but in a clear and urgent
case. If, on the other hand, the Legislature of the Union, or the Legislature
of any member of the Union, shall pass a law, within the general scope of their
constitutional power, the Court cannot pronounce it to be void, merely because
it is, in their judgment, contrary to the principles of natural justice. The
ideas of natural justice are regulated by no fixed standard: the ablest and the
purest men have differed upon the subject; and all that the Court could
properly say, in such an event, would be, that the Legislature (possessed of an
equal right of opinion) had passed an act which, in the opinion of the judges,
was inconsistent with the abstract principles of natural justice."
See also Haines, The Law of Nature in State and Federal Decisions, 25 Yale L.
J. 617 (1916); Judicial Review of Legislation in the United States and the
Doctrines of Vested Rights and of Implied Limitations on Legislatures, 2 Tex.
L. Rev. 257 (1924), 3 Tex. L. Rev. 1 (1924); The Revival of Natural Law
Concepts (1930); The American Doctrine of Judicial Supremacy (1932); The Role
of the Supreme Court in American Government and Politics (1944).
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[***77]
MR. JUSTICE DOUGLAS joins in this opinion.
[For dissenting opinion of MURPHY, J., see post, p. 123.]
APPENDIX.
I.
The legislative origin of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment seems
to have been in the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. That Committee had been
[**1697] appointed by a concurrent resolution of the House and
Senate with authority to report "by bill or otherwise" whether the
former Confederate States "are entitled to be represented in either House
of Congress." Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1865) 6, 30. The broad
mission of that Committee was revealed by its very first action of sending a
delegation to President Johnson requesting him to "defer all further
executive action in regard to reconstruction until this committee shall have
taken action on that subject." Journal of the Joint Committee on
Reconstruction, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866), reprinted as Sen. Doc. No. 711,
63d Cong., 3d Sess. (1915) 6. It immediately set about the business of drafting
constitutional amendments which would outline the plan of reconstruction which
it would recommend to Congress. Some of those proposed amendments related to
suffrage and representation in the South. [***78] Journal, 7. On
January 12, 1866, a subcommittee, consisting of Senators Fessenden (Chairman of
the Reconstruction Committee) [*93] and Howard, and Congressmen
Stevens, Bingham and Conkling, was appointed to consider those suffrage
proposals. Journal, 9. There was at the same time referred to this Committee a
"proposed amendment to the Constitution" submitted by Mr. Bingham
that:
"The Congress shall have power to make all laws necessary and proper to
secure to all persons in every State within this Union equal protection in
their rights of life, liberty, and property." Journal, 9. Another proposed
amendment that "All laws, State or national, shall operate impartially and
equally on all persons without regard to race or color," n1 was also
referred to the Committee. Journal, 9. On January 24, 1866, the subcommittee
reported back a combination of these two proposals which was not accepted by
the full Committee. Journal, 13, 14. Thereupon the proposals were referred to a
"select committee of three," Bingham, Boutwell and Rogers. Journal,
14. On January 27, 1866, Mr. Bingham on behalf of the select committee,
presented this recommended amendment to the full committee:
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n1 Mr. Bingham and Mr. Stevens had introduced these same proposed amendments in
the House prior to the establishment of the Reconstruction Committee. Cong.
Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1865) 10, 14.
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-$=1290*80 [***79]
"Congress shall have power to make all laws which shall be necessary and
proper to secure all persons in every State full protection in the enjoyment of
life, liberty, and property; and to all citizens of the United States, in any
State, the same immunities and also equal political rights and
privileges." Journal, 14. This was not accepted. But on February 3, 1866,
Mr. Bingham submitted an amended version: "The Congress shall have power
to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens
of each State all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States
(Art. 4, sec. 2); and to all persons in the several States equal protection
[*94] in the rights of life, liberty, and property (5th
amendment)." This won committee approval, Journal, 17, and was presented
by Mr. Bingham to the House on behalf of the Committee on February 13, 1866.
Cong. Globe, supra, 813.
[***80] II.
When, on February 26, the proposed amendment came up for debate, Mr. Bingham
stated that "by order . . . of the committee . . . I propose the adoption
of this amendment." In support of it he said:
". . . the amendment proposed stands in the very words of the Constitution
of the United States as it came to us from the hands of its illustrious
framers. Every word of the proposed amendment is to-day in the Constitution of
our country, save the words conferring the express grant of power upon the
Congress of the United States. The residue of the resolution, as the House will
see by a reference to the Constitution, is the language of the second section
of the fourth article, and of a portion of the fifth amendment adopted by the
First Congress in 1789, and made part of the Constitution of the country. . . .
"Sir, it has been the want of the Republic that there was not an express
grant of [**1698] power in the Constitution to enable the whole
people of every State, by congressional enactment, to enforce obedience to
these requirements of the Constitution. Nothing can be plainer to thoughtful
men than that if the grant of power had been originally conferred upon the
Congress of the [***81] nation, and legislation had been upon your
statute-books to enforce these requirements of the Constitution in every State,
that rebellion, which has scarred and blasted the land, would have been an
impossibility. . . .
. . . .
"And, sir, it is equally clear by every construction of the Constitution,
its contemporaneous construction, its continued [*95] construction,
legislative, executive, and judicial, that these great provisions of the
Constitution, this immortal bill of rights embodied in the Constitution, rested
for its execution and enforcement hitherto upon the fidelity of the States. . .
." Cong. Globe, supra, 1033-1034.
Opposition speakers emphasized that the Amendment would destroy state's rights
and empower Congress to legislate on matters of purely local concern. Cong.
Globe, supra, 1054, 1057, 1063-1065, 1083, 1085-1087. See also id.
at 1082. Some took the position that the Amendment was unnecessary because the
Bill of Rights were already secured against state violation. Id. at
1059, 1066, 1088. Mr. Bingham joined issue on this contention:
"The gentleman seemed to think that all persons could have remedies for
all violations of their rights [***82] of 'life, liberty, and
property' in the Federal courts.
"I ventured to ask him yesterday when any action of that sort was ever
maintained in any of the Federal courts of the United States to redress the
great wrong which has been practiced, and which is being practiced now in more
States than one of the Union under the authority of State laws, denying to
citizens therein equal protection or any protection in the rights of life,
liberty, and property.
. . . .
". . . A gentleman on the other side interrupted me and wanted to know if
I could cite a decision showing that the power of the Federal Government to
enforce in the United States courts the bill of rights under the articles of
amendment to the Constitution had been denied. I answered that I was prepared
to introduce such decisions; and that is exactly what makes plain the necessity
of adopting this amendment.
"Mr. Speaker, on this subject I refer the House and the country to a
decision of the Supreme Court, to be found in 7 Peters, 247, in the case of
Barron vs. The Mayor and City [*96] Council of Baltimore,
involving the question whether the provisions of the fifth article of the
amendments to the Constitution [***83] are binding upon the State
of Maryland and to be enforced in the Federal courts. The Chief Justice says:
"'The people of the United States framed such a Government for the United
States as they supposed best adapted to their situation and best calculated to
promote their interests. The powers they conferred on this Government were to
be exercised by itself; and the limitations of power, if expressed in general
terms, are naturally, and we think necessarily, applicable to the Government
created by the instrument. They are limitations of power granted in the
instrument itself, not of distinct governments, framed by different persons and
for different purposes.
"'If these propositions be correct, the fifth amendment must be understood
as restraining the power of the General Government, not as applicable to the
States.'
"I read one further decision on this subject -- the case of the Lessee of
Livingston vs. Moore and others, 7 Peters, page 551. The court, in
delivering its opinion, says:
"'As to the amendments of the Constitution of the United States, they must
be put out of the case, since it is now settled that those amendments do not
extend to the States; and this observation [***84] disposes of the
[**1699] next exception, which relies on the seventh article of
those amendments.'
. . . .
"The question is, simply, whether you will give by this amendment to the
people of the United States the power, by legislative enactment, to punish
officials of States for violation of the oaths enjoined upon them by their
Constitution? . . . Is the bill of rights to stand in [*97] our
Constitution hereafter, as in the past five years within eleven States, a mere
dead letter? It is absolutely essential to the safety of the people that it
should be enforced.
"Mr. Speaker, it appears to me that this very provision of the bill of
rights brought in question this day, upon this trial before the House, more
than any other provision of the Constitution, makes that unity of government
which constitutes us one people, by which and through which American
nationality came to be, and only by the enforcement of which can American
nationality continue to be.
. . . .
"What more could have been added to that instrument to secure the
enforcement of these provisions of the bill of rights in every State, other
than the additional grant of power which we ask this day? . . .
"As slaves [***85] were not protected by the Constitution,
there might be some color of excuse for the slave States in their disregard for
the requirement of the bill of rights as to slaves and refusing them protection
in life or property . . . .
"But, sir, there never was even colorable excuse, much less apology, for
any man North or South claiming that any State Legislature or State court, or
State Executive, has any right to deny protection to any free citizen of the
United States within their limits in the rights of life, liberty, and property.
Gentlemen who oppose this amendment oppose the grant of power to enforce the
bill of rights. Gentlemen who oppose this amendment simply declare to these
rebel States, go on with your confiscation statutes, your statutes of
banishment, your statutes of unjust imprisonment, your statutes of murder and
death against men because of their loyalty to the Constitution and Government
of the United States." Id. at 1089-1091.
". . . Where is the power in Congress, unless this or some similar
amendment be adopted, to prevent the reenactment [*98] of those
infernal statutes . . .? Let some man answer. Why, sir, the gentleman from New
York [Mr. HALE] [***86] . . . yesterday gave up the argument on
this point. He said that the citizens must rely upon the State for their
protection. I admit that such is the rule under the Constitution as it now
stands." Id. at 1093.
As one important writer on the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment has
observed, "Bingham's speech in defense and advocacy of his amendment comprehends
practically everything that was said in the press or on the floor of the House
in favor of the resolution . . . ." Kendrick, Journal of the Joint
Committee on Reconstruction (1914) 217. A reading of the debates indicates that
no member except Mr. Hale had contradicted Mr. Bingham's argument that without
this Amendment the states had power to deprive persons of the rights guaranteed
by the first eight amendments. Mr. Hale had conceded that he did not "know
of a case where it has ever been decided that the United States Constitution is
sufficient for the protection of the liberties of the citizen." Cong.
Globe, supra, at 1064. But he was apparently unaware of the decision
of this Court in Barron v. Baltimore, supra. For he thought
that the protections of the Bill of Rights had already been "thrown over
us [***87] in some way, whether with or without the sanction of a
judicial decision . . . ." And in any event, he insisted, ". . . the
American people have not yet found that their State governments are insufficient
to protect the rights and liberties of the citizen." He further objected,
as had most of the other opponents to the proposal, that the Amendment
authorized the Congress to "arrogate" to itself vast powers over all
kinds of affairs which [**1700] should properly be left to the
States. Cong. Globe, supra, 1064-1065.
When Mr. Hotchkiss suggested that the amendment should be couched in terms of a
prohibition against the States in addition to authorizing Congress to legislate
[*99] against state deprivations of privileges and immunities,
debate on the amendment was postponed until the second Tuesday of April, 1866.
Cong. Globe, supra, 1095.
III.
Important events which apparently affected the evolution of the Fourteenth
Amendment transpired during the period during which discussion of it was
postponed. The Freedman's Bureau Bill which made deprivation of certain civil
rights of negroes an offense punishable by military tribunals had been passed.
It applied, not to the entire [***88] country, but only to the
South. On February 19, 1866, President Johnson had vetoed the bill principally
on the ground that it was unconstitutional. Cong. Globe, supra, 915.
Forthwith, a companion proposal known as the Civil Rights Bill empowering
federal courts to punish those who deprived any person anywhere in the country
of certain defined civil rights was pressed to passage. Senator Trumbull,
Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who offered the bill in the Senate
on behalf of that Committee, had stated that "the late slaveholding
States" had enacted laws ". . . depriving persons of African descent
of privileges which are essential to freemen . . . Statutes of Mississippi . .
. provide that . . . If any person of African descent residing in that State
travels from one county to another without having a pass or a certificate of
his freedom, he is liable to be committed to jail and to be dealt with as a
person who is in the State without authority. Other provisions of the statute
prohibit any negro or mulatto from having fire-arms; and one provision of the
statute declares that for 'exercising the functions of a minister of the Gospel
free negroes . . . on conviction, [***89] may be punished by . . .
lashes . . . .' Other provisions . . . prohibit a free negro . . . from keeping
a house of entertainment, and subject him to trial before two justices of the
peace and five slaveholders for [*100] violating . . . this law.
The statutes of South Carolina make it a highly penal offense for any person,
white or colored, to teach slaves; and similar provisions are to be found
running through all the statutes of the late slaveholding States. . . . The
purpose of the bill . . . is to destroy all these discriminations . . . ."
Cong. Globe, supra, 474.
In the House, after Mr. Bingham's original proposal for a constitutional
amendment had been rejected, the suggestion was also advanced that the bill
secured for all "the right of speech, . . . transit, . . . domicil, . . .
the right to sue, the writ of habeas corpus, and the right of
petition." Cong. Globe, supra, 1263. And an opponent of the
measure, Mr. Raymond, conceded that it would guarantee to the negro "the
right of free passage . . . He has a defined status . . . a right to
defend himself . . . to bear arms . . . to testify in the Federal courts . . .
." Cong. Globe, supra, 1266-1267. [***90] But
opponents took the position that without a constitutional amendment such as
that proposed by Mr. Bingham, the Civil Rights Bill would be unconstitutional.
Cong. Globe, supra, 1154-1155, 1263.
Mr. Bingham himself vigorously opposed and voted against the Bill. His
objection was twofold: First, insofar as it extended the protections of the
Bill of Rights as against state invasion, he believed the measure to be unconstitutional
because of the Supreme Court's holding in Barron v. Baltimore,
supra. While favoring the extension of the Bill of Rights guarantees as
against state invasion, he thought this could be done only by passage of his
amendment. His second objection to the Bill was that, in his view, it would go
beyond his objective of making the states observe the Bill of Rights and would
actually strip the states of power to govern, centralizing all power in the
Federal Government. To this he was opposed. His views are in part reflected by
his own remarks and the answers to him by Mr. Wilson. Mr. Bingham said, in
part:
[*101] ". . . [**1701] I do not oppose any
legislation which is authorized by the Constitution of my country to enforce in
its letter and its spirit [***91] the bill of rights as embodied in
that Constitution. I know that the enforcement of the bill of rights is the
want of the Republic. I know if it had been enforced in good faith in every
State of the Union the calamities and conflicts and crimes and sacrifices of
the past five years would have been impossible.
"But I feel that I am justified in saying, in view of the text of the
Constitution of my country, in view of all its past interpretations, in view of
the manifest and declared intent of the men who framed it, the enforcement of
the bill of rights, touching the life, liberty, and property of every citizen
of the Republic within every organized State of the Union, is of the reserve
powers of the States, to be enforced by State tribunals . . . .
". . . I am with him in an earnest desire to have the bill of rights in
your Constitution enforced everywhere. But I ask that it be enforced in
accordance with the Constitution of my country.
. . . .
". . . I submit that the term civil rights includes every right that
pertains to the citizen under the Constitution, laws, and Government of this
country. . . .
. . . .
". . . The law in every State should be just; it [***92]
should be no respecter of persons. It is otherwise now, and it has been
otherwise for many years in many of the States of the Union. I should remedy
that not by an arbitrary assumption of power, but by amending the Constitution
of the United States, expressly prohibiting the States from any such abuse of
power in the future. . . ."
. . . .
"If the bill of rights, as has been solemnly ruled by the Supreme Court of
the United States, does not limit the powers of States and prohibit such gross
injustice by [*102] States, it does limit the power of Congress and
prohibit any such legislation by Congress.
. . . .
". . . The care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen,
under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is
in the States, and not in the Federal Government. I have sought to effect no
change in that respect in the Constitution of the country. I have advocated
here an amendment which would arm Congress with the power to compel obedience
to the oath, and punish all violations by State officers of the bill of rights,
but leaving those officers to discharge the duties enjoined upon them as
citizens of the United States [***93] by that oath and by that
Constitution. . . ." Cong. Globe, supra, 1291-1292.
Mr. Wilson, House sponsor of the Civil Rights Bill, answered Mr. Bingham's
objections to it with these remarks:
"The gentleman from Ohio tells the House that civil rights involve all the
rights that citizens have under the Government; that in the term are embraced
those rights which belong to the citizen of the United States as such, and
those which belong to a citizen of a State as such; and that this bill is not
intended merely to enforce equality of rights, so far as they relate to
citizens of the United States, but invades the States to enforce equality of
rights in respect to those things which properly and rightfully depend on State
regulations and laws. . . .
". . . I find in the bill of rights which the gentleman desires to have
enforced by an amendment to the Constitution that 'no person shall be deprived
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.' I understand that
these constitute the civil rights belonging to the citizens in connection with
those which are necessary for the protection and maintenance and perfect
enjoyment of the rights thus specifically named, and [***94] these
are the rights to [*103] which this bill relates, having nothing to
do with subjects submitted to the control of the several States." Cong.
Globe, supra at 1294.
In vetoing the Civil Rights Bill, President Johnson said among other things
that the bill was unconstitutional for many of [**1702] the same
reasons advanced by Mr. Bingham:
"Hitherto every subject embraced in the enumeration of rights contained in
this bill has been considered as exclusively belonging to the States. . . . As
respects the Territories, they come within the power of Congress, for as to
them, the law-making power is the Federal power; but as to the States no
similar provisions exist, vesting in Congress the power 'to make rules and
regulations' for them." Cong. Globe, supra, 1679, 1680.
The bill, however, was passed over President Johnson's veto and in spite of the
constitutional objections of Bingham and others. Cong. Globe, supra,
1809, 1861.
IV.
Thereafter the scene changed back to the Committee on Reconstruction. There Mr.
Stevens had proposed an amendment, § 1 of which provided "No
discrimination shall be made by any State, nor by the United States, as to the
civil rights of persons [***95] because of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude." Journal, 28. Mr. Bingham proposed an additional
section providing that "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due
process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws." Journal, 30. After the committee had twice
declined to recommend Mr. Bingham's proposal, on April 28 it was accepted by the
Committee, substantially in the form he had proposed it, as § 1 of the
recommended Amendment. Journal, 44.
[*104] V.
In introducing the proposed Amendment to the House on May 8, 1866, Mr. Stevens
speaking for the Committee said:
"The first section [of the proposed amendment] prohibits the States from
abridging the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, or
unlawfully depriving them of life, liberty, or property, or of denying to any
person within their jurisdiction the 'equal' protection of the laws.
"I can hardly believe that any person can be found who will not admit that
every one of these provisions [***96] is just. They are all
asserted, in some form or other, in our DECLARATION or organic law. But the
Constitution limits only the action of Congress, and is not a limitation on the
States. This amendment supplies that defect, and allows Congress to correct the
unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one
man shall operate equally upon all." Cong. Globe, 2459. n2
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n2 It has been said of Stevens' statement: "He evidently had reference to
the Bill of Rights, for it is in it that most of the privileges are enumerated,
and besides it was not applicable to the States." Flack, The Adoption of
the Fourteenth Amendment (1908) 75.
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On May 23, 1866, Senator Howard introduced the proposed amendment to the Senate
in the absence of Senator Fessenden who was sick. Senator Howard prefaced his
remarks by stating:
"I . . . present to the Senate . . . the views and the motives [of the
Reconstruction Committee] . . . . One result of their investigations has been
the joint resolution for the amendment [***97] of the Constitution
of the United States now under consideration. . . .
"The first section of the amendment . . . submitted for the consideration
of the two Houses relates to the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
several States, [*105] and to the rights and privileges of all
persons, whether citizens or others, under the laws of the United States. . . .
"It will be observed that this is a general prohibition upon all the
States, as such, from abridging the privileges and immunities of the citizens
of the United States. That is its first clause, and I regard it as very
important. It also prohibits each one of the States from depriving any person
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying to any
person within the jurisdiction of the State the equal protection of its laws.
. . . .
" [**1703] It would be a curious question to solve what are
the privileges and immunities of citizens of each of the States in the several
States. . . . I am not aware that the Supreme Court have ever undertaken to
define either the nature or extent of the privileges and immunities thus
guarantied. . . . But we may gather some intimation of what probably will be [***98]
the opinion of the judiciary by referring to . . . Corfield vs.
Coryell . . . 4 Washington's Circuit Court Reports, page 380. [Here Senator
Howard quoted at length from that opinion.]
"Such is the character of the privileges and immunities spoken of in the
second section of the fourth article of the Constitution. To these privileges
and immunities, whatever they may be -- for they are not and cannot be fully
defined in their entire extent and precise nature -- to these should be added
the personal rights guarantied and secured by the first eight amendments of the
Constitution; such as the freedom of speech and of the press; the right of the
people peaceably to assemble and petition the Government for a redress of
grievances, a right appertaining to each and all the people; the right to keep
and to bear arms; the right to be exempted from the quartering of soldiers in a
house without the consent of the owner; [*106] the right to be
exempt from unreasonable searches and seizures, and from any search or seizure
except by virtue of a warrant issued upon a formal oath or affidavit; the right
of an accused person to be informed of the nature of the accusation against
him, and [***99] his right to be tried by an impartial jury of the
vicinage; and also the right to be secure against excessive bail and against
cruel and unusual punishments.
"Now, sir, here is a mass of privileges, immunities, and rights, some of
them secured by the second section of the fourth article of the Constitution,
which I have recited, some by the first eight amendments of the Constitution;
and it is a fact well worthy of attention that the course of decision of our
courts and the present settled doctrine is, that all these immunities,
privileges, rights, thus guarantied by the Constitution or recognized by it,
are secured to the citizens solely as a citizen of the United States and as a
party in their courts. They do not operate in the slightest degree as a
restraint or prohibition upon State legislation. States are not affected by them,
and it has been repeatedly held that the restriction contained in the
Constitution against the taking of private property for public use without just
compensation is not a restriction upon State legislation, but applies only to
the legislation of Congress.
"Now, sir, there is no power given in the Constitution to enforce and to
carry out any of these [***100] guarantees. They are not powers
granted by the Constitution to Congress, and of course do not come within the
sweeping clause of the Constitution authorizing Congress to pass all laws
necessary and proper for carrying out the foregoing or granted powers, but they
stand simply as a bill of rights in the Constitution, without power on the part
of Congress to give them full effect; while at the same time the States are not
restrained from violating the principles embraced in them except by their own
local constitutions, [*107] which may be altered from year to year.
The great object of the first section of this amendment is, therefore, to
restrain the power of the States and compel them at all times to respect these
great fundamental guarantees." Cong. Globe, supra, 2765.
Mr. Bingham had closed the debate in the House on the proposal prior to its
consideration by the Senate. He said in part:
". . . Many instances of State injustice and oppression have already
occurred in the State legislation of this Union, of flagrant violations of the
guarantied privileges of citizens of the United States, for which the national
Government furnished and could furnish by law no remedy [***101]
whatever. Contrary to the express letter of your Constitution, 'cruel and
unusual punishments' have been inflicted under State laws within this Union
upon citizens, not only for crimes committed, but [**1704] for sacred
duty done, for which and against which the Government of the United States had
provided no remedy and could provide none.
. . . .
"It was an approbrium to the Republic that for fidelity to the United
States they could not by national law be protected against the degrading
punishment inflicted on slaves and felons by State law. That great want of the
citizen and stranger, protection by national law from unconstitutional State
enactments, is supplied by the first section of this amendment." Cong.
Globe, supra, 2542-2543.
Both proponents and opponents of § 1 of the amendment spoke of its relation to
the Civil Rights Bill which had been previously passed over the President's
veto. Some considered that the amendment settled any doubts there might be as to
the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Bill. Cong. Globe, 2511, 2896. Others
maintained that the Civil Rights Bill would be unconstitutional
[*108] unless and until the amendment was adopted. Cong. Globe,
[***102] 2461, 2502, 2506, 2513, 2961. Some thought that amendment
was nothing but the Civil Rights "in another shape." Cong. Globe,
2459, 2462, 2465, 2467, 2498, 2502. One attitude of the opponents was
epitomized by a statement by Mr. Shanklin that the amendment strikes "down
the reserved rights of the States, . . . declared by the framers of the
Constitution to belong to the States exclusively and necessary for the
protection of the property and liberty of the people. The first section of this
proposed amendment . . . is to strike down those State rights and invest all
power in the General Government." Cong. Globe, supra, 2500. See
also Cong. Globe, supra, 2530, 2538.
Except for the addition of the first sentence of § 1 which defined citizenship,
Cong. Globe, supra, 2869, the amendment weathered the Senate debate
without substantial change. It is significant that several references were made
in the Senate debate to Mr. Bingham's great responsibility for § 1 of the
amendment as passed by the House. See e. g. Cong. Globe, supra,
2896.
VI.
Also just prior to the final votes in both Houses passing the resolution of
adoption, the Report of the Joint Committee on [***103]
Reconstruction, H. R. Rep. No. 30, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866); Sen. Rep. No.
112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866), was submitted. Cong. Globe, supra,
3038, 3051. This report was apparently not distributed in time to influence the
debates in Congress. But a student of the period reports that 150,000 copies of
the Report and the testimony which it contained were printed in order that
senators and representatives might distribute them among their constituents.
Apparently the Report was widely reprinted in the press and used as a campaign
document [*109] in the election of 1866. Kendrick, Journal of the
Joint Committee on Reconstruction (1914) 265. According to Kendrick the Report
was "eagerly . . . perused" for information concerning
"conditions in the South." Kendrick, supra, 265.
The Report of the Committee had said with reference to the necessity of
amending the Constitution:
". . . The so-called Confederate States are not, at present, entitled to
representation in the Congress of the United States; that, before allowing such
representation, adequate security for future peace and safety should be
required; that this can only be found in such changes of the organic
[***104] law as shall determine the civil rights and privileges of
all citizens in all parts of the republic . . . ." Report, supra,
XXI.
Among the examples recited by the testimony were discrimination against negro
churches and preachers by local officials and criminal punishment of those who
attended objectionable church services. Report, Part II, 52. Testimony also
cited recently enacted Louisiana laws which made it "a highly penal
offence for anyone to do anything that might be construed into encouraging the
blacks to leave the persons with whom they had made contracts
[**1705] for labor . . . ." Report, Part III, p. 25. n3
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
n3 In a widely publicized report to the President which was also submitted to
the Congress, Carl Schurz had reviewed similar incidents and emphasized the
fact that negroes had been denied the right to bear arms, own property, engage
in business, to testify in Court, and that local authorities had arrested them
without cause and tried them without juries. Sen. Exec. Doc. No. 2, 39th Cong.,
1st Sess. (1865) 23, 24, 26, 36. See also Report of Commissioner of Freedman's
Bureau, H. Exec. Doc. No. 70, 39th Cong., 1st Sess. (1866) 41, 47, 48, 233,
236, 265, 376.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -End Footnotes- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[***105]
Flack, supra at 142, who canvassed newspaper coverage and speeches
concerning the popular discussion of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment,
indicates that [*110] Senator Howard's speech stating that one of
the purposes of the first section was to give Congress power to enforce the
Bill of Rights, as well as extracts and digests of other speeches were published
widely in the press. Flack summarizes his observation that
"The declarations and statements of newspapers, writers and speakers, . .
. show very clearly, . . . the general opinion held in the North. That opinion,
briefly stated, was that the Amendment embodied the Civil Rights Bill and gave
Congress the power to define and secure the privileges of citizens of the
United States. There does not seem to have been any statement at all as to
whether the first eight Amendments were to be made applicable to the States or
not, whether the privileges guaranteed by those Amendments were to be
considered as privileges secured by the Amendment, but it may be inferred that
this was recognized to be the logical result by those who thought that the
freedom of speech and of the press as well as due process of law, including
[***106] a jury trial, were secured by it." Flack, supra,
153-154.
VII.
Formal statements subsequent to adoption of the Amendment by the congressional
leaders who participated in the drafting and enactment of it are significant.
In 1871, a bill was before the House which contemplated enforcement of the
Fourteenth Amendment. Mr. Garfield, who had participated in the debates on the
Fourteenth Amendment in 1866, said:
"I now come to consider . . . for it is the basis of the pending bill, the
fourteenth amendment. I ask the attention of the House to the first section of
that amendment, as to its scope and meaning. I hope gentlemen will bear in mind
that this debate, in which so many have taken part, will become historical, as
the earliest legislative construction [*111] given to this clause
of the amendment. Not only the words which we put into the law, but what shall
be said here in the way of defining and interpreting the meaning of the clause,
may go far to settle its interpretation and its value to the country
hereafter." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. (1871) App. 150.
"The next clause of the section under debate declares: 'Nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, [***107] liberty, or property,
without due process of law.'
"This is copied from the fifth article of amendments, with this
difference: as it stood in the fifth article it operated only as a restraint
upon Congress, while here it is a direct restraint upon the governments of the
States. The addition is very valuable. It realizes the full force and effect of
the clause in Magna Charta, from which it was borrowed; and there is now no
power in either the State or the national Government to deprive any person of
those great fundamental rights on which all true freedom rests, the rights of
life, liberty, and property, except by due process of law; that is, by an
impartial trial according to the laws of the land. . . ." Cong. Globe, supra,
at 152-3.
A few days earlier, in a debate on this same bill to enforce the Fourteenth
Amendment, Mr. Bingham, still a member of Congress, had stated at length his
understanding of the purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment as he had originally
conceived it:
"Mr. Speaker, the honorable gentleman from Illinois [Mr. FARNSWORTH] did
me unwittingly, [**1706] great service, when he ventured to ask me
why I changed the form of the first section of the fourteenth article
[***108] of amendment from the form in which I reported it to the
House in February, 1866, from the Committee on Reconstruction. I will answer
the gentleman, sir, and answer him truthfully. I had the honor to frame the
amendment as reported in February, 1866, and the first section, as it now
[*112] stands, letter for letter and syllable for syllable, in the
fourteenth article of the amendments to the Constitution of the United States,
save the introductory clause defining citizens. The clause defining citizens
never came from the joint Committee on Reconstruction, but the residue of the
first section of the fourteenth amendment did come from the committee precisely
as I wrote it and offered it in the Committee on Reconstruction, and precisely
as it now stands in the Constitution . . . .
"That is the grant of power. It is full and complete. The gentleman says
that amendment differs from the amendment reported by me in February; differs
from the provision introduced and written by me, now in the fourteenth article
of amendments. It differs in this: that it is, as it now stands in the
Constitution, more comprehensive than as it was first proposed and reported in
February, 1866. It [***109] embraces all and more than did the
February proposition.
. . . .
"The gentleman ventured upon saying that this amendment does not embrace
all of the amendment prepared and reported by me with the consent of the
committee in February, 1866. The amendment reported in February, and to which
the gentleman refers, is as follows: 'The Congress shall have power to make all
laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of each
State all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States, and
to all persons in the several States equal protection in the rights of life,
liberty, and property.'
"That is the amendment, and the whole of it, as reported in February,
1866. That amendment never was rejected by the House or Senate. A motion was
made to lay it on the table, which was a test vote on the merits of it, and the
motion failed . . . . I consented to and voted for the motion to postpone it .
. . . Afterward, in the joint [*113] Committee on Reconstruction, I
introduced this amendment, in the precise form, as I have stated, in which it
was reported, and as it now stands in the Constitution of my country. . . .
. . . .
"I answer the gentleman, [***110] how I came to change the
form of February to the words now in the first section of the fourteenth
article of amendment, as they stand, and I trust will forever stand, in the
Constitution of my country. I had read -- and that is what induced me to
attempt to impose by constitutional amendments new limitations upon the power
of the States -- the great decision of Marshall in Barron vs. the
Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, wherein the Chief Justice said, in
obedience to his official oath and the Constitution as it then was: 'The
amendments [to the Constitution] contain no expression indicating an intention
to apply them to the State governments. This court cannot so apply them.' -- 7
Peters p. 250.
"In this case the city had taken private property for public use, without
compensation as alleged, and there was no redress for the wrong in the Supreme
Court of the United States; and only for this reason, the first eight
amendments were not limitations on the power of the States.
"And so afterward, in the case of the Lessee of Livingstone vs.
Moore . . . the court ruled, 'it is now settled that the amendments [to the
Constitution] do not extend to the States.' They were [***111] but
limitations upon Congress. Jefferson well said of the first eight articles of
amendments to the Constitution of the United States, they constitute the
American Bill of Rights. Those amendments secured the citizens against any
deprivation of any essential rights of person by any act of Congress, and among
other things thereby [**1707] they were secured [*114]
in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and
seizures, in the inviolability of their homes in times of peace, by declaring
that no soldier shall in time of peace be quartered in any house without the
consent of the owner. They secured trial by jury; they secured the right to be
informed of the nature and cause of accusations which might in any case be made
against them; they secured compulsory process for witnesses, and to be heard in
defense by counsel. They secured, in short, all the rights dear to the American
citizen. And yet it was decided, and rightfully, that these amendments,
defining and protecting the rights of men and citizens, were only limitations
on the power of Congress, not on the power of the States.
"In reexamining that case of Barron, Mr. Speaker, after my struggle in
[***112] the House in February, 1866, to which the gentleman has
alluded, I noted and apprehended as I never did before, certain words in that
opinion of Marshall. Referring to the first eight articles of amendments to the
Constitution of the United States, the Chief Justice said: 'Had the framers of
these amendments intended them to be limitations on the powers of the State
governments they would have imitated the framers of the original Constitution,
and have expressed that intention.' Barron vs. The Mayor, &c., 7
Peters, 250.
"Acting upon this suggestion I did imitate the framers of the original
Constitution. As they had said 'no State shall emit bills of credit, pass any
bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligations
of contracts;' imitating their example and imitating it to the letter, I
prepared the provision of the first section of the fourteenth amendment as it
stands in the Constitution, as follows: 'No State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United
States, nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property
without due process of law, [*115] nor deny to any person
[***113] within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'
"I hope the gentleman now knows why I changed the form of the amendment of
February, 1866.
"Mr. Speaker, that the scope and meaning of the limitations imposed by the
first section, fourteenth amendment of the Constitution may be more fully
understood, permit me to say that the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the United States, as contradistinguished from citizens of a State, are chiefly
defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States.
Those eight amendments are as follows: [Here Mr. Bingham recited verbatim the
first eight articles.]
"These eight articles I have shown never were limitations upon the power
of the States, until made so by the fourteenth amendment. The words of that
amendment, 'no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,' are an express prohibition
upon every State of the Union, which may be enforced under existing laws of
Congress, and such other laws for their better enforcement as Congress may
make.
"Mr. Speaker, that decision in the fourth of Washington's Circuit Court
Reports, to [***114] which my learned colleague . . . has referred
is only a construction of the second section, fourth article of the original
Constitution, to wit, 'The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.' In that case the
court only held that in civil rights the State could not refuse to extend to
citizens of other States the same general rights secured to its own.
"In the case of The United States vs. Primrose, Mr. Webster said
that -- 'For the purposes of trade, it is evidently not in the power of any
State to impose any hinderance or embarrassment, &c., upon citizens of
other States, or to place them, on coming there, upon a different
[*116] footing from her own citizens.' -- 6 Webster's Works,
112.
[**1708] "The learned Justice Story declared that -- 'The
intention of the clause ("the citizens of each State shall be entitled to
all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States,") was to
confer on the citizens of each State a general citizenship, and communicated
all the privileges and immunities which a citizen of the same State would be
entitled to under the same circumstances.' -- Story on the Constitution,
[***115] vol. 2, page 605.
"Is it not clear that other and different privileges and immunities than
those to which a citizen of a State was entitled are secured by the provision
of the fourteenth article, that no State shall abridge the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, which are defined in the eight
articles of amendment, and which were not limitations on the power of the
States before the fourteenth amendment made them limitations?
"Sir, before the ratification of the fourteenth amendment, the State could
deny to any citizen the right of trial by jury, and it was done. Before that
the State could abridge the freedom of the press, and it was so done in half of
the States of the Union. Before that a State, as in the case of the State of
Illinois, could make it a crime punishable by fine and imprisonment for any
citizen within her limits, in obedience to the injunction of our divine Master,
to help a slave who was ready to perish; to give him shelter, or break with him
his crust of bread. The validity of that State restriction upon the rights of
conscience and the duty of life was affirmed, to the shame and disgrace of
America, in the Supreme Court of the United [***116] States; but
nevertheless affirmed in obedience to the requirements of the Constitution. . .
.
"Under the Constitution as it is, not as it was, and by force of the
fourteenth amendment, no State hereafter [*117] can imitate the bad
example of Illinois, to which I have referred, nor can any State ever repeat
the example of Georgia and send men to the penitentiary, as did that State, for
teaching the Indian to read the lessons of the New Testament, to know that new
evangel, 'The pure in heart shall see God.'
. . . .
". . . You say it is centralized power to restrain by law unlawful
combinations in States against the Constitution and citizens of the United
States, to enforce the Constitution and the rights of United States citizen [sic.]
by national law, and to disperse by force, if need be, combinations too
powerful to be overcome by judicial process, engaged in trampling underfoot the
life and liberty, or destroying the property of the citizen.
. . . .
"The States never had the right, though they had the power, to inflict
wrongs upon free citizens by a denial of the full protection of the laws;
because all State officials are by the Constitution required to be
[***117] bound by oath or affirmation to support the Constitution.
As I have already said, the States did deny to citizens the equal protection of
the laws, they did deny the rights of citizens under the Constitution, and
except to the extent of the express limitations upon the States, as I have
shown, the citizen had no remedy. They denied trial by jury, and he had no
remedy. They took property without compensation, and he had no remedy. They
restricted the freedom of the press, and he had no remedy. They restricted the
freedom of speech, and he had no remedy. They restricted the rights of
conscience, and he had no remedy. They bought and sold men who had no remedy.
Who dare say, now that the Constitution has been amended, that the nation
cannot by law provide against all such abuses and denials [*118] of
right as these in States and by States, or combinations of persons?
. . . .
"Mr. Speaker, I respectfully submit to the House and country that, by
virtue of these amendments, it is competent for Congress to-day to provide by
law that no man shall be held to answer in the tribunals of any State in this
Union for any act made criminal by the laws of that State without a fair and
[***118] impartial trial by jury. Congress never
[**1709] before has had the power to do it. It is also competent
for Congress to provide that no citizen in any State shall be deprived of his
property by State law or the judgment of a State court without just
compensation therefor. Congress never before had the power so to declare. It is
competent for the Congress of the United States to-day to declare that no State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the freedom of speech, the
freedom of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble together
and petition for redress of grievances for these are of the rights of citizens
of the United States defined in the Constitution and guarantied by the
fourteenth amendment, and to enforce which Congress is thereby expressly
empowered. . . ." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. (1871) App. 81, 83-85.
And the day after Mr. Garfield's address, Mr. Dawes, also a member of the 39th
Congress, stated his understanding of the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment:
"Sir, in the progress of constitutional liberty, when, in addition to
those privileges and immunities [secured by the original Constitution] . . . ,
there were added from time [***119] to time, by amendments, others,
and these were augmented, amplified, and secured and fortified in the
buttresses of the Constitution itself, he hardly comprehended the full scope
and measure of the phrase which appears in this bill. Let me read, one by one,
these [*119] amendments, and ask the House to tell me when and
where and by what chosen phrase has man been able to bring before the Congress
of the country a broader sweep of legislation than my friend has in the bill
here. In addition to the original rights secured to him in the first article of
amendments he had secured the free exercise of his religious belief, and
freedom of speech and of the press. Then again he had secured to him the right
to keep and bear arms in his defense. Then, after that, his home was secured in
time of peace from the presence of a soldier; and, still further, sir, his
house, his papers, and his effects were protected against unreasonable seizure.
. . .
"Then, again, as if that were not enough, by another amendment he was
secured against trial for any alleged offense except it be on the presentation
of a grand jury, and he was protected against ever giving testimony against
himself. [Italics [***120] supplied.] Then, sir, he was
guarantied a speedy trial, and the right to confront every witness against him.
Then in every controversy which should arise he had the right to have it
decided by a jury of his peers. Then, sir, by another amendment, he was never
to be required to give excessive bail, or be punished by cruel and unusual
punishment. And still later, sir, after the bloody sacrifice of our four years'
war, we gave the most grand of all these rights, privileges, and immunities, by
one single amendment to the Constitution, to four millions of American citizens
who sprang into being, as it were, by the wave of a magic wand. Still further,
every person born on the soil was made a citizen and clothed with them all.
"It is all these, Mr. Speaker, which are comprehended in the words
'American citizen,' and it is to protect and to secure him in these rights,
privileges, and immunities this bill is before the House. And the question to
be settled is, whether by the Constitution, in which these provisions are
[*120] inserted, there is also power to guard, protect, and enforce
these rights of the citizens; whether they are more, indeed, than a mere
declaration of rights, [***121] carrying with it no power of
enforcement . . . ." Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess. Part I (1871) 475,
476.
VIII.
Hereafter appear statements in opinions of this Court rendered after adoption
of the Fourteenth Amendment and prior to the Twining case which
indicate a belief that the Fourteenth Amendment, and particularly its
privileges and immunities clause, was a plain application of the Bill of Rights
to the states. See p. 75, note 6, supra.
In the Slaughter-House cases, 16 Wall. 36, 83, the dissenting opinion
of Mr. Justice Field emphasized that the [**1710] Fourteenth
Amendment made a "citizen of a State . . . a citizen of the United States
residing in that State." Id. at 95. But he enunciated a
relatively limited number of privileges and immunities which he considered
protected by national power from state interference by the Fourteenth
Amendment. Apparently dissatisfied with the limited interpretation of Mr.
Justice Field, Mr. Justice Bradley, although agreeing with all that Mr. Justice
Field had said, wrote an additional dissent. Id. at 111. In it he
said:
"But we are not bound to resort to implication, or to the constitutional
history of England, to find an [***122] authoritative declaration
of some of the most important privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States. It is in the Constitution itself. The Constitution, it is true,
as it stood prior to the recent amendments, specifies, in terms, only a few of
the personal privileges and immunities of citizens, but they are very
comprehensive in their character. The States were merely prohibited from
passing bills of [*121] attainder, ex post facto laws,
laws impairing the obligation of contracts, and perhaps one or two more. But
others of the greatest consequence were enumerated, although they were only
secured, in express terms, from invasion by the Federal government; such as the
right of habeas corpus, the right of trial by jury, of free exercise
of religious worship, the right of free speech and a free press, the right
peaceably to assemble for the discussion of public measures, the right to be
secure against unreasonable searches and seizures, and above all, and including
almost all the rest, the right of not being deprived of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law. These, and still others are
specified in the original Constitution, or in the early [***123]
amendments of it, as among the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States, or, what is still stronger for the force of the argument, the
rights of all persons, whether citizens or not." Id. at 118-119;
see also id. at 120-122.
Mr. Justice Swayne joined in this opinion but added his own not inconsistent
views. Id. at 124.
But in Walker v. Sauvinet, 92 U.S. 90, 92, when a majority of
the Court held that "A trial by jury in suits at common law pending in the
State courts is not . . . a privilege or immunity of national citizenship,
which the States are forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment to abridge,"
Mr. Justice Field and Mr. Justice Clifford dissented from "the opinion and
judgment of the court." Id. at 93.
In Spies v. Illinois, 123 U.S. 131, counsel for the
petitioners, Mr. J. Randolph Tucker, after enumerating the protections of the
Bill of Rights, took this position:
". . . Though originally the first ten Amendments were adopted as
limitations on Federal power, yet in so far as they secure and recognize
fundamental [*122] rights -- common law rights -- of the man, they
make them privileges and immunities of the man [***124] as citizen
of the United States, and cannot now be abridged by a State under the
Fourteenth Amendment. In other words, while the ten Amendments, as limitations
on power, only apply to the Federal government, and not to the States, yet in
so far as they declare or recognize rights of persons, these rights are theirs,
as citizens of the United States, and the Fourteenth Amendment as to such
rights limits state power, as the ten Amendments had limited Federal power.
. . . .
". . . the rights declared in the first ten Amendments are to be regarded
as privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, which, as I
insist, are protected as such by the Fourteenth Amendment." Id.
at 151, 152.
The constitutional issues raised by this argument were not reached by the Court
which disposed of the case on jurisdictional grounds.
However, Mr. Justice Field, in his dissenting opinion in O'Neil v. Vermont,
144 U.S. 323, 337, 361, [**1711] stated that "after much reflection"
he had become persuaded that the definition of privileges and immunities given
by Mr. Tucker in Spies v. Illinois, supra, "is
correct." And Mr. Justice Field went on to say that
"While, therefore, the [***125] ten Amendments, as limitations
on power, and, so far as they accomplish their purpose and find their fruition
in such limitations, are applicable only to the Federal government and not to
the States, yet, so far as they declare or recognize the rights of persons,
they are rights belonging to them as citizens of the United States under the
Constitution; and the Fourteenth Amendment, as [*123] to all such
rights, places a limit upon state power by ordaining that no State shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge them. If I am right in this view, then
every citizen of the United States is protected from punishments which are
cruel and unusual. It is an immunity which belongs to him, against both state
and Federal action. The State cannot apply to him, any more than the United States,
the torture, the rack or thumbscrew, or any cruel and unusual punishment, or
any more than it can deny to him security in his house, papers and effects
against unreasonable searches and seizures, or compel him to be a witness
against himself in a criminal prosecution. These rights, as those of citizens
of the United States, find their recognition and guaranty against Federal
action in the [***126] Constitution of the United States, and
against state action in the Fourteenth Amendment. The inhibition by that
Amendment is not the less valuable and effective because of the prior and
existing inhibition against such action in the constitutions of the several
States. . . ." O'Neil v. Vermont, supra, at 363.
Mr. Justice Harlan, and apparently Mr. Justice Brewer, concurred in this phase
of Mr. Justice Field's dissent. Id. at 366, 370, 371.
For further exposition of these views see also the vigorous dissenting opinions
of Mr. Justice Harlan in Hurtado v. California, 110 U.S. 516,
538, and Maxwell v. Dow, 176 U.S. 581, 605, as well as his
dissenting opinion in Twining v. New Jersey, 211 U.S. 78,
114.
[**1683contd]
[EDITOR'S NOTE: The page numbers of this document may appear to be out of
sequence; however, this pagination accurately reflects the pagination of the
original published document.]
MR. JUSTICE MURPHY, with whom MR. JUSTICE RUTLEDGE concurs, dissenting.
While in substantial agreement with the views of MR. JUSTICE BLACK, I have one
reservation and one addition to make.
[*124] I agree that the specific guarantees of the Bill of Rights
should be carried over intact into the first section of the Fourteenth
Amendment. But I am not prepared to say that the latter is entirely and
necessarily limited by the Bill of Rights. [***127] Occasions may
arise where a proceeding falls so far short of conforming to fundamental
standards of procedure as to warrant constitutional [**1684]
condemnation in terms of a lack of due process despite the absence of a
specific provision in the Bill of Rights.
That point, however, need not be pursued here inasmuch as the Fifth Amendment
is explicit in its provision that no person shall be compelled in any criminal
case to be a witness against himself. That provision, as MR. JUSTICE BLACK
demonstrates, is a constituent part of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Moreover, it is my belief that this guarantee against self-incrimination has
been violated in this case. Under California law, the judge or prosecutor may
comment on the failure of the defendant in a criminal trial to explain or deny
any evidence or facts introduced against him. As interpreted and applied in
this case, such a provision compels a defendant to be a witness against himself
in one of two ways:
1. If he does not take the stand, his silence is used as the basis for drawing
unfavorable inferences against him as to matters which he might reasonably be
expected to explain. Thus he is compelled, through his silence, to testify
[***128] against himself. And silence can be as effective in this
situation as oral statements.
2. If he does take the stand, thereby opening himself to cross-examination, so
as to overcome the effects of the provision in question, he is necessarily
compelled to testify against himself. In that case, his testimony on
cross-examination is the result of the coercive pressure of the provision
rather than his own volition.
[*125] Much can be said pro and con as to the desirability of
allowing comment on the failure of the accused to testify. But policy arguments
are to no avail in the face of a clear constitutional command. This guarantee
of freedom from self-incrimination is grounded on a deep respect for those who
might prefer to remain silent before their accusers. To borrow language from Wilson
v. United States, 149 U.S. 60, 66: "It is not every one who can
safely venture on the witness stand though entirely innocent of the charge
against him. Excessive timidity, nervousness when facing others and attempting
to explain transactions of a suspicious character, and offences charged against
him, will often confuse and embarrass him to such a degree as to increase
rather than [***129] remove prejudices against him. It is not every
one, however honest, who would, therefore, willingly be placed on the witness
stand."
We are obliged to give effect to the principle of freedom from
self-incrimination. That principle is as applicable where the compelled
testimony is in the form of silence as where it is composed of oral statements.
Accordingly, I would reverse the judgment below.