Maryland Law Review
Volume 71, Issue 1
Foreword: Plus or Minus One: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments
By Mark A. Graber [Full Text]
71 Md. L. Rev. 12 (2011).
The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment transformed constitutional debate in the United States. Subsequent controversies over the constitutional rights of African-Americans focused on the proper interpretation of Sections 1 and 5 of that Amendment. The Thirteenth Amendment was confined to a few isolated practices that could be analogized with slavery as it existed in the United States before the Civil War. Legal historians continue to debate the proper interpretation of the Thirteenth Amendment. Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment rendered inquiry into the original meaning of the slavery provisions largely historical. The Fourteenth Amendment, commentators agreed, at a minimum protected all the substantive rights that the original Thirteenth Amendment might have protected. The precise scope of those fundamental rights was contested. The crucial point is that passage of the Fourteenth Amendment eliminated the practical need to adjudicate the 1866 debates between Radical Republicans and Andrew Johnson over the meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment. Constitutional law would be the same had Americans in 1865 just passed the original text of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Suggested citation: Mark A. Graber, Foreword: Plus or Minus One: The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, 71 Md. L. Rev. 12 (2011).
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