Was the 14A a corporate plot?
>
> Hacker, Louis, M. 1940. The Triumph of American Capitalism: The Development
> 1 387: 14th Amendment, drawn up by congressional Joint Committee of
> Fifteen, of which Radicals dominated. Unlike other amendments
> contained more than 1 proposition. Section 1 was much like old
> Civil Rights Law, but it contained a clause "nor shall any state
> deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due
> process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the
> equal protection of the laws." Roscoe Conkling, a member of Joint
> Committee, said that law was intended to protect property rights
> against state legislatures, thus purposely written "due process"
> and "equal protection". see Graham, H. J. "The 'Conspiracy Theory'
> of the Fourteenth Amendment." Yale Law Journal, vol. xlvii (1938),
> p. 171-94.
Sure, the due process clause and takings clause protect property rights on their face. That does not show that they were written to promote corporate over individual rights. Black people were regularly denied property rights in the immediate postwar period.
Btw a 1940 book is not exactly current research. the standard work--also older, but still excelennent--is tenBroek's Equal under Law.
> Beard, Charles and Mary. 1933. The Rise of American Civilization. 2 vols.
Really!
> 113: "Long afterward Roscoe Conkling, the eminent corporation lawyer of New York, a colleague of Bingham on the congressional committee, confirmed this view. While arguing a tax case for a railway company before the Supreme Court in 1882, he declared that the protection of freedmen was by no means
> the sole purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment.
1882--almost two decades later. And anyone who would believe Roscoe Conkling about anything deserves what he gets. But even here, he says at most that protection of blacks was not the sole purpose of the 14A,a lthough it was clearly the main purpose. This kind of "evidence' is the sort of thing that makes me sympathetic to Justice Scalia's view that all legislative history should be consigned to the trask bin--much less post-hoc "legislative history." Btw the Beard's work is almost wholly discredited among historians.
--jks
>
> JKSCHW at aol.com wrote:
>
> > The 14A? This is false and preposterous. It was written by radical Republicans to ensure enforcement of Reconstruction civil rights statutes. There is no serious debate about the issue. the S.Ct. later gave corporations the status of persons under the 14A, but that was not its original intent. --jks
>
> --
>
> Michael Perelman
> Economics Department
> California State University
> michael at ecst.csuchico.edu
> Chico, CA 95929
> 530-898-5321
> fax 530-898-5901