Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 October 1883 — THE COURT'S DECISION. [ARTICLE]

THE COURT'S DECISION.

* The court, in a long and carefully-pre-pared opinion by Justice Bradley, holds: 1. That Congress had no constitutional authority to pass the sections in question under either the Thirteenth or Fourteenth amendments to the constitution. 2. That the Fourteenth amendment is prohibitory upon States only, and that the legislation authorized to be adopted by Congress for enforcing that amendment is not direct legislation on matters respecting which States are prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws or doing certain acts, but is corrective legislation necessary or proper for counteracting and redressing the effoct of snch Jaw cr acts; that in forbidding States, for example, to deprive any person of liberty or property without due process of law and giving Congress power to enforce this prohibition, it was not intended to give Congress power to provide due process of law for the protection of life, liberty and property (which would embrace almost all subjects of legislation), but to provide modes of redress for counteracting the operation and effect of State laws obnoxious to the prohibition. 3. That the Thirteenth amendment gives no power to Congress to pass the sections referred to, because that amendment relates only to slavery and involuntary servitude, which It abolishes, and gives Congress power top ms laws for its enforcement; that this power only extends to the subject-matter of the amendment itself—namely, slavery and involuntary servitude, and the necessary incidents and consequences of those conditions; that it has nothing to do with different races or colors, but only refers to slavery, the legality of different races and classes of citizens being provided for in .the Fourteenth amendment, which prohibits States from doing anythtng to interfere with snch equality; that it is no infringement of the Thirteenth amendment to refuse to any person equal accommodations and privileges at an Inn or pilace of public entertainment, however it may be violative of his legal rights; that It imposes upon him no badge of slavery or involuntary servitude which implies some sort of subjection of one person to another, and the Incapacity incident theretq, sach as inability to hold property, to make contracts, to be parties in court, etc., and that if the original Civil Rights «c* w.iich abolished these incapacities might lie supitorted by the Thirteenth amendment it does not thereto: e follow that the act of 1»74 can be supported by It. 4. That this decision affects only the validity of the law in states, and not in Territories or the District of Columbia, where the legislative power of Congress is un'imited, and it does not undertake to decide what Congress might or might not do under the power to regulate commerce with foreign natibus and among the several States, the law not being drawn with any such view. "6. That it is the opinion of the court that the first and second acts of Congress of March 1, 1875, entitled “An aot to protect all citizens in their civil and legal i ights," are unconstitutional and void, and judgment should be rendered upon the indictments accordingly.