Читать книгу American Democracy in Context - Joseph A. Pika - Страница 114

The so-called Civil War Amendments to the Constitution—the Thirteenth (1865), Fourteenth (1868), and Fifteenth Amendments (1870)—greatly expanded the power of the national government. They prohibited slavery, prevented states from abridging the right to vote on account of race, and prohibited states from depriving any person of due process of the law or the equal protection of the laws. Each contained an enabling clause, which expanded Congress’s power to enforce the provisions of these amendments.

Although it did not happen immediately, the Fourteenth Amendment also paved the way for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights—in other words, making the provisions of the Bill of Rights binding upon states as well as the federal government (see Chapter 4). Thus, the long-term effect of the Fourteenth Amendment has been to restrict the power of states by preventing them from passing legislation that would violate the First Amendment or other specific provisions of the Bill of Rights.

secession The act of withdrawing from membership in a federation.

The Civil War also expanded the role of the national government in other ways. For example, the cost of the war led to the first federal income tax. The war also led the federal government to become involved in a form of social welfare: creating and maintaining a vast pension system for war veterans and war widows. Nonetheless, the debate between dual federalists and cooperative federalists was far from over, and dual federalists soon began to win important victories from the Supreme Court.

As early as 1873, the Supreme Court began to limit the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment.³² Ten years later, the Court sharply limited the enabling clause power that Congress derived from the Fourteenth Amendment.³³ But the biggest boost to states’ rights came in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). By ruling that state-imposed “separate but equal” facilities (such as schools) for whites and blacks did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Court gave great leeway to states to impose racial segregation.³⁴ This laid the groundwork for a broad interpretation of states’ rights that allowed states to pass Jim Crow laws and impose barriers to prevent blacks from voting (see Chapter 5).

The Court’s narrow, dual federalist interpretation of the commerce clause from 1895 to 1937 also limited Congress’s ability to regulate the workplace through such things as child labor laws and minimum wage laws. Starting in 1895, the Court embraced the so-called direct–indirect test to delineate congressional power under the commerce clause.³⁵ According to this test, Congress could only use its commerce clause power to regulate those things that had a direct effect on interstate commerce (such as the actual distribution of goods and commodities across state lines). It could not regulate those things that had only an indirect effect on interstate commerce (such as the production of items shipped in interstate commerce). Thus, Congress could not regulate manufacturing, mining, or agriculture, which the Court considered to be the province of states. Attempts by Congress to pass workplace regulations were mostly struck down by the Supreme Court as violations of the Tenth Amendment.³⁶ So, too, were attempts by Congress to regulate the economy.

In the early twentieth century, child labor was commonplace in factories, mines, and mills like this one in Macon, Georgia. The dual federalist Supreme Court struck down attempts by Congress to regulate the practice. These cases were later overturned after the emergence of a cooperative federalist majority on the Court in 1937.

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