of voting, in respect of race, colour, or previous servitude: deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law: deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.
Note that this list contains no prohibition to a State to do any of the following things: — Establish a particular form of religion: endow a particular form of religion, or educational or charitable establishments connected therewith: abolish trial by jury in criminal or civil cases: suppress the freedom of speaking, writing, and meeting (provided that this be done equally as between different classes of citizens, and provided also that it be not done to such an extent as to amount to a deprivation of liberty without due process of law): limit the electoral franchise to any extent: extend the electoral franchise to women, minors, aliens.
These omissions are significant. They show that the framers of the Constitution had no wish to produce uniformity among the States in government or institutions, and little care to protect the citizens against abuses of State power.[1] They were content to trust for this to the provisions of the State constitutions. Their chief aim was to secure the National government against encroachments on the part of the States, and to prevent causes of quarrel both between the central and State authorities and between the several States. The result has, on the whole, justified their action. So far from abusing their power of making themselves unlike one another, the States have tended to be too uniform, and have made fewer experiments in institutions than one could wish.
VI. The powers vested in each State are all of them original and inherent powers, which belonged to the State before it entered the Union. Hence they are prima facie unlimited, and if a question arises as to any particular power, it is presumed to be enjoyed by the State, unless it can be shown to have been taken away by the Federal Constitution; or, in other words, a State is not deemed to be subject to any restriction which the Constitution has not distinctly imposed.
The powers granted to the National government are delegated powers, enumerated in and defined by the instrument
- ↑ The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are in this respect a novelty. The only restrictions of this kind to be found in the instrument of 1789 are those relating to contracts and ex post facto laws.
