upon the States only; and the legislation authorized to be adopted by Congress for enforcing it is not direct legislation on the matters respecting which the States are prohibited from making or enforcing certain laws, or doing certain acts, but is corrective legislation, such as may be necessary or proper for counteracting and redressing the effect of such laws or acts;[1] that this inhibition contained in the amendment has exclusive reference to State action, and means that no agency of the State, or of the officers or agents by whom its powers are exerted, shall deny to any person within her jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.[2]
The Fourteenth Amendment, therefore, comprehensive and "as broad and general as the casing air," stood, after this decision, and stands now, as the supreme law of the land, fitly joined to and compacted with the Constitution. This amendment declares, and embraces under general terms, the whole body of the advanced rights, public and private, which constitute the charm of modern civilized life to all citizens of the United States. It is an integral part of the Constitution, operating, like the other parts, on the State sovereignties as well as on the people. It laid the foundation of, and defined, the individual rights of the adopted citizen, which neither the law power of the United States nor that of the States could infringe or curtail. This great superstructure of law, embodied in the Constitution, followed after a tremendous internal struggle for the attainment and preservation of freedom; and constituted for the African race the formal acknowledgment of, and their muniment of title to, the rights, liberties, immunities and privileges of American citizenship.
Although the Civil-Rights Cases decide that Congress cannot "step into the domain of local jurisprudence," and that the Fourteenth Amendment does not invest Congress with power to legislate upon subjects which are within the domain of State legislation; although it does not authorize Congress to create a code of municipal law for the regulation of private rights, yet, says the court, "It had a deeper and broader scope: it nullifies and
