United States v. Cruikshank
Encyclopedia
United States v. Cruikshank, 92 U.S. 542
(1876) was an important United States Supreme Court
decision in United States constitutional law
, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights
to state governments
following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
.
, Louisiana
, courthouse to protect it from the pending Democratic takeover. Although some of the blacks were armed and initially defended themselves, estimates were that 100-280 were killed, most of them following surrender, and 50 were being held prisoner that night. Three whites were killed. This was in the tense aftermath of months of uncertainty following the disputed gubernatorial election of November 1872, when two parties declared victory at the state and local levels. The election was still unsettled in the spring, and both Republican
and Fusionists
, who carried Democratic
backing, had certified their own slates for the local offices of sheriff
(Christopher Columbus Nash
) and justice of the peace
in Grant Parish
, where Colfax is the parish seat. Federal troops reinforced the election of the Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg.
Some members of the white mob were indicted and charged under the Enforcement Act
of 1870. Among other provisions, the law made it a felony for two or more people conspired to deprive anyone of his constitutional rights.
Given the disproportionate rate of black fatalities, historians have come to call the event the Colfax Massacre
.
to the states and found that the First Amendment
right to assembly "was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens" and that the Second Amendment
"has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government."
Although the Enforcement Act had been designed primarily to allow Federal enforcement and prosecution of actions of the Ku Klux Klan
and other secret vigilante groups in preventing blacks from voting and murdering them, the Cruikshank court held that the Due Process and Equal Protection
Clauses applied only to state action
, and not to actions of individuals: "The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another."
that also voted to rescind the indictments, but for entirely different reasons: He opined that section five of the 14th Amendment did, in fact, invest the federal government with the power to legislate the actions of individuals who restrict the constitutional rights of others, but also found that the indictments were worded too vaguely to allow the defendants to prepare an effective defense.
regained power in the late 1870s, they passed legislation making voter registration
and elections more complicated, effectively stripping many blacks from voter rolls. Paramilitary
violence continued to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate
states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments, with provisions for poll taxes, residency requirements, literacy test
s, and grandfather clause
s that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor whites. The disfranchisement also meant that in most cases blacks could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters.
The Cruikshank case effectively enabled political parties' use of paramilitary forces.
Ironically, and despite that era's Republican commitment to Reconstruction and black civil rights, all five Justices in the majority were appointed by Republicans (three by Lincoln, two by Grant), while the lone Democratic appointee Nathan Clifford
dissented.
wrote: "Cruikshank paralyzed the federal government's attempt to protect black citizens by punishing violators of their Civil Rights and, in effect, shaped the Constitution to the advantage of the Ku Klux Klan." Federal civil rights enforcement was blocked by Cruikshank until 1966 (United States v. Price
; United States v. Guest
) when the Court vitiated Cruikshank. Cruikshank has also been cited for over a century by supporters of restrictive state and local gun control
laws such as the Sullivan Act
.
Although significant portions of Cruikshank have been overturned by later decisions, it is still relied upon with some authority in other portions. Cruikshank and Presser v. Illinois
, which reaffirmed it in 1886, are the only significant Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment until the murky United States v. Miller
in 1939, but both preceded the court's general acceptance of the incorporation doctrine
and have been questioned for that reason. However, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller
in 2008 clearly suggested that Cruikshank and the chain of cases flowing from it would no longer be considered good law as a result of the radically changed view of the Fourteenth Amendment
when that issue eventually comes before the courts:
Regarding this assertion in Heller that Cruikshank said the first amendment did not apply against the states, Professor David Rabban has written that the Cruikshank Court "never specified whether the First Amendment contains 'fundamental rights' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against state action....”
The Civil Rights Cases
and Rehnquist's
opinion for the majority in United States v. Morrison
referred to the Cruikshank state action doctrine.
Case citation
Case citation is the system used in many countries to identify the decisions in past court cases, either in special series of books called reporters or law reports, or in a 'neutral' form which will identify a decision wherever it was reported...
(1876) was an important United States Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
decision in United States constitutional law
United States constitutional law
United States constitutional law is the body of law governing the interpretation and implementation of the United States Constitution.- Introduction :United States constitutional law defines the scope and application of the terms of the Constitution...
, one of the earliest to deal with the application of the Bill of Rights
United States Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights is the collective name for the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. These limitations serve to protect the natural rights of liberty and property. They guarantee a number of personal freedoms, limit the government's power in judicial and other proceedings, and...
to state governments
State governments of the United States
State governments in the United States are those republics formed by citizens in the jurisdiction thereof as provided by the United States Constitution; with the original 13 States forming the first Articles of Confederation, and later the aforementioned Constitution. Within the U.S...
following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
.
Background
On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, an armed white militia attacked Republican freedmen, who had gathered at the ColfaxColfax, Louisiana
Colfax is a town in and the parish seat of Grant Parish, Louisiana, United States. The town, founded in 1869, is named for the vice president of the United States, Schuyler M. Colfax , who served in the first term of U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant, for whom the parish is named. Colfax is part of...
, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, courthouse to protect it from the pending Democratic takeover. Although some of the blacks were armed and initially defended themselves, estimates were that 100-280 were killed, most of them following surrender, and 50 were being held prisoner that night. Three whites were killed. This was in the tense aftermath of months of uncertainty following the disputed gubernatorial election of November 1872, when two parties declared victory at the state and local levels. The election was still unsettled in the spring, and both Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
and Fusionists
Fusion Party
Fusion Party is a term that may have a variety of meanings in the political history of the United States.The Fusion Party was the original name of the Republican Party in the state of Ohio. In 1854, anti-slavery parties were forming in many northern states in opposition to the Kansas Nebraska Act...
, who carried Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
backing, had certified their own slates for the local offices of sheriff
Sheriff
A sheriff is in principle a legal official with responsibility for a county. In practice, the specific combination of legal, political, and ceremonial duties of a sheriff varies greatly from country to country....
(Christopher Columbus Nash
Christopher Columbus Nash
Christopher Columbus Nash was a merchant and a Democratic sheriff in Grant Parish, Louisiana, who in 1873 led a company of white militiamen to regain control of the parish courthouse in Colfax, which had been seized by armed African-American insurgents...
) and justice of the peace
Justice of the Peace
A justice of the peace is a puisne judicial officer elected or appointed by means of a commission to keep the peace. Depending on the jurisdiction, they might dispense summary justice or merely deal with local administrative applications in common law jurisdictions...
in Grant Parish
Grant Parish, Louisiana
-Demographics:As of the census of 2000, there were 18,698 people, 7,073 households, and 5,276 families residing in the parish. The population density was 29 people per square mile . There were 8,531 housing units at an average density of 13 per square mile...
, where Colfax is the parish seat. Federal troops reinforced the election of the Republican governor, William Pitt Kellogg.
Some members of the white mob were indicted and charged under the Enforcement Act
Enforcement Acts
The Enforcement Acts in the United States were four acts passed from 1870 to 1871 that were meant to protect rights of all blacks following ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as part of Reconstruction, which entitled freedmen and all others born in the United...
of 1870. Among other provisions, the law made it a felony for two or more people conspired to deprive anyone of his constitutional rights.
Given the disproportionate rate of black fatalities, historians have come to call the event the Colfax Massacre
Colfax massacre
The Colfax massacre or Colfax Riot occurred on Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, in Colfax, Louisiana, the seat of Grant Parish, during Reconstruction, when white militia attacked freedmen at the Colfax courthouse...
.
Ruling
The Supreme Court ruled on a range of issues and found the indictment faulty. It overturned the convictions of two defendants in the case. The Court did not incorporate the Bill of RightsBill of rights
A bill of rights is a list of the most important rights of the citizens of a country. The purpose of these bills is to protect those rights against infringement. The term "bill of rights" originates from England, where it referred to the Bill of Rights 1689. Bills of rights may be entrenched or...
to the states and found that the First Amendment
First Amendment to the United States Constitution
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution is part of the Bill of Rights. The amendment prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering...
right to assembly "was not intended to limit the powers of the State governments in respect to their own citizens" and that the Second Amendment
Second Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the United States Bill of Rights that protects the right of the people to keep and bear arms. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights.In 2008 and 2010, the Supreme Court issued two Second...
"has no other effect than to restrict the powers of the national government."
Although the Enforcement Act had been designed primarily to allow Federal enforcement and prosecution of actions of the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
and other secret vigilante groups in preventing blacks from voting and murdering them, the Cruikshank court held that the Due Process and Equal Protection
Equal Protection Clause
The Equal Protection Clause, part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, provides that "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws"...
Clauses applied only to state action
State actor
In United States law, a state actor is a person who is acting on behalf of a governmental body, and is therefore subject to regulation under the United States Bill of Rights, including the First, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, which prohibit the federal and state governments from violating...
, and not to actions of individuals: "The fourteenth amendment prohibits a State from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; but this adds nothing to the rights of one citizen as against another."
Dissent
Mr. Justice Clifford offered a concurring opinionConcurring opinion
In law, a concurring opinion is a written opinion by one or more judges of a court which agrees with the decision made by the majority of the court, but states different reasons as the basis for his or her decision...
that also voted to rescind the indictments, but for entirely different reasons: He opined that section five of the 14th Amendment did, in fact, invest the federal government with the power to legislate the actions of individuals who restrict the constitutional rights of others, but also found that the indictments were worded too vaguely to allow the defendants to prepare an effective defense.
Aftermath
In the short term, blacks in the South were left to the mercy of increasingly hostile state governments, who did little to protect them. When DemocratsDemocratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
regained power in the late 1870s, they passed legislation making voter registration
Voter registration
Voter registration is the requirement in some democracies for citizens and residents to check in with some central registry specifically for the purpose of being allowed to vote in elections. An effort to get people to register is known as a voter registration drive.-Centralized/compulsory vs...
and elections more complicated, effectively stripping many blacks from voter rolls. Paramilitary
Paramilitary
A paramilitary is a force whose function and organization are similar to those of a professional military, but which is not considered part of a state's formal armed forces....
violence continued to suppress black voting. From 1890 to 1908, 10 of the 11 former Confederate
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
states passed disfranchising constitutions or amendments, with provisions for poll taxes, residency requirements, literacy test
Literacy test
A literacy test, in the context of United States political history, refers to the government practice of testing the literacy of potential citizens at the federal level, and potential voters at the state level. The federal government first employed literacy tests as part of the immigration process...
s, and grandfather clause
Grandfather clause
Grandfather clause is a legal term used to describe a situation in which an old rule continues to apply to some existing situations, while a new rule will apply to all future situations. It is often used as a verb: to grandfather means to grant such an exemption...
s that effectively disfranchised most black voters and many poor whites. The disfranchisement also meant that in most cases blacks could not serve on juries or hold any political office, which were restricted to voters.
The Cruikshank case effectively enabled political parties' use of paramilitary forces.
Ironically, and despite that era's Republican commitment to Reconstruction and black civil rights, all five Justices in the majority were appointed by Republicans (three by Lincoln, two by Grant), while the lone Democratic appointee Nathan Clifford
Nathan Clifford
Nathan Clifford was an American statesman, diplomat and jurist.Clifford was born of old Yankee stock in Rumney, New Hampshire, to farmers, the only son of seven children He attended the public schools of that town, then the Haverhill Academy in New...
dissented.
Continuing validity
Constitutional commentator Leonard LevyLeonard Levy
Leonard W. Levy was the Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Professor of Humanities and Chairman of the Graduate Faculty of History at Claremont Graduate School, California. He was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and educated at Columbia University, where his mentor for the Ph.D...
wrote: "Cruikshank paralyzed the federal government's attempt to protect black citizens by punishing violators of their Civil Rights and, in effect, shaped the Constitution to the advantage of the Ku Klux Klan." Federal civil rights enforcement was blocked by Cruikshank until 1966 (United States v. Price
United States v. Price
United States v. Cecil Price, et al. , also known as the "Mississippi Burning trial" , was one of the most famous criminal trials in American history...
; United States v. Guest
United States v. Guest
United States v. Guest 383 U.S. 745 is a United States Supreme Court opinion, authored by Justice Potter Stewart, in which the court extended the protection of the 14th Amendment to citizens who suffer rights deprivations at the hands of private conspiracies, where there is minimal state...
) when the Court vitiated Cruikshank. Cruikshank has also been cited for over a century by supporters of restrictive state and local gun control
Gun control
Gun control is any law, policy, practice, or proposal designed to restrict or limit the possession, production, importation, shipment, sale, and/or use of guns or other firearms by private citizens...
laws such as the Sullivan Act
Sullivan Act
The Sullivan Act, also known as the Sullivan Law, is a controversial gun control law in New York State. Upon first passage, the Sullivan Act required licenses for New Yorkers to possess firearms small enough to be concealed. Possession of such firearms without a license was a misdemeanor, carrying...
.
Although significant portions of Cruikshank have been overturned by later decisions, it is still relied upon with some authority in other portions. Cruikshank and Presser v. Illinois
Presser v. Illinois
Presser v. Illinois, 116 U.S. 252 , was a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States holding that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution limited only the power of Congress and the national government to control firearms, not that of the state.-Background:In this 1886 case,...
, which reaffirmed it in 1886, are the only significant Supreme Court interpretations of the Second Amendment until the murky United States v. Miller
United States v. Miller
United States v. Miller, 307 U.S. 174 , was the first Supreme Court of the United States decision to involve the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. Miller is a controversial decision in the ongoing American gun politics debate, as both sides claim that it supports their...
in 1939, but both preceded the court's general acceptance of the incorporation doctrine
Incorporation (Bill of Rights)
The incorporation of the Bill of Rights is the process by which American courts have applied portions of the U.S. Bill of Rights to the states. Prior to the 1890s, the Bill of Rights was held only to apply to the federal government...
and have been questioned for that reason. However, the majority opinion of the Supreme Court in District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller
District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570 , was a landmark case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution protects an individual's right to possess a firearm for traditionally lawful purposes in federal enclaves, such as...
in 2008 clearly suggested that Cruikshank and the chain of cases flowing from it would no longer be considered good law as a result of the radically changed view of the Fourteenth Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
when that issue eventually comes before the courts:
With respect to Cruikshank's continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.
Regarding this assertion in Heller that Cruikshank said the first amendment did not apply against the states, Professor David Rabban has written that the Cruikshank Court "never specified whether the First Amendment contains 'fundamental rights' protected by the Fourteenth Amendment against state action....”
The Civil Rights Cases
Civil Rights Cases
The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 , were a group of five similar cases consolidated into one issue for the United States Supreme Court to review...
and Rehnquist's
William Rehnquist
William Hubbs Rehnquist was an American lawyer, jurist, and political figure who served as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court of the United States and later as the 16th Chief Justice of the United States...
opinion for the majority in United States v. Morrison
United States v. Morrison
United States v. Morrison, is a United States Supreme Court decision which held that parts of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 were unconstitutional because they exceeded congressional power under the Commerce Clause and under section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.-...
referred to the Cruikshank state action doctrine.
Dualistic nature of the US political system
This Supreme Court case opined the following:We have in our political system a government of the United States and a government of each of the several States. Each one of these governments is distinct from the others, and each has citizens of its own who owe it allegiance, and whose rights, within its jurisdiction, it must protect. The same person may be at the same time a citizen of the United States and a citizen of a State, but his rights of citizenship under one of these governments will be different from those he has under the other.