In Re Slaughter-House Cases
83 U.S. 36 (1872)
The three cases known as In Re Slaughterhouse Cases challenged an act of the legislature of the State of Louisiana incorporating The Crescent City Live‐Stock Landing and Slaughter‐ House Company, and restricting slaughterhouse operations, allegedly in the interest of public health, to those operations established and sustained by the State‐created Corporation. Cases were brought on behalf of hundreds of butchers, alleging that the Act of the legislature created a monopoly in violation of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the federal Constitution; by the State itself to protect the exclusive privileges of the Corporation and prevent the butchers from purchasing land and engaging in similar operations; and the Corporation itself to prevent a competing enterprise. Citing DeTocqueville, counsel for the butchers noted that the colonists had come to America to escape monopolies which oppressed free enterprise, and that the federal Constitution guaranteed the right to engage in the occupations and businesses which represented their labor, a right suppressed and denied by the State law and the monopoly granted the Corporation. Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the court.
Writing for the majority, Justice Miller, rejected the petitioners’ Constitutional claim, holding that the statute, which he observed to be for the protection of the public health and safety (a valid and frequently exercised aspect of the police power), did not deprive the petitioners of the right to exercise their trade. Citing Gibbons v. Ogden, and other precedent, Justice Miller suggests at the outset that “no direct general power over these objects is granted to Congress; and consequently they remain subject to State legislation.” About monopoly status, per se, Justice Miller writes that the “butcher is permitted to slaughter, to prepare, and to sell his own meats; but he is required to slaughter at a specified place and to pay a reasonable compensation for the use of the accommodations furnished him at that place.” While the wisdom of such a monopoly “is open to question,” he observes, there is no deprivation of the right to labor in one’s occupation, and no destruction of the business of butchering. Noting that the petitioner’s argument was based upon the government’s exercise of its police power function through the Chartering of a Corporation, Justice Miller suggests: “If this statute had imposed on the city of New Orleans precisely the same duties, accompanied by the same privileges, which it has on the corporation which it created, it is believed that no question would have been raised as to its constitutionality. In that case the effect on the butchers in pursuit of their occupation and on the public would have been the same as it is now * * * [Wherever] a legislature has the right to accomplish a certain result, and that result is best attained by means of a corporation, it has the right to create such a corporation, and to endow it with the powers necessary to effect the desired and lawful purpose (Citing McCulloch v. The State of Maryland).” Thus framed, the initial question raised by petitioners’ argument is whether any “exclusive privileges” may be granted by a state to any of its citizens, or to a corporation, by the legislature of a State? His affirmative answer to this question rests on his acceptance of unquestioned legislative precedent in England and America. This said, petitioners’ argument rests on the premise that such delegation is unconstitutional., because it creates an involuntary servitude forbidden by the Thirteenth Amendment; (or) because it abridges the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; (or) because it denies to the plaintiffs the equal protection of the laws, or deprives them of property without due process – in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. [It is important for the student of this subject to recall that Justice Miller then observes that: “We do not conceal from ourselves the great responsibility which this duty devolves upon us. No questions so far‐reaching and pervading in their consequences, so profoundly interesting to the people of this country, and so important in their bearing upon the relations of the United States, and of the several States to each other and to the citizens of the States and of the United States, have been before this court during the official life of any of its present members.”] Noting the distinction of the history of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, and their apparent “unity of purpose,” Justice Miller grounds his further opinion on the influence of this history and unity of purpose on the meaning to be given the Constitutional provisions at issue. The first influence, he asserts, is the recognition that the American institution of African slavery was the subject of both the separation of certain States from the Federal Government, and a war between the States. As a result of that struggle, slavery was abolished “as a necessity of the bitterness and force of the conflict.” And, in the aftermath of this struggle, he sees Lincoln’s executive proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution as formalizing de facto emancipation – e.g., the formal abolition of “personal servitude.” Justice Miller’s fundamental point – in reference to the issue before the Court in the instant case – is that the Amendment precludes the Southern states from substituting conditions of personal servitude for a formal slave system, as well as to preclude measures to prohibit former slaves from purchasing land, etc. He then attaches a similar intent to the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Fifteenth also, as measures of further protection of former slaves, and declining to treat the Southern states as restored to their full participation in the Union until they ratified these Constitutional protections. Thus, he writes of the Fifteenth Amendment: “...It was urged that a race of men distinctively marked as was the negro, living in the midst of another and dominant race, could never be fully secured in their person and their property without the right of suffrage. Hence the fifteenth amendment, which declares that 'the right of a citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.' The negro having, by the fourteenth amendment, been declared to be a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State of the Union.” In sum, as to the Civil War Amendments, Justice Miller writes: “[In] the light of this recapitulation of events, almost too recent to be called history, but which are familiar to us all; and on the most casual examination of the language of these amendments, no one can fail to be impressed with the one pervading purpose found in them all, lying at the foundation of each, and without which none of them would have been even suggested; we mean the freedom of the slave race, the security and firm establishment of that freedom, and the protection of the newly‐made freeman and citizen from the oppressions of those who had formerly exercised unlimited dominion over him. It is true that only the fifteenth amendment, in terms, mentions the negro by speaking of his color and his slavery. But it is just as true that each of the other articles was addressed to the grievances of that race, and designed to remedy them as the fifteenth.” [Such a reading of the Amendments, Justice Miller cautions, would be extended to other attempts at racial servitude – and thus the Thirteenth Amendment would be read to forbid any other kind of slavery, now or hereafter.]. Turning specifically to the petitioners’ Fourteenth Amendment argument, Justice Miller sees the first section of that Amendment as creating a dual citizenship – national and state – for the first time in the Constitution, overturning the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. He concludes....“[that its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt.].” Moreover, seeing the citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, as distinct from each other, he rejects petitioners’ reliance on the Amendment, suggesting that the privileges and immunities spoken of in the Amendment are “privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States...” not those of citizens of the several States., which are unmentioned in the Amendment. Seeing petitioners’ argument in the instant case as relying on an assertion of privileges and immunities attached to a singular citizenship – he rejects their reading of the Amendment. Noting the constitutional language at issue [“No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”], Justice Miller observes that... “It is a little remarkable, if this clause was intended as a protection to the citizen of a State against the legislative power of his own State, that the word citizen of the State should be left out when it is so carefully used, and used in contradistinction to citizens of the United States, in the very sentence which precedes it.” Both traditional and revisionist scholars have agreed that Justice Miller intended “to have limited fundamental rights to state citizenship, and therefore placed those rights outside the scope of the federal government’s powers. Thus he rejects the butchers’ assertion that a national right to engage in their labor and occupation prohibited the State from establishing the slaughterhouse corporation.” [See James Fox, “Re‐
readings and Misreadings: Slaughterhouse, Privileges or Immunities, and Section Five Enforcement Powers,” 91 Ken. Law J. 67, 76]. From Justice Miller’s opinion: “Was it the purpose of the fourteenth amendment, by the simple declaration that no State should make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, to transfer the security and protection of all the civil rights which we have mentioned, from the States to the Federal government? And where it is declared that Congress shall have the power to enforce that article was it intended to bring within the power of Congress the entire domain of civil rights heretofore belonging exclusively to the States? * * *All this and more must follow, if the proposition of the (butchers) be sound. * * * [Such] a construction followed by the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment * * * We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States which ratified them.” Justice Miller did recognize both the federal guarantees of due process and equal protection of the laws, as restrictions upon state power, but held again that the principal purpose of these guarantees was to protect “newly emancipated negroes.” But, even assuming the larger Constitutional purpose to secure a strong federal government against an assertion of state power which would break up the nation, he sees the Constitutional language at issue “...as preserving state power regarding domestic and local government, including the regulation of civil rights of person and property.” Justices Field, Bradley and Swayne dissented. Not denying the State’s legitimate (sovereign and constitutional) interest in public health and safety, the dissenters argued that the Civil War Amendments were indeed a new and important step in Constitutional history, intending (unlike the original amendments) to directly affect the power of the states. Factually, Justice Field notes, ab initio, that only two provisions of the Act granting a monopoly to the slaughterhouse corporation could legitimately be assumed to be exercises of the State’s police power. Assuming compliance with the concern that slaughtering is done “below the City of New Orleans,” and that animals are inspected before they are slaughtered, the State’s police power concerns are no longer implicated, and therefore the Act grants an exclusive privilege unjustified by police power arguments. Indeed, Justice Field notes, public health concerns could justify the prohibition of slaughtering within the City altogether, but do not justify limiting that privilege to a single corporation. Nor, Justice Field notes, are police powers linked to public works and the power of eminent domain an analogy to the State’s act in the instant cases. The granting of State authority to provide for roads, bridges, and public water transportation relate to matters which it is the duty of the government to provide, and that is distinct from granting a monopoly to a state‐created corporation to engage in one of the “ordinary trades or callings of life, which is a right appertaining solely to the individual.” The question presented by the instant cases is thus, in Justice Field’s view, whether these amendments to the Federal Constitution “protect the citizens of the United States against the deprivation of their common rights by State legislation. He concludes that the Fourteenth Amendment “does afford such protection, and was so intended by the Congress which framed and the States which adopted it.” [Although Justice Field deemed his discussion of the Thirteenth Amendment unnecessary to the resolution of the cases before him, his observation that the Civil Rights Act was intended to secure the rights and privileges enumerated within its terms to all citizens of the country – and his assertion that to deny any citizen “...equality in these rights and privileges with others (would subject him) to an involuntary servitude...” – is relevant to a discussion of the origins of “Jim Crow,” and the socio‐legal context in which Brown v. Board came to the Court.] Justice Field writes that the Fourteenth Amendment specifically overturns Dred Scott, and expressly provides that national citizenship – and the rights attending that status – are not dependent upon the constitution or laws of any State. While recognizing that the exercise of these rights and privileges are “...affected by the condition and the local institutions of the State (“...the ability of its officers, the officiency of its magistrates, the education and morals of its people, and by many other considerations”) – they do not derive their existence from its legislation, and cannot be destroyed by its power.” He thus recognizes these rights as natural and inalienable, and not dependent upon their designation in the prior Constitution. Justice Field concludes his dissent by turning Justice Miller’s argument on its ear. Noting the rights which it was the purpose of the Reconstruction Civil Rights Act to secure, he expresses the certainty that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to prevent objections to the Act – the Amendment was intended to make clear the power of Congress’ to secure such civil rights. Such a conclusion is confirmed by Congress’ re‐
enactment of the Act following the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment. Moreover, the rights there secured were, indeed, not new; they were in the Constitution before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and were fundamental rights, to be protected against prejudicial enforcement within a state, based on state citizenship. If, Justice Field reasons, “equality of privileges and immunities is thus secured between citizens of different States, then under the Fourteenth Amendment, the same equality is secured between citizens of the United States.” And so, what the former Constitutional language does for the protection of citizens of one State against the creation of monopolies in favor of citizens of other States, “the Fourteenth Amendment does for the protection of every citizen of the United States against the creation of any monopoly whatever. The privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, of every one of them, are secured against abridgment in any form by any State.” [Note Professor Bass’ later observation in the introduction to “Unlikely Heroes,” that the Fifth Circuit Judges who advanced the basic mandate of Brown v. Board interpreted the Civil War Amendments as incorporating into the Constitution this “natural rights” concept of equality espoused in the nation’s Declaration of Independence. J. Bass, “Unlikely Heroes,” pp. 9‐10.]. Mr. Justice Bradley, joining Justice Field’s opinion, but also writing separately, begins with the fundamental assertion that the question is now settled by the Fourteenth Amendment, that “...citizenship of the United States is the primary citizenship in this country; and that State citizenship is secondary and derivative, depending upon citizenship of the United States and the citizen's place of residence. The States have not now, if they ever had, any power to restrict their citizenship to any classes or persons.” [Professor Fox observes that the most important problem with Justice Miller’s opinion is not its position on the issue of incorporation, but his misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges and Immunities Clause. Justice Miller “wrongly relegated the fundamental privileges of citizenship, which were extensively discussed by the drafters of the Amendment and subsequent Congresses, to state privileges and immunities.” See, James Fox, supra., at 164. The importance of Professor Fox’s point for the student in this course is that the claims advanced in Brown and the cases which followed it, required access to the federal courts, just as the direct action campaign for civil rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s needed the power of the federal Executive]. Justice Bradley emphasizes that Justice Miller’s opinion confused the state’s involvement in the manner in which civil rights are exercised with the state’s attempt to subvert those rights. This, he asserts, is the essence of a person’s national citizenship. Citing Blackstone’s identification of the absolute rights of individuals to include “the right of personal security, the right of personal liberty, and the right of private property,” he views the recreation of these personal rights in the Declaration of Independence: “[Personal rights] ... were claimed by the very first Congress of the Colonies, assembled in 1774, as the undoubted inheritance of the people of this country; and the Declaration of Independence which was the first political act of the American people in their independent sovereign capacity, lays the foundation of our National existence upon this broad proposition: 'That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.' Here again we have the great threefold division of the rights of freemen, asserted as the rights of man. Rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are equivalent to the rights of life, liberty, and property. These are the fundamental rights which can only be taken away by due process of law, and which can only be interfered with, or the enjoyment of which can only be modified, by lawful regulations necessary or proper for the mutual good of all; and these rights, I contend, belong to the citizens of every free government * * * For the preservation, exercise, and enjoyment of these rights the individual citizen, as a necessity, must be left free to adopt such calling, profession, or trade as may seem to him most conducive to that end. Without this right he cannot be a freeman. This right to choose one's calling is an essential part of that liberty which it is the object of government to protect; and a calling, when chosen, is a man's property and right. Liberty and property are not protected where these rights are arbitrarily assailed.” And, Justice Bradley observes, while the primary cause of the Fourteenth Amendment was the subjugation and denial of citizenship to African‐American people, the rights guaranteed by the Amendment belong to all citizens: “The mischief to be remedied was not merely slavery and its incidents and consequences; but that spirit of insubordination and disloyalty to the National government which had troubled the country for so many years in some of the States, and that intolerance of free speech and free discussion which often rendered life and property insecure, and led to much unequal legislation. The amendment was an attempt to give voice to the strong National yearning for that time and that condition of things, in which American citizenship should be a sure guaranty of safety, and in which every citizen of the United States might stand erect on every portion of its soil, in the full enjoyment of every right and privilege belonging to a freeman, without fear of violence or molestation.”