The  Myth of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1866

Abstract

Although legal scholars who focus on the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment disagree about many things, almost all agree that John Bingham proposed what was to become section one of the amendment in order to definitively establish the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act of 1866. In fact, however, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction chose to insert the Bingham formulation in place of a provision that would have explicitly constitutionalized the Civil Rights Act. This comment describes the circumstances that provided the backdrop for the consideration of the Bingham proposal and the implications that this context has for our understanding of the original meaning of section one.

Keywords: constitutional law, constitutional history, Fourteenth Amendment