Case Law - Resource

SOVERIGNTY/Freedom:

U.S. Supreme Court:

Slaughter-House Cases, 83 US 36 - (U.S. Supreme Court - 1873) (multiple quotes):

1. 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.

2. The first section of the fourteenth article, to which our attention is more specially invited, opens with a definition of citizenship — not only citizenship of the United States, but citizenship of the States. No such definition was previously found in the Constitution, nor had any attempt been made to define it by act of Congress. It had been the occasion of much discussion in the courts, by the executive departments, and in the public journals. It had been said by eminent judges that no man was a citizen of the United States, except as he was a citizen of one of the States composing the Union. Those, therefore, who had been born and resided always in the District of Columbia or in the Territories, though within the United States, were not citizens.

3. then all the negro race who had recently been made freemen, were still, not only not citizens, but were incapable of becoming so by anything short of an amendment to the Constitution.

To remove this difficulty primarily, and to establish a clear and comprehensive definition of citizenship which should declare what should constitute citizenship of the United States, and also citizenship of a State, the first clause of the first section was framed.

4. The first observation we have to make on this clause is, that it puts at rest both the questions which we stated to have been the subject of differences of opinion. It declares that persons may be citizens of the United States without regard to their citizenship of a particular State, and it overturns the Dred Scott decision by making all persons born within the United States and subject to its jurisdiction citizens of the United States. That its main purpose was to establish the citizenship of the negro can admit of no doubt. The phrase, "subject to its jurisdiction" was intended to exclude from its operation children of ministers, consuls, and citizens or subjects of foreign States born within the United States.

5. The next observation is more important in view of the arguments of counsel in the present case. It is, that the distinction between citizenship of the United States and citizenship of a State is clearly recognized and established. Not only may a man be a citizen of the United States without being a citizen of a State, but an important element is necessary to convert the former into the latter. He must reside within the State to make him a citizen of it, but it is only necessary that he should be born or naturalized in the United States to be a citizen of the Union.

It is quite clear, then, that there is a citizenship of the United States, and a citizenship of a State, which are distinct from each other, and which depend upon different characteristics or circumstances in the individual.

6. We think this distinction and its explicit recognition in this amendment of great weight in this argument, because the next paragraph of this same section, which is the one mainly relied on by the plaintiffs in error, speaks only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several States.

7. Of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the United States, and of the privileges and immunities of the citizen of the State, and what they respectively are, we will presently consider; but we wish to state here that it is only the former which are placed by this clause under the protection of the Federal Constitution, and that the latter, whatever they may be, are not intended to have any additional protection by this paragraph of the amendment.

If, then, there is a difference between the privileges and immunities belonging to a citizen of the United States as such, and those belonging to the citizen of the State as such the latter must rest for their security and protection where they have heretofore rested; for they are not embraced by this paragraph of the amendment.

8. Fortunately we are not without judicial construction of this clause of the Constitution. The first and the leading case on the subject is that of Corfield v. Coryell, decided by Mr. Justice Washington in the Circuit Court for the District of Pennsylvania in 1823.

"The inquiry," he says, "is, what are the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States? We feel no hesitation in confining these expressions to those privileges and immunities which are fundamental; which belong of right to the citizens of all free governments, and which have at all times been enjoyed by citizens of the several States which compose this Union, from the time of their becoming free, independent, and sovereign. What these fundamental principles are, it would be more tedious than difficult to enumerate. They may all, however, be comprehended under the following general heads: protection by the government, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such restraints as the government may prescribe for the general good of the whole."

9. In the case of Paul v. Virginia, the court, in expounding this clause of the Constitution, says that "the privileges and immunities secured to citizens of each State in the several States, by the provision in question, are those privileges and immunities which are common to the citizens in the latter States under their constitution and laws by virtue of their being citizens."

10. It would be the vainest show of learning to attempt to prove by citations of authority, that up to the adoption of the recent amendments, no claim or pretence was set up that those rights depended on the Federal government for their existence or protection, beyond the very few express limitations which the Federal Constitution imposed upon the States — such, for instance, as the prohibition against ex post facto laws, bills of attainder, and laws impairing the obligation of contracts. But with the exception of these and a few other restrictions, the entire domain of the privileges and immunities of citizens of the States, as above defined, lay within the constitutional and legislative power of the States, and without that of the Federal government.

11. That 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, seems hardly to admit of debate

12. In the early history of the organization of the government, its statesmen seem to have divided on the line which should separate the powers of the National government from those of the State governments, and though this line has never been very well defined in public opinion, such a division has continued from that day to this.

The adoption of the first eleven amendments to the Constitution so soon after the original instrument was accepted, shows a prevailing sense of danger at that time from the Federal power. And it cannot be denied that such a jealousy continued to exist with many patriotic men until the breaking out of the late civil war. It was then discovered that the true danger to the perpetuity of the Union was in the capacity of the State organizations to combine and concentrate all the powers of the State, and of contiguous States, for a determined resistance to the General Government.

13. it had never been held in any case which had come under its observation, either in the State or Federal courts, that a corporation was a citizen within the meaning of the clause in question, entitling the citizens of each State to the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

14. The people of this country brought with them to its shores the rights of Englishmen; the rights which had been wrested from English sovereigns at various periods of the nation's history. One of these fundamental rights was expressed in these words, found in Magna Charta: "No freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseized of his freehold or liberties or free customs, or be outlawed or exiled, or any otherwise destroyed; nor will we pass upon him or condemn him but by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land."

United States v. Cruikshank, 92 US 542 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1876):

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. Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 74.

Caha v. U.S., 152 U.S. 211 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1894):

This statute is one of universal application within the territorial limits of the United States, and is not limited to those portions which are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the national government, such as the District of Columbia. Generally speaking, within any State of this Union the preservation of the peace and the protection of person and property are the functions of the state government, and are no part of the primary duty, at least, of the nation. The laws of Congress in respect to those matters do not extend into the territorial limits of the States, but have force only in the District of Columbia, and other places that are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the national government.

Madden v. Kentucky, 309 US 83 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1940):

This position is that the privileges and immunities clause protects all citizens against abridgment by states of rights of national citizenship as distinct from the fundamental or natural rights inherent in state citizenship. This Court declared in the Slaughter-House Cases that the Fourteenth Amendment as well as the Thirteenth and Fifteenth were adopted to protect the negroes in their freedom. This almost contemporaneous interpretation extended the benefits of the privileges and immunities clause to other rights which are inherent in national citizenship but denied it to those which spring from state citizenship.

Hague v. Committee for Industrial Organization, 307 US 496 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1939):

Prior to the Civil War there was confusion and debate as to the relation between United States citizenship and state citizenship. Beyond dispute, citizenship of the United States, as such, existed. The Constitution, in various clauses, recognized it but nowhere defined it. Many thought state citizenship, and that only, created United States citizenship.

After the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, a bill, which became the first Civil Rights Act, was introduced in the 39th Congress, the major purpose of which was to secure to the recently freed negroes all the civil rights secured to white men.

Hale v. Henkel, 201 U.S. 43 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1906):

The individual may stand upon his constitutional rights as a citizen. He is entitled to carry on his private business in his own way. His power to contract is unlimited. He owes no duty to the State or to his neighbors to divulge his business, or to open his doors to an investigation, so far as it may tend to criminate him. He owes no such duty to the State, since he receives nothing therefrom beyond the protection of his life and property. His rights are such as existed by the law of the land long antecedent to the organization of the State, and can only be taken from him by due process of law, and in accordance with the Constitution. Among his rights are a refusal to incriminate himself and the immunity of himself and his property from arrest or seizure except under a warrant of the law. He owes nothing to the public so long as he does not trespass upon their rights.

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1886):

Sovereignty itself is, of course, not subject to law, for it is the author and source of law; but, in our system, while sovereign powers are delegated to the agencies of government, sovereignty itself remains with the people, by whom and for whom all government exists and acts. And the law is the definition and limitation of power.

Barnes v. District of Columbia, 91 U.S. 540 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1875):

The people are the recognized source of all authority, state and municipal, and to this authority it must come at last, whether immediately or by a circuitous process.

American Communications Assn. v. Douds, 339 U.S. 382 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1950):

It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error. We could justify any censorship only when the censors are better shielded against error than the censored.

Miranda v. Arizona, 384 U.S. 436 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1966):

Where rights secured by the Constitution are involved, there can be no rule making or legislation which would abrogate them.

OKLAHOMA TAX COMMISSION v. CITIZEN BAND POTAWATOMI INDIAN TRIBE OF OKLAHOMA No. 89-1322 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1991):

Indian tribes are "domestic dependent nations" that exercise inherent sovereign authority over their members and territories. Cherokee Nation v. Georgia, 5 Pet. 1, 17 (1831). Suits against Indian tribes are thus barred by sovereign immunity absent a clear waiver by the tribe or congressional abrogation. Santa Clara Pueblo v. Martinez, 436 U. S. 49, 58 (1978).

United States v. Cooper Corp 312 U.S. 600 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1941):

Since, in common usage, the term "person" does not include the sovereign, statutes employing the phrase are ordinarily construed to exclude it. But there is no hard and fast rule of exclusion. The purpose, the subject matter, the context, the legislative history, and the executive interpretation of the statute are aids to construction which may indicate an intent, by the use of the term, to bring state or nation within the scope of the law.

BRADY v. U. S., 397 U.S. 742 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1970):

Waivers of constitutional rights not only must be voluntary but must be knowing, intelligent acts done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and likely consequences.

Murdock v. Pennsylvania, 319 U.S. 105 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1943):

A State may not impose a charge for the enjoyment of a right granted by the Federal Constitution.

Shuttlesworth v. City of Birmingham, 394 U.S. 147 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1969):

And our decisions have made clear that a person faced with such an unconstitutional licensing law may ignore it and engage with impunity in the exercise of the right of free expression for which the law purports to require a license.

Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967):

It is true that the chief interest of the people in giving permanence and security to citizenship in the Fourteenth Amendment was the desire to protect Negroes. The Dred Scott decision, 19 How. 393, had shortly before greatly disturbed many people about the status of Negro citizenship. But the Civil Rights Act of 1866, 14 Stat. 27, had already attempted to confer citizenship on all persons born or naturalized in the United States. Nevertheless, when the Fourteenth Amendment passed the House without containing any definition of citizenship, the sponsors of the Amendment in the Senate insisted on inserting a constitutional definition and grant of citizenship. They expressed fears that the citizenship so recently conferred on Negroes by the Civil Rights Act could be just as easily taken away from them by subsequent Congresses, and it was to provide an insuperable obstacle against every governmental effort to strip Negroes of their newly acquired citizenship that the first clause was added to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 US 393 (U.S. Supreme Court - 1857):

The words "people of the United States" and "citizens" are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the "sovereign people," and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.

BROWN et al. v. Commonwealth, 453 Pa. 566 (Pennsylvania Supreme Court - 1973):

Article 1 of the Pennsylvania Constitution is titled the Declaration of Rights. The entire Article is concerned with establishing the principle that the people are the sovereign — not the state. There are twenty-six sections in Article 1 and every single section is concerned with the rights of the people — not the state. To isolate one sentence out of the twenty-six sections in the Declaration of Rights and say that it should be interpreted to protect the rights of the state — not the people — is ludicrous and violates all reasonable principles of construing written language in proper context. Article 1, the Declaration of Rights, opens by stating that the purpose of the Declaration is "that the general, great and essential principles of liberty and free government may be recognized and unalterably established." Nothing is said about protecting the state. The complete Declaration — its language, tone and thrust — concerns the protection of the people — not the state.

State Supreme Court:

ELLEN R. VAN VALKENBURG v. ALBERT BROWN 43 Cal. 43 (California Supreme Court 1872):

No white person born within the limits of the United States, and subject to their jurisdiction, or born without those limits, and subsequently naturalized under their laws, owes the status of citizenship to the recent amendments to the Federal Constitution. The history and aim of the Fourteenth Amendment is well known, and the purpose had in view in its adoption well understood. That purpose was to confer the status of citizenship upon a numerous class of persons domiciled within the limits of the United States, who could not be brought within the operation of the naturalization laws because native born, and whose birth, though native, had at the same time left them without the status of citizenship. These persons were not white persons, but were, in the main, persons of African descent, who had been held in slavery in this country, or, if having themselves never been held in slavery, were the native-born descendants of slaves. Prior to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment it was settled that neither slaves, nor those who had been such, nor the descendants of these, though native and free born, were capable of becoming citizens of the United States. (Dred Scott v. Sanford, 19 How. 393.) The Thirteenth Amendment, though conferring the boon of freedom upon native-born persons of African blood, had yet left them under an insuperable bar as to citizenship; and it was mainly to remedy this condition that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.

State v. Manue l20 N.C. 144 (Supreme Court of North Carolina - 1838):

The term "citizen" as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term subject in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government. The sovereignty has been transferred from one man to the collective body of the people — and he who before was a "subject of the king" is now "a citizen of the State."

Redfield v. Fisher, 292 P. 813, 135 Or. 180, 294 P.461, 73 A.L.R. 721 (Oregon Supreme Court - 1931):

The individual, unlike the corporation, cannot be taxed for the mere privilege of existing. The corporation is an artificial entity which owes its existence and charter powers to the state; but the individual's right to live and own property are natural rights for the enjoyment of which an excise cannot be imposed: 26 R.C.L., Taxation, § 209, p. 236; Cooley, Taxation, (4th Ed.), § 1676; Opinion of the Justices, 195 Mass. 607 ( 84 N.E. 499).

Cruden v. Neale, 2 N.C. 2 S.E. 70 (Supreme Court of North Carolina - 1796):

It is not a rule upon mankind in their natural state. There, every man is independent of all laws, except those prescribed by nature. He is not bound by any institutions formed by his fellowmen without his consent

State v. Manuel 20 N.C. 144 (Supreme Court of North Carolina - 1838):

The term "citizen" as understood in our law, is precisely analogous to the term subject in the common law, and the change of phrase has entirely resulted from the change of government

Appeals/Circuit Courts:

City of Dallas v. Mitchell, 245 S.W. 944 (Texas Appeals Court - 1922):

The rights of the individual are not derived from governmental agencies, either municipal, state or federal, or even from the Constitution. They exist inherently in every man, by endowment of the Creator, and are merely reaffirmed in the Constitution, and restricted only to the extent that they have been voluntarily surrendered by the citizenship to the agencies of government. The people's rights are not derived from the government, but the government's authority comes from the people. The Constitution but states again these rights already existing, and when legislative encroachment by the nation, state, or municipality invade these original and permanent rights, it is the duty of the courts to so declare, and to afford the necessary relief. The fewer restrictions that surround the individual liberties of the citizen, except those for the preservation of the public health, safety, and morals, the more contented the people and the more successful the democracy.

Lansing v. Smith, 4 Wend. 9 (Court of Appeals of New York - 1829):

The people of this state, as the successors of its former sovereign, are entitled to all the rights which formerly belonged to the king by his prerogative. Through the medium of their legislature they may exercise all the powers which previous to the revolution could have been exercised either by the king alone, or by him in conjunction with his parliament; subject only to those restrictions which have been imposed by the constitution of this state or of the United States.

U.S. v Anthony 24 Fed. 829 (New York Circuit Court - 1873):

The 14th amendment defines and declares who shall he citizens of the United States, and protects only such rights as are rights belonging to persons as citizens of the United States, and not rights belonging to persons as citizens of a state.