number of electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two thirds of the whole number of senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President of the United States.

ARTICLE XIII1

SECTION 1. 1 Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

2 Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

ARTICLE XIV 2

1 All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

2 Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

1 Adopted in 1865.

2 Adopted in 1868.

3 No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two thirds of each House, remove such disability.

4 The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions. and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

5 The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

ARTICLE XV1

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

1 Adopted in 1870.

UNITED STATES CONSTITUTIONAL LAW.

CHAPTER I.

THE SUPREMACY OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION.

The fundamental principle of American constitutional jurisprudence is that laws and not men shall govern. This means that when a power, exercised by an official or by a governmental organ, is challenged legal authority therefor derived from some existing law must be shown, and that no valid law can exist save that which is recognized as such by the courts. The courts recognize two great bodies of law; the so-called common law, which is a product of custom and judicial interpretation, which in large measure we have inherited from England; and enacted law, which is the formal creation of the legislative organs of government. This formally enacted law is of two kinds: That embodied in written constitutions, and that enacted by the ordinary legislative bodies and termed statutes.

Independently of express statement to that effect, it has become axiomatic that no statute law is valid if not consistent with the provisions of the Constitution from which the enacting legislature derives its powers. A state statute inconsistent with the Constitution of that state is, therefore, invalid, and an act of Congress not warranted by the provisions of the federal Constitution is similarly void. And the same legal invalidity of course attaches to the unconstitutional act of an executive or judicial organ of government. In addition to being subordinate to the provisions of the state Constitution, every act of the state official or organ is required to conform to the requirements of the federal Constitution, and this applies as well to the provisions of a state Constitution, as to the statutes of its legislature.

Elsewhere we shall have occasion to deal with the constitutional tests to be applied to executive and judicial acts. In this chapter we are concerned with the relation between statute and constitutional law.

§ 1. The Courts and Unconstitutional Laws.

The principle that statutory law, in order to be valid, must be in conformity with constitutional requirements, is a product of American jurisprudence, and peculiar to it. That the acts of the legislatures of subordinate political units must agree with the conditions and recognize the limits laid down by the superior sovereign power is of course not peculiar to the United States; but that the legislative acts of the highest legislative body itself are void if not warranted by the Constitution under which that body is organized, is nowhere else admitted, neither in England, which is without a written Constitution, nor in any other Continental country which has one.

§ 2. Marbury v. Madison.

The acceptance of this principle in the United States may be dated from the decision by the Supreme Court in 1803 of the case of Marbury v. Madison.1 This point is of such transcendent importance that the argument of Marshall will be given in extenso.

"The question whether an act, repugnant to the Constitution, can become the law of the land," says the great Chief Justice, "is a question deeply interesting to the United States; but, happily, not of an intricacy proportioned to its interest. It seems only necessary to recognize certain principles, supposed to have been long and well established, to decide it. That the people have an original right to establish, for their future government, such principles, as, in their opinion, shall most conduce to their own happiness is the basis on which the whole American fabric has been erected. The exercise of this original right is a very great exertion; nor can it, nor ought it, to be frequently repeated. The 11 Cr. 137; 2 L. ed. 60.