• About
  • Contact
  • Staff
  • Home
  • Essays
  • Forum
  • Podcasts
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Classics

August 26, 2013|Establishment Clause, Incorporation, Reverse Incorporation

A Bridge Too Far: Reverse Incorporation

by Mike Rappaport|

Over at Prawfsblog, Kurt Lash has a post on Incorporation of the Establishment Clause.  Kurt did pioneering work on this issue back in the day, work which is rightly esteemed.  In the first part of his post, Kurt argues that people at the time of the 14th Amendment understood the meaning of the Establishment Clause differently than they did at the time of the Bill of Rights.  And he argues that the 14th Amendment should get the meaning in existence at that time.

While I don’t think we really understand the original meaning of the 14th Amendment, I am sympathetic both to incorporation and to a two track approach to incorporation, with the 14th Amendment incorporated Bill having a different meaning than the original Bill.  (As an example, see this paper where I argue that the 1791 Takings Clause does not extend to regulatory takings, but that the 1868 version may.)

But Kurt then takes a further step:

The Supreme Court has rejected the two-track approach, and rightly so, I think. The Fourteenth Amendment declares that the states are bound to enforce “the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”  One of these privileges was the privilege of non-establishment declared by the federal Establishment Clause.  To the people who adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, there were not two principles of non-establishment, only one; the principle already existed in regard to the federal government and it was now to be applied against the states.  It is almost as if, in adopting the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the people readopted the original Establishment Clause and declared its principles—as they understood those principles- now operative against both state and federal governments.

If correct, then this means that Marsh v. Chambers got it exactly backwards.  We should not look to the original Founding to determine the content of Reconstruction liberty; we should look to the meaning of Reconstruction liberty to determine the content of the readopted Bill of Rights.

I disagree.  If Kurt believes that there can only be a one track approach, then the much stronger argument is that the 14th Amendment incorporated the 1791 meaning of the Bill.  Under this view, 14th Amendment might be referring to “the original Bill as enacted in 1791,” which is certainly a plausible view.

Kurt writes: “It is almost as if, in adopting the Privileges or Immunities Clause, the people readopted the original Establishment Clause and declared its principles—as they understood those principles- now operative against both state and federal governments.” Exactly — it is almost as if. But the 14th Amendment simply did not do that, and there is no obvious way that it can be understood to have amended the original Bill.

I don’t know why people are so quick to resist a two track approach.  It makes sense that the same provisions adopted at different times might have different meanings.  And it might make sense to impose different restrictions on different levels of government.

Mike Rappaport

Professor Rappaport is Darling Foundation Professor of Law at the University of San Diego, where he also serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of Constitutional Originalism. Professor Rappaport is the author of numerous law review articles in journals such as the Yale Law Journal, the Virginia Law Review, the Georgetown Law Review, and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. His book, Originalism and the Good Constitution, which is coauthored with John McGinnis, was published by the Harvard University Press in 2013.  Professor Rappaport is a graduate of the Yale Law School, where he received a JD and a DCL (Law and Political Theory).

About the Author

America Must Be On America’s Side
Reforming Class Action Abuse

Recent Popular Posts

  • Popular
  • Today Week Month All
  • Britain’s Classicist-Politician February 18, 2020
  • Luther and Liberalism December 10, 2019
  • The Poverty of Woke Capital: A Law & Liberty Symposium November 26, 2019
  • How “Self-Interest” Works in The Federalist August 9, 2018
  • N.T. Wright's Epicurean Enlightenment November 15, 2019
Ajax spinner

Related Posts

Related

Book Reviews

A Mirror of the 20th-Century Congress

by Joseph Postell

Wright undermined the very basis of his local popularity—the decentralized nature of the House—by supporting reforms that gave power to the party leaders.

Read More

The Graces of Flannery O'Connor

by Henry T. Edmondson III

O’Connor’s correspondence is a goldmine of piercing insight and startling reflections on everything from literature to philosophy to raising peacocks.

Read More

Liberty Classics

Rereading Politica in the Post-Liberal Moment

by Glenn A. Moots

Althusius offers a rich constitutionalism that empowers persons to thrive alongside one another in deliberate communities.

Read More

James Fenimore Cooper and the American Experiment

by Melissa Matthes

In The American Democrat, James Fenimore Cooper defended democracy against both mob rule and majority tyranny.

Read More

Podcasts

Stuck With Decadence

A discussion with Ross Douthat

Ross Douthat discusses with Richard Reinsch his new book The Decadent Society.

Read More

Can the Postmodern Natural Law Remedy Our Failing Humanism?

A discussion with Graham McAleer

Graham McAleer discusses how postmodern natural law can help us think more coherently about human beings and our actions.

Read More

Did the Civil Rights Constitution Distort American Politics?

A discussion with Christopher Caldwell

Christopher Caldwell discusses his new book, The Age of Entitlement.

Read More

America, Land of Deformed Institutions

A discussion with Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin pinpoints that American alienation and anger emerges from our weak political, social, and religious institutions.

Read More

Recent Posts

  • The Just Restraint of the Vicious

    For some contemporary criminal justice reformers, devotion to ideology leads to illogical conclusions about human nature and character change.
    by Gerard T. Mundy

  • Too Immature to be Punished?

    When I look back on my own life, I think I knew by the age of ten that one should not strangle old ladies in their beds.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Badge of Discrimination

    The British National Health Service has spoken: Wear the badge or declare yourself to be a bigot.
    by Theodore Dalrymple

  • A Judicial Takeover of Asylum Policy?

    Thuraissigiam threatens to make both the law and the facts in every petition for asylum—and there are thousands of them—a matter for the courts.
    by Thomas Ascik

  • The Environmental Uncertainty Principle

    By engaging in such flagrant projection, the Times has highlighted once again the problem with groupthink in the climate discussion.
    by Paul Schwennesen

Blogroll

  • Acton PowerBlog
  • Cafe Hayek
  • Cato@Liberty
  • Claremont
  • Congress Shall Make No Law
  • EconLog
  • Fed Soc Blog
  • First Things
  • Hoover
  • ISI First Principles Journal
  • Legal Theory Blog
  • Marginal Revolution
  • Pacific Legal Liberty Blog
  • Point of Law
  • Power Line
  • Professor Bainbridge
  • Ricochet
  • Right Reason
  • Spengler
  • The American
  • The Beacon Blog
  • The Foundry
  • The Originalism Blog
  • The Public Discourse
  • University Bookman
  • Via Meadia
  • Volokh

Archives

  • All Posts & Publications
  • Book Reviews
  • Liberty Forum
  • Liberty Law Blog
  • Liberty Law Talk

About

Law & Liberty’s focus is on the classical liberal tradition of law and political thought and how it shapes a society of free and responsible persons. This site brings together serious debate, commentary, essays, book reviews, interviews, and educational material in a commitment to the first principles of law in a free society. Law & Liberty considers a range of foundational and contemporary legal issues, legal philosophy, and pedagogy.

The opinions expressed on Law & Liberty are solely those of the contributors to the site and do not reflect the opinions of Liberty Fund.
  • Home
  • About
  • Staff
  • Contact
  • Archive

© 2021 Liberty Fund, Inc.

This site uses local and third-party cookies to analyze traffic. If you want to know more, click here.
By closing this banner or clicking any link in this page, you agree with this practice.Accept Read More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Necessary Always Enabled

Subscribe
Get Law and Liberty's latest content delivered to you daily
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
Close