There is a common misconception regarding the term “the rule of law.” Lots of people, including U.S. officials, believe that it means that people should obey the law. But that’s not what it means. What it means is a society in which people have to answer only to the law and not to the edicts or orders issued by government officials. A society in which people have to respond to edicts and orders issued by politicians and bureaucrats is what is called “the rule of men.”

We are supposed to follow the requirements of our Constitution and statutes even when they yield results we don’t like—say, freeing a person who appears guilty.

Generally, that famous phrase—a government of laws not men—is taken as being a safeguard against capricious or arbitrary rule by individuals. Even the sovereign, it was said, is subject to the law.

But the response to Trump and the negative media and political responses to his election—reminded me that there is another, just as important side to the desideratum “a government of laws not men.

What does it mean that several hundred thousand females converge on Washington, D.C., in pink hats and vagina costumes to whine that Donald Trump is “not our president”?

What does it mean that on college campuses across the country, students, often aided and abetted by faculty and the occasional outside agitator, protest that Trump is “illegitimate”?

That various media pundits, on the Right as well as the Left, warn against “normalizing” Donald Trump?
And most worrisome, what does it mean that a smattering of judges across the country argue that the president’s executive orders are illegitimate, unconstitutional because (cutting to the chase) they are THIS president’s orders?

Thus we see another way in which the principle of “a government of laws not men” can be violated. It used to be that we were on the lookout for individuals arrogating to themselves the power of the law. Now we find individuals denying our lawfully elected representatives the legitimacy to exercise their rightful authority.

Ironically, this is the way that things used to work under the old European monarchies. It is what led to the anarchy of the French revolution. It is what led to the Russian revolution that eventually resulted in the rule of Stalin. It’s also the way things work today in Russia under the Putin regime. Government officials issue their edicts and orders, and the people and businessmen are expected to obey them without question.

The difference, however, is that Putin and Russia don’t pretend to operate under the rule of law while unelected U.S. bureaucrats do. Given this truth, who are the bigger hypocrites?

Now available on Amazon…”A Republic, if you can keep it.”
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1717513069/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1528767387&sr=8-1&keywords=Patrick+C+Kansoer+Sr

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(c) 2018 Uriel Press

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.
Amendment XXVII

On June 8, 1789, James Madison proposed the Congressional Compensation Amendment as one of many that he presented to the House of Representatives that day. After debate, the House of Representatives and the Senate approved the proposed amendment and forwarded it and eleven others to the states. Only six states ratified it, however, and thus it did not become part of the Bill of Rights. The proposed amendment languished for almost two hundred years before becoming the object of a successful ratification campaign in the 1980s, ultimately resulting in its formal acceptance by Congress as the Twenty-seventh Amendment on May 20, 1992.

At the Constitutional Convention, the Framers heatedly debated the question of whether individual states or the new national government would compensate elected representatives. The Compensation Clause of Article I, Section 6, was the result, providing that the central government would pay the representatives from the federal treasury as established by federal law.

The Anti-Federalists and others at state ratifying conventions found this compensation arrangement deeply worrisome; because the Members of Congress enacted the very law that set their salary, there was no check on Congress’s ability to enrich itself. It was a classic case of the danger of self-dealing corruption. Madison responded to that criticism with the proposed Compensation Amendment, which would prevent representatives from granting themselves a pay raise that would take effect during the term in which they sat. Instead, Congress would only be able to pass the pay raise prospectively and would thereby face the electorate before it could take effect. Madison believed the amendment was necessary because of the “seeming impropriety in leaving any set of men without controul to put their hand into the public coffers, to take out money to put in their pockets.”

The issue of congressional compensation was the subject of periodic legislation and attendant political maneuvering in succeeding years. Particularly unpopular with the electorate was the notorious “Salary Grab” Act of 1873, which not only granted a pay raise to legislators but also made it retroactive. One of the Ohio General Assembly’s responses to the act was ratification of the dormant Compensation Amendment, thus becoming the seventh state to do so, eighty-four years after Maryland, which was the first state to ratify.

Over a century later, the amendment became the object of a grassroots ratification campaign initiated by a college undergraduate who had authored a term paper on the subject in 1982. Despite widespread doubt about the propriety of actually adopting the long-dormant amendment should it ever be fully ratified, the ratification campaign gathered momentum. On May 7, 1992, Michigan became the thirty-eighth state to ratify the Compensation Amendment, completing the process initiated over two hundred years earlier by the First Congress in 1789.

The unique history of the Compensation Amendment raised initial questions about the validity of its ratification. In Coleman v. Miller (1939), the Supreme Court declared that disputes about ratification procedures and the time within which an amendment could be ratified were political questions assigned to the province of the legislative branch under Article V of the Constitution and, therefore, not subject to adjudication by the federal courts. Coleman seemed to envision some sort of formal congressional review of the constitutional validity of a fully ratified amendment prior to its official addition to the Constitution. Despite initial comments about formal review by rather stunned federal legislators following Michigan’s ratifying vote on May 7, 1992, Congress, sensing the public mood, scheduled no formal hearings on the Compensation Amendment. On May 18, 1992, the National Archivist certified the amendment. Two days later, overwhelming majorities in both chambers of Congress confirmed the Twenty-seventh Amendment.

The first, and thus far, only, case to explore the scope of the amendment’s compensation limitation was Schaffer v. Clinton (2001) where four plaintiffs challenged the now-traditional annual cost-of-living pay increases to legislators. The district court interpreted Flast v. Cohen (1968) to limit general taxpayer standing to challenges under the Establishment Clause only (and thereby refusing to treat the Twenty-seventh Amendment as a comparable explicit restriction on spending). The court denied standing to three of the plaintiffs, who came to the court as taxpayers. However, the district court reached the merits for the remaining plaintiff, Congressman Bob Schaffer, whose salary was increased under the statute (to the detriment, he asserted, of his antitax reputation). The court held that periodic cost-of-living pay increases were not discretionary acts of Congress and were therefore not independent laws that varied compensation in violation of the amendment. It is true that cost-of-living increases, though “automatic” under congressional legislation, may, like any other governmental expenditure, only take effect upon enactment of an appropriation statute, but the court did not find that procedure to be dispositive.

On appeal, the Tenth Circuit declined to reach the merits, finding instead that Congressman Schaffer also lacked standing, noting that “the standing inquiry must be ‘especially rigorous'” when the dispute involves two branches of government. The circuit court held that the Congressman “was not injured for standing purposes simply because he received a higher salary.” If followed by later courts—the Supreme Court denied the petition for a writ of certiorari in the case—the Tenth Circuit’s reasoning would appear to foreclose standing to any plaintiff challenging a statute under the Twenty-seventh Amendment. Ironically, after lying dormant for two hundred years, this amendment may now have been put back to sleep. Nevertheless, it is clear that Congress still has the option of voluntarily abiding by the amendment.

With this page we come to the end of our study of the Constitution and it’s amendments. If we have learned anything, it is that the “Supreme Law of the Land” is most notable in its’ lack of application by those in government who pledge to “Preserve, Protect and Defend” it.

The Congress no longer passes most federal laws, rules, and regulations.

Instead, about 99 percent of the rules we must live by decrees from an army of unelected federal bureaucrats.

Using a classic duck-and-dodge strategy, Congress routinely passes legislation that pretends to solve a genuine problem, but then delegates to the executive-branch bureaucrats the power to make the legally binding rules. These rules determine the law’s real-world impact.

It’s a brilliant plan; Congress gets all the credit for the popular feel-good laws and none of the blame for a regulation’s controversial—and expensive—implementation.

Too many members of Congress either don’t understand the Constitution they’ve sworn to defend because they make little or no effort to do so.

Many Supreme Court, (and lower court), justices aren’t any better. Many of them understand our founding document but refuse to acknowledge that its most important function is to limit and check power.

Presidents are often even worse; they pay lip service to our nation’s governing document, but their actions frequently betray a lack of real commitment to its restrictions.

The Constitution must be defended  by the citizens who elect officeholders. Only the voters can force our government officials to obey their oaths to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. We must make every effort to persuade friends and neighbors that constitutionally limited government not only matters but is essential to our prosperity as a nation. 

We must  remind elected representatives in Washington that the power to make laws belongs to Congress, not unaccountable bureaucrats, and that those laws should be clear and understandable to the average citizen.

This was implicit in Benjamin Franklin’s response to the question; “Well doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

“A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”

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(c) 2018

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXVI

The Vietnam War provoked many draft-age youngsters and like-minded adults to proclaim, “If eighteen-to-twenty-year-olds are old enough to die for their country, they’re old enough to vote.” That slogan is commonly cited as the impetus for the Twenty-sixth Amendment.

The truth is somewhat less colorful. The amendment was crafted primarily to overturn the holding of a fractured Supreme Court in Oregon v. Mitchell (1970). That case had invalidated an attempt by Congress to regulate voting age in state and local elections. Essentially, the Twenty-sixth Amendment did what Congress could not do.

Earlier in 1970, Congress had amended the Voting Rights Act of 1965, lowering the minimum voting age to eighteen in all federal, state, and local elections. When the revised law was challenged, primarily on federalism grounds, Justice Hugo L. Black wrote an opinion reflecting the position of two separate five-Justice majorities. One contingent agreed with Black that Congress could establish a minimum voting age for federal elections, but found contrary to Black that Congress could also exercise that power over state and local elections. A different four Justices joined Black in restricting Congress’s power over state and local elections, but would have restricted its power over federal elections as well. Thus, Black’s opinion became the Court’s holding: Congress had the authority to extend the vote to eighteen-year-olds in federal elections but not in state or local contests.

After Oregon v. Mitchell, states unwilling to set their minimum voting age at eighteen would have been required to maintain separate voting systems for federal and nonfederal elections. To avoid that complication and expense, the states opted for national uniformity and ratified the Twenty-sixth Amendment in record time—a mere 107 days after it was proposed by Congress.

Almost immediately, the courts had to resolve issues peripheral to the new amendment. For example, did the right to vote for a candidate include eligibility to sign and vote for initiative petitions? In Colorado Project-Common Cause v. Anderson (1972), a state court found that enactment of the Twenty-sixth Amendment entailed participation by young voters in the entire political process—initiatives included.

Could states restrict voting by minors by denying them residency at schools or other places away from their parents? In Jolicoeur v. Mihaly (1971), the California Supreme Court found that denying minors voting residence where they actually lived—whether at school or elsewhere—constituted a violation of the Twenty-sixth Amendment; the amendment was held to have emancipated minors for all purposes related to voting. In the same vein, a New Jersey court added that the Twenty-sixth Amendment secured the rights of bona fide campus residents to register in the counties where their campuses were located. Worden v. Mercer County Board of Elections (1972).

On the other hand, a state constitution could, without offending the Twenty-sixth Amendment, institute twenty-one as the minimum age for holding elective public office. Opatz v. City of St. Cloud (1972). And the amendment does not mandate that persons under twenty-one years old be seated as jurors under state law. Johnson v. State (1972); Commonwealth v. Cobbs (1973); State ex rel. McNary v. Stussie (1974).

There is a serious movement afoot to lower the voting age to sixteen. On it’s face, it is ludicrous, but if it gains traction it will be dangerous to our republic.

There is a reason why society withholds the full benefits of citizenship from minors. They are CHILDREN and are therefore immature and liable to hold foolish and morally questionable opinions based on ignorance. Children have poor judgement, lack the wisdom and knowledge necessary to properly understand the subject or understand why their opinions could be wrong and immoral.

The scientific evidence is also stacked against the votes for kids brigade. It has been established that our brains are still underdeveloped in our teen years, which explains a lot about their tendencies for reckless and irresponsible behavior, risk taking and lack of judgement. The brain’s pre-fontal cortex helps us manage our emotions, consider moral dilemmas and think abstractly, and this is not fully developed in teenagers.

The most nauseating advocates of this madness are “progressive” politicians who talk insincere garbage about “extending our democracy”, reinvigorating politics, giving 16 year-olds’ a “stake in society” and other such pathetic and transparent nonsense.

This is cynical politics of the most irresponsible kind; they support votes for children because they believe it will expand their vote share. As young people are idealistic they are more likely to be left wing, so their thinking goes, and therefore more likely to vote for them. Not only is this exasperatingly unprincipled and opportunistic, it is downright presumptuous and patronizing.

If politicians really wanted to improve the electoral system they should be advocating informed and educated voting, not pushing to give children with little or no real life experience the right to go to the ballot box.

This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.

(c) 2018

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Amendment XXIV

Southern states enacted poll taxes of one or two dollars per year between 1889 and 1966 as a prerequisite to voting. A citizen paid the tax when registering and then annually thereafter; some laws required payment up to nine months before an election. Furthermore, many states had a cumulative feature that required an individual to pay all previous years’ poll taxes before he could vote in the instant year.

Prior to the enactment of poll taxes, property ownership was frequently a prerequisite to voting. States instituted the poll tax early in the nineteenth century as a device to grant voting rights to individuals who did not own real property. Although most states had dispensed with both property qualifications and the poll tax by the time of the Civil War, the tax resurfaced in the South to dilute the effect of race-neutral voting provisions required in Southern states’ constitutions as a condition for readmission to the Union following the Civil War.

Beginning in 1889, Southern states reintroduced the poll tax as a method of disenfranchising black voters. As delegate Carter Glass declared during the Virginia constitutional convention of 1902, the tax was designed “with a view to the elimination of every negro voter who can be gotten rid of, legally, without materially impairing the numerical strength of the white electorate.” Additionally, poll taxes had the effect of disenfranchising the poor in general, including whites; later, it fell upon many women after the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment.

Legislation to eliminate poll taxes in federal elections was introduced in every Congress beginning in 1939, but no bill made it into law. By the time of the Twenty-fourth Amendment’s ratification in 1964, only five states retained a poll tax. Nevertheless, Congress deemed the amendment necessary inasmuch as poll taxes had previously survived constitutional challenges in the courts, see Breedlove v. Suttles (1937), and they had become a notorious symbol of black disenfranchisement.

During the debates, some Members of Congress argued that because poll taxes were racially discriminatory, Congress should outlaw them directly under the enforcement powers of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. However, Congress eventually decided against using its Fifteenth Amendment enforcement power because it did not directly reach the disenfranchisement of the poor. Early drafts of the Fifteenth Amendment had, in fact, sought to proscribe devices like poll taxes. Ultimately, however, the Fifteenth Amendment’s drafters had settled on language forbidding only racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the franchise. A specific poll tax amendment would be both more sweeping and have greater symbolic status. In addition, the amendment’s supporters attacked the poll tax as a vehicle for fraud because the tax facilitated political corruption through vote buying by political machines that had made block payments of the tax. Some states allowed third parties to pay an individual’s poll tax, so some businesses interested in the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment were able to pay the poll tax for their patrons. Similarly, unions, frustrated with the resistance to unionization in the South, encouraged registration of their members in some cases by paying their poll taxes. Defenders of states’ rights, however, fended off any attempt to extend the amendment’s application to local elections. Nonetheless, not long after the ratification of the amendment, Congress enacted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which made problematic the continuing validity of the poll tax as a qualification in state elections.

In Harman v. Forssenius (1965), the Supreme Court for the first time construed the Twenty-fourth Amendment, giving broad effect to its prohibition. In anticipation of the amendment’s adoption, Virginia had enacted a statute amending its election laws to provide that a qualified citizen might vote in federal elections only if, at least six months prior to each election, he had either paid a poll tax or filed a certificate of residence. In declaring the new Virginia voting law unconstitutional, the Court stressed the broad language of the Twenty-fourth Amendment, which prohibits not only the denial but also the abridgement of the right to vote. The Court noted that the Twenty-fourth Amendment, like the Fifteenth, “nullifies sophisticated as well as simple-minded modes of impairing the right guaranteed.” Continuing, the Court also found that the Twenty-fourth Amendment applies to “onerous procedural requirements” which effectively handicap, impede, or impair the “exercise of the freedom by those claiming the constitutional immunity.”

The drafters of the amendment carefully limited its scope to federal elections. Two years after its ratification, the Supreme Court announced that the use of poll taxes as a prerequisite to voting in state elections violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, even though it seemed evident that the conclusion was at odds with the original understanding of the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, a position emphasized in the dissents of Justices Hugo L. Black and John M. Harlan. Harper v. Virginia State Board of Elections (1966). In Harper, the Court dealt with a Virginia statute requiring the payment of a poll tax not to exceed $1.50 as a precondition for voting, an amount that Virginia argued was minimal and thus not a significant burden on the right to vote. Admitting “the right to vote in state elections is nowhere expressly mentioned,” the Court nevertheless invalidated the statute because “it is enough to say that once the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Justice William O. Douglas, writing for the Court, explained: “[A] state violates the Equal Protection Clause… whenever it makes the affluence of the voter or payments of any fee an electoral standard. Voter qualifications have no relation to wealth nor to paying or not paying this or any other tax.” The logic of the Court’s opinion has made the Twenty-fourth Amendment virtually superfluous, as Justice John M. Harlan observed in his dissent.

As has been observed in our blog post on Amendment XIV, the “Equal Protection Clause” has had the unintended consequence of calling into question whether or not Illegal Aliens are entitled to the franchise. Although “common sense” might dictate otherwise, this is a real issue.

In late 2017, with a tie-breaking vote from the mayor, the City Council in College Park approved the measure to allow undocumented immigrants, student visa holders and residents with green cards to vote in local elections.

Several other cities in Maryland already allow noncitizens to vote locally. Chicago and San Francisco also offer noncitizen voting.

This page and its links contain opinion. As with all opinion, it should not be relied upon without independent verification. Think for yourself. Fair Use is relied upon for all content. For educational purposes only. No claims are made to the properties of third parties.

(c) 2018