Constitutional Amendment

The First Amendment
The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” This Amendment basically protects free speech, among other rights—but in recent years it has been necessary to define the parameters of free speech, particularly when it comes to politics. One of the more recent cases of this is with respect to the creation of the Super Political Action Committee (PAC). In the news article by Samuelson (2012) it is shown how the Supreme Court is muddling the Constitution by allowing the formation of Super PACs, which rather than serving as an affirmation of First Amendment rights are actually more of a stifling of those rights—yet the Courts do not see it that way.
The Super PAC came about thanks to the Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission Supreme Court ruling—this ruling allowed corruption to lead into the political system by giving more weight to corporations to influence elections. The Citizens United case centered on the non-profit Citizens United, which sought to air a film that was critical of Hillary Clinton, who was running for president during the 2008 Democratic primary elections. The Federal Election Committee ruled that this would be a violation of federal law, which stipulated that corporations could not engage in electioneering campaigning within a month of a primary election or two months of a general election. Citizens United sued and the Supreme Court sided with the non-profit saying that to prevent the corporation from doing so was a violation of First Amendment Rights. The First Amendment is a crucial right, but this case shows how it can be twisted and used for political purposes.
The Second Amendment
In the U.S., people have a Constitutional right to bear arms. This right is protected by the Second Amendment, which states that “a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” While the justification for the Second Amendment may seem outdated to some, it is honored and celebrated by others who believe that part of what makes America unique among other countries in the world is that its citizens have never been denied the right to bear arms. Indeed, among all modern nations, the U.S. stands out for its gun laws for a number of reasons: people want to feel safe and they know they have the right to carry and bear arms according to the Constitution; in other countries, like the UK, it is illegal to own a gun. Thus, America is unique.
Following the Parkland school shooting, many called for the 2nd Amendment to be abolished. In his news article, Hsieh (2018) states the opposite: “Millions of Americans legally carry a firearm every day, and most cite self-defense as their primary reason. The overwhelming majority of the time, those guns are never drawn in anger. But innocent civilians can and do sometimes use their guns in self-defense. Any discussion of firearms policy must acknowledge the lives saved by legal use of guns.” The gist of Hsieh’s article is that guns can be used for good purposes and not every gun owner is a villain. This article is valuable for putting the context of the Second Amendment in the right light. Americans have the right to bear arms—and that right is important to people and they do not feel it is outdated. If anything they feel it is more important now than ever because no one feels safe anymore.
The Fourth Amendment
With the rise of the Digital Age, this question of searching and seizing the personal property of people has been questioned in a number of court cases, especially those involving wiretapping, confiscating hard drives, or surveillance via FISA courts. Though these activities are conducted in order to obtain evidence so that the target might then be aptly accused of a crime, the Fourth Amendment is clear about persons being accused, first, and then detained or searched—not the other way around. Over time, this concept has been inverted and the necessity to prevent crime for going undetected or from letting criminals escape without being caught has allowed this inversion to take place. This is the case today with the RussiaGate issue that has plagued the Trump presidency. The Trump Administration says that the Obama Administration had no legal standing to authorize wiretaps on Trump Tower and that the Courts had no legal standing to allow for this either as the intelligence used to justify the invasion of privacy was based on a bogus narrative that the intelligence community knew to be bogus. This is all reported in the news story by Investors Business Daily (2018), which discusses the illegality of the wiretapping and the scandal that it has caused for the American public over the past two years.
The Fourth Amendment was meant to protect citizens from undue searches and seizures and was an important addition to the Constitution, because those who are detained, searched, and have their property seized are essentially being accused of some criminal act and are thus treated by the state. However, there is a protocol that must be in place in order for police or the state to act in this manner. They cannot simply stop whomever they wish or conduct searches in a meaningless manner, as Constitutional law forbids it.
The Fifth Amendment
The Fifth Amendment directly addresses and identifies the rights of the accused by stating that “No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.” This important Amendment was added to the Constitution in order to prevent states from forcing an accused to self-incriminate and to prevent states from continuously charging a person with the same crime over and over again until the state gets a verdict it wants—i.e., the accused is protected from double jeopardy.
This protection evolved in the 20th century with the case of Blockburger v. United States, in which the accused was charged with multiple crimes. The Supreme Court ruled that a state may try the accused for two crimes if there is an element of each of the crimes that is unique and not contained in the other crime. What is important to remember about this case is that instead of a state targeting a person for a crime repeatedly, it now has the option of breaking up the person’s crime into unique crimes that are hair-splittingly similar (relying on they do on minute differences and distinctions) in order to better their chances of obtaining a conviction. One also sees in this ruling the obvious tendency in American law to subvert the rights of the accused through legalistic practices that put immense pressure on the defendant and undermine his or her chances of obtaining a fair and impartial trial. Surely, a jury may think, the more crimes an individual is charged with by the state, the more likely it is the accused is guilty of something.
The Sixth Amendment
The Sixth Amendment also directly addressed the rights of the accused by ensuring that “in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right… to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.” This important right of the accused was designed so that no defendant would be going to court unassisted, blind about the law, and unsupported by a qualified lawyer. The Assistance of Counsel clause, as it is called, provides the accused with a variety of rights in and of themselves:
· The right to choose one’s counsel
· The right to have counsel appointed
· The right to have counsel that is free of conflict
· The right to have counsel that is effective
· The right to choose to represent oneself as one’s own counsel
These rights have evolved over the years and have grown organically out of Court interpretations of the Sixth Amendment as a result of various court cases. For example, Brewer v. Williams (1977) led to the definition that “at least that a person is entitled to the help of a lawyer at or after the time that judicial proceedings have been initiated against him, whether by formal charge, preliminary hearing, indictment, information, or accusation.”  This Court case helped to define the Amendment so that it was clear what the rights of the accused were and how the defendant should be able to have access to a lawyer.
The Eighth Amendment
The 8th Amendment protects a person from suffering excessive bail or cruel and unusual punishment. It was included in the Constitution to prevent tyranny from taking over in the courts. However, the article by UPI (2019) shows this may not be working. UPI (2019) notes that Alabama state prisons are not safe for inmates and “that the state's men prisons have failed to protect prisoners against inmate-on-inmate violence and sexual abuse, and failed to create safe conditions for those prisoners. The Constitution's Eight Amendment prevents inmates from enduring cruel and unusual punishment.” The article goes on to describe how the inmates in the Alabama state prison are not being protected because there is so much risk of inmate-on-inmate violence, which should not be happening. If prisoners are not protected from harm in the prison, their Constitutional rights are being violated, according to the 8th Amendment.
The 8th Amendment is thus an important one and is one that not many probably think about—as most people do not spend much time thinking about the rights of the imprisoned. They are more likely to be mindful of the 1st Amendment rights or the 2nd Amendment rights, as these pertain to them. They want free speech or they want the press to be able to publish whatever it wants. However, the Founding Fathers knew what it meant to live under tyranny and they wanted to make sure the American government never permitted tyranny in the future. Thus, this is an important amendment to the Constitution because it protects a population that is not typically thought of when one thinks of rights.
The Thirteenth Amendment
The 13th Amendment abolished slavery except as a punishment for crime. This Amendment was added to the Constitution in the wake of Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation. However, more than a hundred years later, the era of political correctness has dawned and the nation’s leaders are no longer comfortable with any artifact of slavery remaining: they view it as a symbol of the country’s racist past that should be eliminated from the public arena. Instead of addressing actual issues of racism that still exist, for example, in the criminal justice system, the leaders are more concerned about banning books that use racist language or eliminating the word “slavery” from 200 year old state constitutions. That is what Vermont has just done, as the article by Budryk (2019) shows.
Budryk’s aricle focuses on the one senator who voted against the law to purge the word “slavery” from the state constitution: “Sen. Dick McCormack (D), called the measure unnecessary, noting that the 13th Amendment outlawed slavery nationwide in 1865. ‘Given when you look at the horrible, evil thing slavery is, that fact that Vermont was the first to outlaw it is a source of great pride,’ McCormack said. ‘[The language] ought to be preserved.’ Changing the language of the state constitution, he added, would be ‘put[ting] a smiley face on our history.’” Thus, the article shows that while the 13th Amendment was an important moment in U.S. history, today’s U.S. wants to act like the whole slavery issue never happened. However, it is important to remember that the 13th Amendment was necessary and was important. White washing history by removing words from the state constitution in order to pacify political correct activists is not something that should be accepted. The 13th Amendment should be remembered for what it did—and that cannot happen if no one permits acknowledging slavery in the first place.
The Fifteenth Amendment
The 15th Amendment passed in 1870, and granted suffrage to black men. However, it did not grant it to women: women were not granted suffrage until 19th Amendment was passed in 1920. Still the laws of the land were racist because Jim Crow still lurked everywhere within the judicial system. The notoriously racist Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 showed the extent to which the nation was still immersed in a racist view towards African Americans. In that court case, the Court used the phrase “separate but equal” to explain the relationship between whites and blacks. It was a moment in which the country could have confronted the problem of Jim Crow that still existed decades after the passing of the 15th Amendment—but did not. As Walsh (2015) shows, voting rights are still an issue because the problem of racism was never really solved by the 15th amendment. In Walsh’s (2015) article, he notes that “the issue of voting rights has become a subject of contention in the presidential campaign. Democratic and Republican candidates are taking potshots at one another, and political consultants of both major parties say the fate of the law could have an impact on the outcome in 2016 by determining who can actually vote in key states.” In other words, nothing has really been settled because the Establishment will always try to find ways to control the outcomes of votes, but controlling who gets to vote where and in what districts.
This Amendment is important because it provided African Americans with a sense of equality for one of the first times. It gave them the right to vote, which they had not expressly held before. For that reason, it was a crucial addition to the Constitution and one that should be respected by today’s politicians and legislators but unfortunately is not, as Walsh (2018) shows.
The 16th Amendment
The 16th Amendment gave the federal government the right to impose the income tax: “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.” Today, however, more than half the population wants to end this Amendment. It is possibly the most hated Amendment of all time. As the article by Rasmussen (2019) shows, “today, 52% of voters favor repealing the 16th Amendment to end the federal income tax. A ScottRasmussen.com national survey found that such a repeal is favored by 62% of independent voters, 56% of Republicans, and 42% of Democrats.” However, Rasmussen (2019) shows that while the majority of Americans are in favor of repealing this Amendment, the likelihood of that happening is virtually zero, as it is exceedingly difficult to change the Constitution. Likewise, the federal government is not going to vote to eliminate its main source of funding each year, according to the article.
So this is an Amendment that the Founding Fathers surely did not anticipate. That it was passed the same year the Federal Reserve was established should indicate something about what was going on in the country and who the nation’s leaders were at the time. The 16th Amendment was passed so as to allow the federal government to get even bigger and more bureaucratic, which it could not do without regularly income streams, which the income tax allowed it to do.
The 18th Amendment
If there was one Amendment more hated than the 16th Amendment, it was the 18th Amendment. It legally banned the manufacturing and sale of alcohol in the whole United States. No one could legally purchase a drink anymore—which turned country into a nation of scofflaws during the 1920s, also known as the Lawless Decade, as everyone had to go underground to get their booze. They huddled in speakeasies and flouted the law—because no one really wanted to stop drinking. Carrie Nation and the teetotalers managed to get this Amendment passed, and it would eventually be repealed by the 21st Amendment—but not before the rise of the criminal underworld thanks to all the bootlegging and profits that that 18th Amendment allowed them to accrue. The criminal class basically came into existence in a big way because of this ill-thought out Amendment.
The news article by DeFelitta (2019) focuses more on the repeal of the 18th Amendment rather than on the good things that it brought about during the more than a decade of its existence. For that reason, the title of the article is “Cheers to the 21st Amendment,” and the article was published on National Beer Day to get the point across that the 18th Amendment will go down in history as the worst Amendment to the Constitution ever imaginable. The article discusses how it was finally repealed and why this was a good thing.
The 18th Amendment will probably never be revived as it was passed at a time when the nation was trying to “sober” up and get back to a moral footing. That ship has since passed. Now the people are demanding that marijuana be legalized across the board. What a difference a century makes.
References
Blockburger v. United States. (1932). Retrieved from
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/284/299/
Brewer v. Williams. (1977). Retrieved from
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/430/387/
Budryk, Z. (2019). Vermont Senate votes to remove all slavery references from state
Constitution. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/440727-vermont-senate-votes-to-remove-all-references-to-slavery-from-state
Defelitta, R. (2019). Cheers to the 21st Amendment! Retrieved from
https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/daily-bite/cheers-to-the-21st-amendment-
Hsieh, P. (2018). Any study of gun violence should include how guns save lives.
References from https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulhsieh/2018/03/20/any-study-of-gun-violence-should-include-how-guns-save-lives/#6ae1ade65edc
Investors Business Daily. (2018). At Best, The FBI Misled The Court To Wiretap
Trump Campaign, FISA Application Shows. Retrieved from https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/fisa-application-steele-dossier-trump-russia-carter-page-wiretap/
Rasmussen, S. (2019). 52 Percent of Voters: Repeal Federal Income Tax. Retrieved
from https://www.newsmax.com/scottrasmussen/constitution-amend-congress/2019/04/09/id/910935/
Samuelson, R. (2012). The Super PAC confusion. Retrieved from
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-super-pac-confusion/2012/02/17/gIQApb1FOR_story.html?utm_term=.8145af05932b
UPI. (2018). Justice Department: Alabama prisons may violate 8th Amendment.
Retrieved from https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2019/04/03/Justice-Department-Alabama-prisons-may-violate-8th-Amendment/8921554309036/
Walsh, K. (2015). Voting Rights Still a Hot-Button Issue. Retrieved from
https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/08/04/voting-rights-still-a-political-issue-50-years-later