From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lcrocker@jupiter.colossus.net)
Date: Mon Sep 22 1997 - 18:29:14 MDT
> Darrell Parfitt writes:
> (in reference to someone's use of "so-called 14th Amendment")
> > I have a semantics problem with this paragraph. I understand
> > referring to the Constitution of the United States as the so-called
> > Constitution, as a constitution is a document that governs the
> > legal workings of an organization, and many people think that the
> > legal system often subverts and ignores the provisions of the
> > constitution in pursuit of their political projects.
> > However, an amendment is simply something in a document that was
> > put in later through a process described in the original document.
>
> This is precisely the point at issue among those who dispute
> the legality of the 14th amendment and the other Reconstruction
> Amendments. The process by which they were added to the
> Constitution is not the process described in the original
> document, because the legal situation at the time (one half the
> country having been conquered by the other half) was never
> foreseen by the Constitution.
The language could still be clearer. I'd call it the "putative
14th amendment" rather than the "so-called 14th amendment", because
we don't question its inherent amendment-ness, only its legality.
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