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By: Alexander Tsesis

The Essays in this volume address four broad themes: (I) the Thirteenth Amendment in relation to other constitutional provisions, (II) the significance of the Amendment in restructuring federalism, (III) the limits of the Amendment’s grant of congressional and judicial ...READ MORE

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By: Jack M. Balkin and Sanford Levinson

Through most of its history, the Thirteenth Amendment has been interpreted extremely narrowly, especially when compared to the Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights. The Thirteenth Amendment has been read in this way ...READ MORE

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By: Mark A. Graber

The celebration of the Thirteenth Amendment in many Essays prepared for this Symposium may be premature. That the Thirteenth Amendment arguably protects a different and, perhaps, wider array of rights than the Fourteenth Amendment may be less ...READ MORE

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By: George Rutherglen

Most of the recent controversy over the Thirteenth Amendment concerns the possibility of using the Amendment to create rights like those under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, but without the restrictions of the state action doctrine. ...READ MORE

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By: Eric Foner

Beginning in the 1930s, Reconstruction historiography underwent a dramatic change. Early-twentieth-century historians of Reconstruction viewed aggressive federal intervention to protect the civil rights of freed slaves as a mistake, and they celebrated the Compromise of 1877 and the ...READ MORE

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By: Aviam Soifer

The Peonage Abolition Act of 1867 abolished voluntary as well as involuntary servitude. Congress did this in sweeping terms, based on the Enforcement Clause of the Thirteenth Amendment, but Congress explicitly extended protections beyond those proclaimed in Section ...READ MORE

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By: Alexander Tsesis

Although the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified more than a century and a half ago, courts have yet to delve into its relevance to gender discrimination. This oversight is unfortunate given the extent to which jurisprudence about another Reconstruction ...READ MORE

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By: Rebecca E. Zietlow

On January 31, 1865, the United States House of Representatives voted to approve the Thirteenth Amendment. Chairing the final debate over the Amendment was Representative James Ashley, a lifelong opponent of slavery from Northwest Ohio who led ...READ MORE

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By: Jamal Greene

Thirteenth Amendment optimism is the view that the Thirteenth Amendment may be used to reach doctrinal outcomes neither specifically intended by the Amendment’s drafters nor obvious to contemporary audiences. In prominent legal scholarship, Thirteenth Amendment optimism has supported ...READ MORE

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By: Jennifer Mason McAward

Section 2 of the Thirteenth Amendment gives Congress the “power to enforce” the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude “by appropriate legislation.” The conventional view of Section 2 regards this language as an allusion to McCulloch v. ...READ MORE

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By: Darrell A.H. Miller

Custom is an underdeveloped concept in Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence. While a substantial body of work has explored the tech- nical meaning of custom as it applies to § 1983 and, to a lesser extent, Congress’s power to ...READ MORE

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By: William M. Carter, Jr.

The Thirteenth Amendment’s Framers envisioned the Amendment as providing federal authority to eliminate the “badges and incidents of slavery.” The freemen and their descendants are the most likely to be burdened with the effects of stigma, ...READ MORE

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By: Richard Delgado

The protection of civil rights in the United States encompasses remedies for at least five separate groups. Native Americans have suffered extermination, removal, denial of sovereignty, and destruction of culture; Latinos, conquest and the indignities of a racially ...READ MORE

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By: Andrew Koppelman

Does an originalist reading of the Thirteenth Amendment support a right to abortion? Not long ago a negative answer seemed obvious enough to make the question silly. Since then, however, originalism has become more sophisticated. It is now ...READ MORE