1. Describe the Estonia governmental system in the country, discuss what governmental institutions are there, what election process this country has, and who are the major power players are who influence Public Policy in Estonia;
2. Explains how the Public Policy process works in Estonia; who influences policies in Estonia?
3. Discuss a specific policy area (e.g. education, health care, environment, etc.) and explain how the policy works?
Constitutionally a Slave
Kena Walker
PSPS.4300: Race and Law
March 8th, 2022
Constitutionally a Slave
We the People of the United States, is the first phrase the framers wrote into the nation-binding American Constitution. The long precedence of slavery and judicial affirmation of state-statutes depriving Blacks of their unalienable rights places an uncertainty towards the freedom applied in the United States Constitution. Jefferson Davis and William Lloyd Garrison denounces the application of freedom in the United States as the doctrine behaves as a pro-slavery doctrine. The Constitution was formed by Confederate States, instilling the right to own their slaves without mentioning such noun in writing, overwhelmingly revealing itself as a pro-slavery document that upholds the institution and deprivation of rights of Blacks for centuries, while defining the differences of personhood and citizenship along the way in the Courts of the Federation by race.
Jefferson Davis and William Lloyd Garrison asserts in numerous of ways how the U.S. Constitution has upheld the institution of slavery and the deprivation of Black rights. In 1861, Davis delivers his first Inaugural Address in Montgomery Alabama, asserting himself with the Confederate States of America. Davis brings forth the idea that the government rests upon the consent of the governed and it is the right of the people to abolish a government that reveals destructive to which it was established. Positing that forming the Confederacy was in line with Constitutional rights of person and property, and to increase the power, develop the resources, and promote the happiness of a confederacy, it is requisite that there should be so much of homogeneity that the welfare of every portion shall be the aim of the whole, (Davis, 1861). The actions of the Confederate States are thereby justified by the Constitution as they acted constitutionally to preserve their own rights and promote their own general welfare as stated in the preamble of the Constitution. Furthermore, he ends his speech declaring that the Confederate States is founded on the Constitution formed by the Founding Fathers and which the Confederates have a light which reveals its true meaning, (Davis, 1861). Along with Davis, William Lloyd Garrison contends that the U.S. Constitution is the most bloody and heaven-daring arrangement ever made by men for the continuance and protection of a system of the most atrocious villany every exhibited on earth, (Garrison, 1832). Garrison alludes that the Framers premeditatedly excluded the mention of slaves from the Constitution to avoid separation of states which allowed the barbaric institution to be validated under the Constitution. The Jefferson and Garrison elucidation of the United States Constitution reveals how the Framers protected the institution of slavery throughout this doctrine which America would lay its foundation in till the end of time. Slavery was a crucial factor to the development and economy of the states, allowing whites to dominate and maintain independence from Great Britain. The Framers had great knowledge on the odious institution during the construction of the Constitution, and for these men to not clarify a means to end this system throughout this doctrine imparts the approval of such demeaning acts. To promote the general welfare,, scribed in the Constitution with the precedence of white men using slaves to meet this end, substantiates the institution of slavery in the nations doctrine, as Chief Justice Taney would assert natural law.
The U.S. Constitution lays as a protector of the white American freedom beside the grisly institution of slavery as opposed to the portrayal of the doctrine of the peoples freedom. In the Constitution, there is no mentioning of slaves or the institution of slavery, however there is Article I, Sec. 2. that proclaims the form of representation to which, shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons, (U.S. Const., art I, § 2). The Three-Fifths Compromise was an agreement between Northern and Southern states that counted a black slave as three-fifths of a person to allow the South to have a representation in the House of Representatives. Hence, the Framers marked this Constitution in enabling slavery and deprivation of Black rights in asserting slaves are to be counted as only three-fifths of a person, not an entire person without mentioning the word slave. The exertion of the phrases the whole Number of free Persons and three fifths of all other Persons (U.S. Const., art I, § 2), implicitly constitutionalizes the system of slavery towards the Black race. This doctrine has threaded a history of discrimination and deprivation of Blacks in America, legalized in the Supreme Courts backed by the Constitution. In 1823, after the addition of the Bill of Rights protecting individual liberties of citizens of the United States along with two more amendments, in Dred Scott v. Sanford, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat) 543 (1823), Chief Justice Taney declared Blacks, emancipated, or born free, were not intended to be included under the word citizen as Blacks were regarded as an article of property
and bought and sold, (Taney, 1823). Taney declares the Constitution implicitly defines the class of Blacks in the clauses concerning the importation of slaves besides the rights of the master. From this point on, personhood of Blacks did not subject them to the rights of citizens of the United States because Blacks were not intended by the Founders under the term of citizens, because they were not fully person. Following, State v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263 (1829) declared that violence against ones own slave is protected under full dominion of the owner and to ensure stability of the happiness, the value, and public tranquility of slaves, the master must maintain a full dominion over slaves. The Fifth Amendment, grants persons the right to life, liberty, and property, such as the white man to his slave, because according to the Constitution when asserting all others as three-fifths of a person, Blacks are scribed to not be a whole person. Therefore, when the Constitution and Bill of Rights mentions persons, the Constitution assures Blacks are not subjected to these liberties. After the end of the Civil War, depicting a false image of the end to slavery, Blacks were now to be under the protection as citizens and whole persons of the United States. However, States now relied on the Tenth Amendment which granted States to police powers over the health and general welfare of the public, leading to the deprivation of rights for Blacks due to racial segregation to protect the general welfare of the white public. Setting up the deprivation of equality for Blacks in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896) where Justice Brown asserted state police powers under the Tenth Amendment upholds racial segregation within interstate lines. If facilities are separate but equal, the states have the right to distinguish the white race as superior. 58 years after Plessy, in the Brown v. Board of Education, 346 U.S. 74 (1954), with the addition of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendment, which outlawed slavery and asserted Blacks equal liberties and immunities that must also be protected by the states, the segregation of schools was found inherently unequal. Yet, these additions still did not constitute the Constitution as a freedom document, rather it exemplified the underlying framework of a pro-slavery doctrine. For instance, in 1964 in the Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 the Heart of Atlanta contends the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce to prevent racial discrimination. However when the Court upholds the Civil Rights Act, no mention of the inherent freedoms Blacks have as a citizen or person was expressed upon. Rather, Justice Clark held that any acts that may be harmful to interstate commerce can be regulated by Congress under Article I, Section 8, Clause 3 of the United States Constitution. Although this case was depicted as a win for Black rights in America, the way these rights were protected was not by the individual rights of people and citizens of the United States, but to protect the right of the power of Congress. The ruling of the case could have easily been struck down by the Fourteenth Amendment of the equal protection of laws, however the foundation and precedence on the Constitution reveals the blockage of Blacks as citizens. The United States Constitution embeds the institution of slavery into history, although this document is depicted as a doctrine of freedom, the experience of the Black race reveals the identity of the pro-slavery document.
The pro-slavery doctrine, the United States Constitution, administered Blacks in America to be regarded as non-citizens nor people in America, yet Asian-Americans were granted the privileges under personhood but deprived of citizenship. In Chae Chan Ping v. U.S., 130 U.S. 581 (1889) the court declares the power of Congress to issue the expulsions of immigrants in violation to treaties because the immigrants are foreigners to the nation, not eligible to reach to the terms of citizenship. Therefore, in Plessy 1896, in Justice Harlans dissent against the constitutionality of segregated facilities proclaims that Chinese are non-citizens of the United States. Asian-Americans were defined from Blacks by being granted personhood in the United States. Hence, in Tape v Hurley, 66 Cal. 473 (1885), the state of California ruled that the exclusion of Chinese descendants to a public school is unlawful. Specifically, Chinese descendants have been ruled by the government as non-citizens, however San Francisco, as opposed to Blacks, were now entitled to public school. This ultimately led to the decision in Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214 (1944), where the Federal government ignores the citizenship of Japanese descendants to protect the nation from espionage and sabotage during a time of warfare. Korematsu was an American citizen of Japanese descent in 1944 when the Executive Order No.34 was enacted by the President. This act forced all citizens who are Japanese descent to relocate from military areas, however Korematsu contended the act was a violation of the Fifth Amendment. However, the Court declared Congress is granted these Constitutional powers to prevent espionage and sabotage when the nation is at war. Justice Black declares that the President of the United States may act in a way which may be unlawful during a time of peace, (Black, 1944). The access of personhood and citizenship split once the Constitution dealt with various ancestries other than the white, Blacks were neither persons or citizens, while Asian-Americans were granted personhood but could not fulfill the roles of citizenship.
The United States Constitution lays as the holy doctrine of American freedom to its white citizens while standing as a pro-slavery contract against Blacks and minorities. Jefferson Davis and William Lloyd Garrison posits the idea that the bloody Constitution protects the institution of slavery to maintain the general welfare of white domination in America. This doctrine has asserted the Black race as an article of property as Blacks are defined as three-fifths of a person. Yet when personhood is granted, the defense against segregation does not birth from the inherent rights of the black race granted within the Constitution, but to the powers invested in Congress to regulate states protected by the pro-slavery Constitution that this nation is banded by.
Bibliography
Brown v. Board of Education, 346 U.S. 74 (1954)
Chae Chan Ping v. U.S., 130 U.S. 581 (1889)
Davis, Jefferson. Speech. First Inaugural Address . Presented at Alabama Capitol, Montgomery, February 18, 1861.
Dred Scott v. Sanford, 21 U.S. (8 Wheat) 543 (1823)
Garrison, William Lloyd. The Great Crisis!”. The Liberator II, no. 51 (December 29, 1832): 2067.
Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964)
Korematsu v. U.S., 323 U.S. 214 (1944)
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896)
State v. Mann, 13 N.C. 263 (1829)
Tape v. Hurley, 66 Cal. 473 (1885)
U.S. Const., art I, § 2.
