Unratified amendments

[A18]

The first is pointless. The rest are bad.

None of the above.

[A18]

The one good thing about the Child Labor Amendment is that it might make it clear just how haywire the Court's Commerce Clause jurisprudence has gone.

[A18]

The slavery ammendment, having now nothing to do with slavery, is great.

The amendment states:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

What are the "domestic institutions" of a state? The amendment strikes me as excessively vague, and might have become a pretext for judicial activism, just like the due process clause. Moreover, it restricts future constitutional amendments, thereby reducing constitutional flexibility.

Marriage certainly would fall under the domestic institution proviso, but I agree that clause is rather vague and subject to interpretation, and the zero admendment part gives me the willies since there would be no recourse other than revolution if a Supreme Court ever misinterpreted it.  The right of revoultion is a necessary and proper right, but we should never structure our laws such that it may someday become necessary.

Actually, it could just be repealed by another amendment.

[A18]

The fourth I'm very glad was not ratified, but it's interesting nonetheless because it shows that even as late as the 1920s congress knew it couldn't do outrageous things like regulating child labor without clear constitutional justification.

Actually, that was intended to effectively overturn the Supreme Court's ruling in Hammer v. Dagenhart, 247 U.S. 251 (1918).

Why are you "very glad" the child labor amendment was not ratified?

[A18]

The Fourteenth Amendment clearly was not understood to grant anyone suffrage.

[A18]

The Fourteenth Amendment clearly was not understood to grant anyone suffrage.

Was not then or is not now?

I believe the modern interpretation to be incorrect. The plain text of the amendment would make that apparent.