![]() ![]() In Slaughter-House, the Supreme Court held that the Privileges or Immunities Clause protected only rights “which owe their existence to the Federal government, its National character, its Constitution, or its laws.” The Court emphasized that the Clause did not protect “nearly every civil right for the establishment and protection of which organized government is instituted,” including “those rights which are fundamental.” Justice Thomas explained that this decision “sapped the Clause of any meaning” so thoroughly that it went largely unmentioned until Saenz in 1999. ![]() Justice Thomas thus rejected the Supreme Court’s 1873 decision in the Slaughter-House Cases. were understood to refer to those fundamental rights and liberties specifically enjoyed by English citizens, and more broadly, by all persons.” In the same dissent, Justice Thomas concluded that those who lived “at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted” likewise “understood that ‘privileges or immunities of citizens’ were fundamental rights.” Roe (1999), Justice Thomas explained that according to English common law and other legal history, “at the time of the founding, the terms ‘privileges’ and ‘immunities’. Justice Clarence Thomas, for instance, would perform the analysis using the Privileges or Immunities Clause: “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” Note, the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment should not be confused with the Privileges and Immunities Clause of Article IV. ![]() Scholars and jurists disagree, however, as to which provision of the amendment should be used as a tool for incorporation. Since the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, the Supreme Court has incrementally incorporated almost the entire Bill of Rights against the states. ![]()
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