Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/396

376 376 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. In the phrase, "all persons born or naturalized in the United States," ^ it seems clear that "United States" is used in its original sense; for, first, it is either used in that sense or in its third sense, and, as the latter is not a constitutional or legal sense, there is a presumption that the term is not used in that sense in an amend- ment of the Constitution; secondly, it is declared that the same persons shall be citizens of the State in which they reside, and this shows that the authors of the amendment contemplated only States, for, if they had contemplated Territories as well, they certainly would have said "citizens of the State or Territory in which they reside"; thirdly, the whole of the 14th Amendment had reference exclusively to the then late war, and was designed to secure its results, — in particular to secure to persons of African descent certain political rights, and to take from the States respectively in which they might reside the power to deprive them of those rights. Moreover, the amendment consists mainly of prohibitions, and these are all (with a single exception which need not be mentioned) aimed exclusively against the States. It was no part of the object of the amendment to restrain the power of Congress (which its authors did not distrust), and hence there was no practical reason for extending its operation to Territories, in which all the power resided in Congress. What is the true meaning of "United States" in the phrase under consideration is certainly a question of great moment, for on its answer depends the question whether all persons hereafter born in any of our recently acquired islands will be by birth citizens of the United States. Th^ foregoing comprise all the instances but one in which the ierm "United States" is used either in the original Constitution, tion, in which occurs the phrase, "the United States or either of them," and also an extract from the 6th Article, in which occurs the phrase, "the United States or any of them;" and, while these phrases are perfectly correct where they stand, yet a transfer to the Constitution of the passages containing them would have made the same phrases incorrect, as such transfer would have changed the meaning of "United States." On the other hand, a transfer to the Constitution of an extract in the same note from Art. 9, containing the same phrase, would, it seems, have caused no change in the meaning of "United States," and hence the phrase in question would have been cor- rect, notwithstanding such transfer. ^ 14th Amendment, sect, i: ["All persons bom or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State de- prive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."]