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12 U. S. Brown Reargument Brief 65 (citation omitted). For example, the Pennsylvania debate suggests that the Fourteenth Amendment was understood to make the law “what justice is represented to be, blind” to the “color of [one’s] skin.” App. to Pa. Leg. Record XLVIII (1867) (Rep. Mann).

The most commonly held view today—consistent with the rationale repeatedly invoked during the congressional debates, see, e.g., Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., at 2458–2469—is that the Amendment was designed to remove any doubts regarding Congress’ authority to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and to establish a nondiscrimination rule that could not be repealed by future Congresses. See, e.g., J. Harrison, Reconstructing the Privileges or Immunities Clause, 101 Yale L. J. 1385, 1388 (1992) (noting that the “primary purpose” of the Fourteenth Amendment “was to mandate certain rules of racial equality, especially those contained in Section 1 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866”). The Amendment’s phrasing supports this view, and there does not appear to have been any argument to the contrary predating Brown.

Consistent with the Civil Rights Act of 1866’s aim, the Amendment definitively overruled Chief Justice Taney’s opinion in Dred Scott that blacks “were not regarded as a portion of the people or citizens of the Government” and “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” 19 How., at 407, 411. And, like the 1866 Act, the Amendment also clarified that American citizenship conferred