A lot of us, use FindLaw.com to research and read about many of the cases we talk about. I have found that Cornell University uses a much better format, when you can find the case there.
grymster2007, to understand how the P&I clause (the one you quoted) was read out of the amendment (and thus, out of the Constitution), you should read the decision that did this.
Slaghterhouse Cases at Cornell. You can contrast what Justice Miller writes in his majority opinion and contrast that with the 3 dissenting opinions.
To help save you time: Justice Miller spends a few paragraphs on the civil war and its aftermath. He expounds upon how the 13th, the 14th and the 15th were passed in regards to giving only the Negro or African race the rights of all free men. Then after expounding upon the meaning of the phrase, Privileges and Immunities, he writes:
Quote:
All this and more must follow if the proposition of the plaintiffs in error be sound. For not only are these rights subject to the control of Congress whenever, in its discretion, any of them are supposed to be abridged by State legislation, but that body may also pass laws in advance, limiting and restricting the exercise of legislative power by the States, in their most ordinary and usual functions, as in its judgment it may think proper on all such subjects. And still further, such a construction followed by the reversal of the judgments of the Supreme Court of Louisiana in these cases, would constitute this court a perpetual censor upon all legislation of the States, on the civil rights of their own citizens, with authority to nullify such as it did not approve as consistent with those rights, as they existed at the time of the adoption of this amendment. The argument, we admit, is not always the most conclusive which is drawn from the consequences urged against the adoption of a particular construction of an instrument. But when, as in the case before us, these consequences are so serious, so far-reaching and pervading, so great a departure from the structure and spirit of our institutions; when the effect is to fetter and degrade the State governments by subjecting them to the control of Congress in the exercise of powers heretofore universally conceded to them of the most ordinary and fundamental character; when, in fact, it radically changes the whole theory of the relations of the State and Federal governments to each other and of both these governments to the people, the argument has a force that is irresistible in the absence of language which expresses such a purpose too clearly to admit of doubt.
We are convinced that no such results were intended by the Congress which proposed these amendments, nor by the legislatures of the States which ratified them.
|
What he is saying is that the nature of the relationship between the Federal Government and the State Government cannot have been meant to change in the manner the amendment suggests. The majority of the Court rejects the plain meaning of the amendment, as it would apply to all and not just to the former slaves.
That is how the P&I clause has been read completely out of the Constitution by a single case before the Supreme Court. A Court that refuses to believe change can happen.