A Civil Rights Approach

On another front, beginning with City of Boerne v. Flores, the Court reduced Congress's ability to enforce Fourteenth Amendment due process and equal protection rights.3 Boerne interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to be a responsive, rather than a proactive, federal empowerment.4 This 1 United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549, 561-63 (1995).Chief Justice Rehnquist's language also indicated that the Commerce Clause would henceforth only apply to cases involving "economic enterprise."Id. at 558-61.Curiously, during the most recent term, the Court deviated from its demand for extensive evidence collection, finding constitutional a federal statute that regulated the medical use of marijuana despite the lack of proof that it would have any substantial effect on interstate commerce.Gonzales v. Raich, 125 S. Ct. 2195, 2197 (2005) ("In assessing the scope of Congress' Commerce Clause authority, the Court need not determine whether respondents' activities, taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a 'rational basis' exists for so concluding.");id. at 2221 (O'Connor, J., dissenting).2 See, e.g., United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598, 617 (2000) (striking down section of Violence Against Women Act that created private cause of action against perpetrators of gender-motivated violence).3City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 532 (1997) (finding Religious Freedom Restoration Act unconstitutional, in part, because statute was "so out of proportion to a supposed remedial or preventative object that it cannot be understood as responsive to, or designed to prevent unconstitutional behavior").4 natural rights tradition that the country's founders had invoked.Part III describes how abolitionist thought evolved during the congressional debates on the Thirteenth Amendment.These debates took place at the end of the Civil War, in 1864 and 1865, and provide insight into how the Amendment's goal of universal liberty is connected to Revolutionary ideals that the Constitution's framers failed to secure.Part IV details Supreme Court precedent on the Thirteenth Amendment which recognizes Congress's authority to pass wideranging laws that prohibit private and public discrimination.While Thirteenth Amendment jurisprudence has remained intact since the Warren and Burger Courts, the Rehnquist Court recently limited congressional power to act pursuant to other constitutional provisions.Part V explains how the erosion of Fourteenth Amendment and Commerce Clause powers, by such cases as United States v. Morrison 13 and United States v. Lopez, 14 has increased the pertinence of the Thirteenth Amendment.The article concludes by considering the extent of Congress's enforcement power under the Thirteenth Amendment.I. REVOLUTIONARY FERVOR FOR LIBERTYThe Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution declare life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness to be innate human characteristics.This was a radical notion in the United States at a time when slavery was an established practice in most colonies.Neither the Declaration nor the Preamble, however, granted Congress the power to enforce the rights they mentioned.The liberal equality that many colonists envisioned only became an enforceable, national commitment in 1865 with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.To be sure, encouraging signs appeared immediately after the Revolution; for instance, northern laws ending slavery seemed, for a time, to move the entire country in the direction of abolition.The antislavery temperament of the Revolutionary age, however, did not translate into universal or national prohibitions against the institution.To the contrary, several constitutional provisions, including the Three-Fifths Clause, the Importation Clause, and the Fugitive Slave Clause, protected slavery. 15The founding documents of the American Revolution and their colonial antecedents, nevertheless, were essential to 13 United States v. Morrison, 529 U.