Editing Slaughter-House Cases (section)

==Analysis==
The ''Slaughter-House Cases'' essentially "gutted" the Privileges or Immunities Clause.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Tribe|first=Laurence H.|date=1995|title=Taking Text and Structure Seriously: Reflections on Free-Form Method in Constitutional Interpretation|url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/1341856|journal=Harvard Law Review|volume=108|issue=6|pages=1221–1303|doi=10.2307/1341856|jstor=1341856|issn=0017-811X}}</ref> The American scholar [[Edward Samuel Corwin]] remarked: "Unique among constitutional provisions, the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enjoys the distinction of having been rendered a practical nullity by a single decision of the Supreme Court rendered within five years after its ratification."<ref>Edward S. Corwin, ed., (1953) ''The Constitution of the United States of America'', Legislative Reference Service, Library of Congress, p. 965, cited in {{harvp|Chemerinsky|2019|loc=§ 6.3.2, pp. 542–43}}</ref>

The Supreme Court has used the Privileges or Immunities Clause to declare a law unconstitutional only one time in the modern era, in the 1999 case ''Saenz v. Roe'' where it examined a California law barring new state residents from receiving welfare benefits. While he dissented, Justice Clarence Thomas nevertheless took the opportunity to criticize the ''Slaughter-House Cases'', stating, "Legal scholars agree on little beyond the conclusion that the Clause does not mean what the Court said it meant in 1873." Thomas later expanded on his view of the Clause, at least as it relates to incorporating the Bill of Rights against the States, in ''McDonald v. Chicago''. In 2001, the American legal scholar [[Akhil Reed Amar]] similarly wrote of the ''Slaughter-House Cases'': "Virtually no serious modern scholar—left, right, and center—thinks that the decision is a plausible reading of the [Fourteenth] Amendment."{{sfnp|Amar|2001|p=631, note 178}} This view was echoed by historian [[Eric Foner]], who wrote "[T]he Court's ... studied distinction between the privileges deriving from state and national citizenship should have been seriously doubted by anyone who read the Congressional debates of the 1860s".<ref>[[Eric Foner|Foner, Eric]] (2014) [1988] ''[[Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877]]'' pp.528-529. New York: Harper Perennial. {{isbn|978-0-06-235451-8}}</ref>

[[Kevin Gutzman]], an American constitutional scholar and historian, argues that the Fourteenth Amendment was originally meant to protect only "specifically federal rights" and describes the later, broader interpretation of the Amendment as "the Court's [use of] the Fourteenth Amendment to claim a capacious national judicial authority". Gutzman believes that "legal academics despise the ''Slaughterhouse'' decision because they ''do'' think the federal courts should be 'a perpetual censor upon all legislation in the States{{'"}}.<ref>{{cite book |last= Gutzman |first= Kevin R. C. |title= The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution |location= Washington, D.C. |publisher= [[Regnery Publishing]] |year= 2007 |pages= 134–137}}</ref>