Buy essay: Slavery Laws and the US Constitution
// October 28th, 2012 // No Comments » // Free essays
The US Constitution was implemented when slavery was legal in the USA. In this respect, it should be said that the US Constitution was consistently affected by the slavery and, what is more important, the US Constitution actually legalized the discriminatory practices, such as the renowned Three-Fifth compromise. In fact, the Three-Fifth Compromise contributed to the development of unjust and discriminatory policies in relation to minorities since it prevented slaves from being treated as equal to free people. To put it more precisely, the Three-Fifth Compromise was clearly defined in the US Constitution, which reads as follows:
Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. (US Constitution, Article 1:2).
In fact, it is hardly possible to underestimate the significance of the Three-Fifth compromise for the further development of politics and legislation in the USA. In actuality, it opened the way for the implementation of legal norms which could maintain the established inequality between free men and slaves. Consequently, the US Constitution treated slaves as second-class citizens unworthy of equal rights compared to free Americans. In addition, it established in equality in voting and taxation, since, according to the compromise, three-fifth of the population of slaves would be counted for enumeration purposes regarding both the distribution of taxes and the appointment of members of the US House of Representatives (Walton and Smith, 2006). In such a way, slaveholders agreed to pay more taxes but limited voting rights of slaves and, thus, the representation of slaveholders’ opponents in the US House of Representatives. (more…)




