W.D.Moore – APSA-03– Slaughter-House – p.1
08.18.03
(Re)Construction of Constitutional Authority and Meaning:
The Fourteenth Amendment and Slaughter-House Cases
Wayne D. Moore
This paper develops a novel theoretical framework to examine issues of constitutional
continuity and change. It does so through a study of the creation, maintenance, and revision of
constitutional authority and meaning in the aftermath of the fourteenth amendment’s addition to the
text of the U.S. Constitution in 1868. The focus, more specifically, is on the U.S. Supreme Court’s
initial (re)construction of that amendment in Slaughter-House Cases (1873).
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Several themes emerge from this case study. First, Slaughter-House demonstrates some of
the theoretical contributions of relying on multiple rather than singular criteria of constitutional
authority and corresponding conceptions of meaning. Second, the justices’ opinions points toward
linkages among problems of constitutional authority and meaning. Third, in seeking to account for
the case’s significance, it is important to allow for gradations or partiality of constitutional
authority, not simply its presence or absence. Fourth, the opinions similarly underscore the need to
account for the plurality rather than univocality of constitutional meaning. Fifth, the opinions and
the criteria upon which I draw to analyze them point beyond themselves toward broader norms and
practices of constitutional politics.
Accordingly, while this paper focuses on one part of the U.S. Constitution and its
(re)construction by justices of the U.S. Supreme Court in one case, my interpretive agenda extends
beyond that particular text and my analytic aims are not confined to studying the U.S.
Constitution’s judicial interpretation and enforcement. The justices in Slaughter-House engaged in
an interpretive exercise that involved much more than simply (re)reading and (not) enforcing the
fourteenth amendment as such. The judges were not alone, moreover, in confronting pervasive
problems of constitutional authority and meaning. Those issues would, in addition, survive the
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Throughout this essay, I use the term constitutional “(re)construction” to refer to the construction or
reconstruction of constitutional norms where it is helpful to hold open which characterization is more appropriate.
Convention