Are there only two, or are there three, forms of conventional involuntary servitude in the antebellum U.S.A.? In 1865 the 13th Amendment provided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime, shall exist in the United States. I have heard it said that slavery and indentured servitude are the two forms of servitude that were abolished. However, a commonplace practice was that parents signed up their 12- or 13- or 14-year-old son as an apprentice to a tradesman, and such an apprentice was forbidden to resign. If he left his master, the master would advertise in newspapers that whoever found him should arrest him and return him to his master, and the master would sue anyone who employed his "runaway apprentice" (google that term!) and the court would award damages. Was that kind of apprenticeship also abolished by the 13th Amendment?
This depends on how far along you're waiting for court rulings to set in, and if you count laws of Congress passed under the 13th amendment's enforcement clause. There were quite a lot of things that got ruled as violations of the 13th and 14th amendments (mostly the 14th), but many were not ruled or legislated that way for decades. Some were even ruled to have an essentially opposite effect of what the current (overturning) precedents do. "Separate but equal" was challenged on 13th amendment grounds, but was upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and wasn't overturned, on 14th amendment grounds, until 58 years later in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Your particular situation sounds like peonage, which was outlawed by Congress in 1867 via the enforcement clause. This law specifically banned "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise." However, peonage cases continued to make their way into the courts for more than 40 years thereafter, such as Clyatt v. United States (1905)&mdash; which ruled that peonage was involuntary servitude&mdash; and Bailey v. Alabama (1911). These cases affirmed that the 13th amendment abolished not just chattel slavery but essentially all forms of involuntary or indentured servitude (except as punishment for a crime). Though exactly what qualifies as "involuntary servitude" is still something courts decide on a case-by-case basis; the draft doesn't, nor does mandatory community service to graduate high school.
It isn't a double negative, although it is a bit of an usual phrasing. The context that you are overlooking is that the United States Constitution does not say who is or is not allowed to vote because that authority is not vested in the federal government. There is no affirmative right to vote in the United States Constitution, there is merely a right not to be denied the right to vote for certain particular reasons. Responsibility for determining who is allowed to vote is vested in state governments. The right to vote for the House of Representatives is derivative of that decision pursuant to Article I, Section 2, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution which states: The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature. The 19th Amendment prohibits state's from denying the right to vote on account of sex, but does not prohibit states from denying the right to vote on account of other grounds not specified in the 19th Amendment, such as property ownership, education, criminal record, possession of identification, etc. When the 19th Amendment was ratified, in 1920, some states (e.g. Colorado) already allowed women to vote, while others did not. Similarly, when the 15th Amendment was ratified some states prevented people from voting based upon race and others did not. And, so on. In practice, the modern trend is for states to enact laws allowing all U.S. citizens age eighteen or over to vote, subject primarily to limitations that vary quite a bit based upon criminal record or incarceration status. But, historically, when the power to set the franchise was vested in the states, race, gender, property ownership, age (in excess of eighteen), poll tax payments, and "civics" tests, have all been used at sometime or another to limit the right to vote. There is, however, some incentive for states not to be restrictive, because certain kinds of restrictions reduce the population of the state under the U.S. Constitution for purposes of allocated members of Congress and electoral votes. This is set forth in Section 2 of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution (ratified in 1868) which states: Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State. (Incidentally, there are no longer any people who qualify as "Indians not taxed" in the U.S. due to federal legislation that was adopted after 1868.) This set a presumptive baseline that males twenty-one years of age not disqualified by a criminal record are allowed to vote, but with a penalty for not doing so imposed at the state level in apportionment rather than in the form of a prohibition against doing so, before express prohibitions against certain kinds of restrictions of the franchise were adopted in the 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th Amendments. It is also useful to compare the examples of the 15th Amendment (ratified 1870), the 24th Amendment (ratified 1964) and the 26th Amendment (ratified 1971), which are parallel to the 19th Amendment and wouldn't make sense against a backdrop that the population, by default, is allowed to vote. Article XV (Amendment 15 - Rights of Citizens to Vote) The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXIV (Amendment 24 - Abolition of the Poll Tax Qualification in Federal Elections) The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state by reason of failure to pay any poll tax or other tax. The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. and Amendment XXVI (Amendment 26 - Reduction of Voting Age Qualification) 1: The right of citizens of the United States, who are 18 years of age or older, to vote, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any state on account of age. affects 15 2: The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This was at least a feature of Athenian law. In the Aristarchus of Isaeus (early 4th century BC), it is recorded that &quot;the law expressly forbids any child—or woman—to contract for the disposal of more than a bushel of barley&quot;. This is a sufficiently ancient and transmissible principle of law that there well may have been Egyptian and Sumerian analogs. You might get the details that you seek by focusing on medieval English common law.
There appears to be no specific number of hours. This article touches on the matter, presenting a slew of cases where e.g. the prisoner was on a hunger strike (self-imposed starvation is not cruel and unusual punishment). Gardener v. Beale upheld a 2-meal plan with 18 hours between dinner and brunch to be allowed. This was, however a temporary exception rather than a long term policy which was to provide 3 meals not spaced further apart than 12 hours. There does not seem to be any period deemed to be legally too long, however a prison system may have (probably does) have a policy, which cannot simply be ignored.
He has this phrased like it's the ability to decide which laws you follow, and that it's an ability being withheld from the general public (although I seriously doubt that at least the former is the case). This is yet another false claim made by "freemen" or those who claim "common law defences". Notice of Understanding has no legal meaning unless the context demands that it evidences a meeting of the minds for the purposes of contract formation. It is a well-settled principle of common law that in order to be bound by a contract, there must be an agreement. Put simply, I cannot bind someone simply by sending them a Notice unless it is a right conferred on me by some earlier statute or legislation, or legally binding agreement. I tried searching for a solid definition, but all I could find was people/organization's Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights. The reason you've found nothing official about the terms Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights is that there is nothing official or legal about those terms. They are ordinary terms with ordinary meaning being bastardised by deluded people who believe they can fine the government and refuse to be bound by the law of the land. Of course, none of this holds up. What is the purpose of declaring your Notice of Understanding and Intent and Claim of Rights? It might make you feel better, even though it has no legal, practical or other effect.
Early in the history of the US, various states passed laws adopting the then extant common law and at least some of the statutory law of Great Britain (much of which was in origin the Law of England) as law in those states. Such laws would still be valid, unless later acts had amended or replaced particular provisions. Tracing which provisions had since been altered would be a massive task. Basic common law, particularly definitions of crimes such as fraud, theft, murder, and of torts such as conversion, slander, libel, and the like will probably be largely unchanged, with some modifications. Blackstone's Commentaries remained a significant legal text used in training lawyers and in legal practice in the US through much of the nineteenth century.
Since this apparently amends the law giving colleges and universities the power to adopt and enforced various regulations, what it really means is that if such an institution adopts a rule in violation of this law, it may not legally enforce that law. It might also give an affected student a right to sue if such a rule is adopted and enforced. As a comment by ohwilleke mentions, such a law might well authorize a court to issue an injunction forbidding the institution from enforcing the kind of rule prohibited by the law. Note that it is not at all uncommon to have &quot;or else&quot; provisions in different sections of the law. For example Section 123 of the (hypothetical) New France state code might prohibit having a faked driver's license, section 124 prohibit obtaining a license through false or misleading statements on nthe application, and section 458 say &quot;anyone who violates sections 123, 124, 125, or 126 shall be fined up to $2,000, or imprisoned for up to 1 year, or both, as a court may think just&quot;. Thus it is not always easy to find what penalties, if any, apply to a code section.
The Fifth Amendment, and all the other amendments in the "Bill of Rights" (numbers 1-10) were universally understood when passed to be restrictions on the Federal Government only. The courts treated them that way through the end of the US Civil War. This was made definite in the US Supreme Court case Barron v. Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243 (1833) Since the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment the courts have decided that most of the provisions of the bill of rights also apply to actions by the states. A few do not apply, such as the requirement that indictments be by a grand jury, and the Third Amendment ban on quartering soldiers in private dwellings. This was done through a somewhat roundabout mechanism -- the Supreme Court decided that the protections of the Bill of Rights were included in the Due process clause of the 14th. As a result not all the provisions were made applicable at the same time. (Most were held to be incorporated during the period from 1925-1985. Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925) thru Roberts v. United States Jaycees, 468 U.S. 609 (1984)). Modern legal opinions sometimes discuss incorporation as if it was a fact from the passage of the 14th in 1868. But the actual gradual process is clear in the case law. For example, the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in criminal cases was first incorporated in Powell v. Alabama, 287 U.S. 45 (1932), but only for death penalty cases, and only if "special circumstances" existed, such as a defendant who was illiterate, far from home and support, or feeble-minded. Later cases gradually found "special circumstances" in more and more fact patterns, and in Gideon v. Wainwright, 372 U.S. 335 (1963) the Court extended the right to all felony cases. It has later been extended to misdemeanor cases if jail time is a possible result. A similar history could be spelled out for the Fifth Amendment's protection against self-incrimination, or for the Fourth's against search and seizure, particularly the "exclusionary rule". I, and a number of legal scholars who have better rights to an opinion, think that the 14th's "Privileges and Immunities" clause would have been a more sensible means to this end, but for various reasons that isn't how it was done. Justice Thomas seems to be trying to reverse this -- he has made comments in a number of opinions of late that various things should be protected under the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th, rather than the Due Process clause.. Even if the Court adopts this theory, it probably won't change many outcomes. That is how the Fifth, and other Bill of rights Provisions like the Fourth (search and seizure) and the First (free speech and religion) have been applied to restrict the states. None of these provisions directly restrict private individuals. In some cases, courts have said that while individuals may not be forbidden to do things that are forbidden to governments under the Bill of Rights, the courts will not help you do such things, such as by enforcing contracts to do them. No person shall be held to answer for a... crime "held to answer" here means prosecuted in court. Only governments do that. That provision forbids criminal court cases that do not start with a grand Jury indictment. it is one of the few Bill of Rights provisions which the Supreme Court has held do not apply to the states. But in any case it is purely procedural. It doesn't say that crimes may not be prosecuted, nor that they must. It says only "if you want to try someone for a crime, this is a step you must go through." The other provisions of the Fifth all do apply to the states, such as the ban on double jeopardy, and the protection against self-incrimination. does that mean that government can declare it legal for citizens to kill a particular person? No. That would violate the Fifth Amendment's Due Process clause if don3 by the Federal Government, and the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause and its Equal Protection clause if done by a state. It would probably also violate the provision against Bills of Attainder, and perhaps the provision against cruel and unusual punishment. Once upon a time, several hundred years before the US was founded, the government of England did just that. It was called "outlawry". For certain crimes, the punishment was to be put "outside the law". An "outlaw" (in this older sense) was not protected by the law. Anyone could kill an outlaw, or steal from one, and the legal system would do nothing about it. The US has never used outlawry.