Cite as: 521 U. S. 507 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
laws in conflict with the principles of the amendment, to correct that legislation by a formal congressional enactment"). See generally H. Brannon, The Rights and Privileges Guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States 387 (1901) (Congress' "powers are only prohibitive, corrective, vetoing, aimed only at undue process of law"); id., at 420, 452-455 (same); T. Cooley, Constitutional Limitations 294, n. 1 (2d ed. 1871) ("This amendment of the Constitution does not concentrate power in the general government for any purpose of police government within the States; its object is to preclude legislation by any State which shall 'abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States' "). The revised Amendment proposal did not raise the concerns expressed earlier regarding broad congressional power to prescribe uniform national laws with respect to life, liberty, and property. See, e. g., Cong. Globe, 42d Cong., 1st Sess., at App. 151 (statement of Rep. Garfield) ("The [Fourteenth Amendment] limited but did not oust the jurisdiction of the State[s]"). After revisions not relevant here, the new measure passed both Houses and was ratified in July 1868 as the Fourteenth Amendment.
The significance of the defeat of the Bingham proposal was apparent even then. During the debates over the Ku Klux Klan Act only a few years after the Amendment's ratification, Representative James Garfield argued there were limits on Congress' enforcement power, saying "unless we ignore both the history and the language of these clauses we cannot, by any reasonable interpretation, give to [§ 5] . . . the force and effect of the rejected [Bingham] clause." Ibid.; see also id., at App. 115-116 (statement of Rep. Farnsworth). Scholars of successive generations have agreed with this assessment. See H. Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment 64 (1908); Bickel, The Voting Rights Cases, 1966 S. Ct. Rev. 79, 97.
The design of the Fourteenth Amendment has proved significant also in maintaining the traditional separation of pow-
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