1900.] HASTINGS—POLICE POWER OF THE STATE. 489 
be a mere drutum fulmen, the last section of the amendment invests 
Congress with power to enforce it by appropriate legislation ; to enforce 
what? ‘To enforce the prohibition ; to adopt appropriate legislation for 
correcting the effects of such prohibited state laws and state acts, and 
thus to render them effectually null) void and innocuous. This is the 
legislative power conferred on Congress, and the whole of it..... e 
‘“‘It does not authorize Congress to create a code of municipal law for 
the regulation of private rights, but to provide a mode of redress against 
the operation of state laws and the action of state officers, executive and 
judicial, when these are subversive of the fundamental rights specified 
in the amendment.” 
“ United States vs. Cruikshank, * Virginia vs. Rives and ° ex parte Vir- 
ginia are especially referred to. The section of the law held valid 
in the last-mentioned case is again pointed out to be entirely pro- 
hibitory on the states and their officers. 
{t is forcibly pointed out that deprivation of a right in the sense 
meant by the constitution can only be by political authority. The 
act of a private individual may invade a right and prevent tempo- 
rarily its enjoyment, but it still inheres in the holder, and he pre- 
sumably has his remedy. Of course, this rests upon the theory of 
*Hobbes that legal rights are derived from the state. However 
offensive this may be to moralists, it will probably have to be con- 
ceded by lawyers. 
No foundation for the law is found, then, in the fourteenth 
amendment; in the thirteenth is no authority for legislation except 
upon slavery and involuntary servitude. And in the fifteenth none 
except with regard to rights of suffrage. The law is, therefore, 
held invalid so far as these amendments are related to the two sec- 
tions of it under consideration. 
The earnest dissenting opinion of Judge Harlan seeks to find in 
the thirteenth amendment and its abolition of slavery and servitude 
and the power given to Congress to enforce it by appropriate leg- 
islation, authority to legislate on all social usages and practices 
growing out of slavery. His success does not seem great. It isa 
resort to implication beyond anything of the kind ever used in con- 
stitutional interpretation, and besides loses sight of the fact that the 
social usages are not necessarily founded on slavery, and prevail, if 
anything, even more strongly in states where slavery was never 
tolerated. 
92 ©. S.; 542- 3700 U. S., 339. 
LOOK S25) 303 * Leviathan, chap, 18, 
