Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

“ No. R. 20, 2009
Commencement of the Constitution Sixteenth Amendment Act of 2009
Under section 2 of the Constitution Sixteenth Amendment Act of 2009, I hereby fix 3 April 2009 as the date on which the said Act shall come into operation. ”

“ I entirely agree with you that, while agitation in the States is necessary as a means of education, a sixteenth amendment to the national constitution is the quickest, surest and least laborious way to secure the success of this great work for human liberty. Any legislature of Indiana in the last six years would have ratified such an amendment. ”

“ I ask for a sixteenth amendment because this republic is a nation and not a confederacy of States. I ask it because the United States not only possesses inherent power to protect its citizens but also because of its national duty to secure to all its citizens the exercise of their rights of self-government. I ask it because having created classes of voters in numberless instances, it is most flagrant injustice to deny this protection to woman. ”

“ It is guarded from invasion by the Sixth Amendment, adopted to raise an effective barrier against arbitrary or unjust deprivation of liberty by the Federal Government. 297 U.S. 233, 243-244. It is guarded from invasion by the Sixth Amendment, adopted to raise an effective barrier against arbitrary or unjust deprivation of liberty by the Federal Government. ”

“ However, the Supreme Court declined to sustain Congress when, under the guise of enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment by appropriate legislation, it enacted a statute which was not limited to take effect only in case a State should abridge the privileges of United States citizens, but applied no matter how well the State might have performed its duty, and would subject to punishment private individuals who conspired to deprive anyone of the equal protection of the laws. ”

“ The states may now by a constitutional amendment, with few limitations, change the whole structure and powers of the government, and thus legalize any present excess of power. And the general right of a society in other cases to change the government at the will of a majority of the whole people, in any manner, that may suit its pleasure, is undisputed, and seems indisputable. If there be any remedy at all for the minority in such cases, it is a remedy never provided for by human institutions. ”

“ Preliminarily we observe that, unless there be some real conflict between the Sixteenth Amendment and the prohibition, in article 3, section 1, making the compensation of the judges undiminishable, effect must be given to the latter as well as to the former; and also that a purpose to depart from or imperil a constitutional principle so widely esteemed and so vital to our system of government as the independence of the judiciary is not lightly to be assumed. ”

“ Suppose that Congress, when proposing the Eleventh Amendment, had appended to it a proviso that nothing therein contained should prevent a State from being sued by its own citizens in cases arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States: can we imagine that it would have been adopted by the States? ”

“ As the two methods do not conflict, and what is done in the several States tells on the nation, and what is done by congress reacts again on the States, it must be a good thing to keep up both kinds of agitation.
In the middle of November the National Association sent out thousands of petitions and appeals for the sixteenth amendment, which were published and commented on extensively by the press in every State in the Union. Early in January they began to pour into Washington at the rate of a thousand a day, coming from twenty-six different States. ”

“ People of State of New York, 346 U.S. 156, 195-196, 73 S.Ct. 1077, 1098 1099, 97 L.Ed. 1522. But of course since Gideon v. Wainwright, supra, it no longer can broadly be said that the Sixth Amendment does not apply to state courts. ”

“ It is repugnant to the tenth amendment of the constitution, which declares that powers not delegated to the United States by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people. ”

“ Whatever the full extent of the Sixth Amendment's protection of one's right to retain counsel of his choosing, that protection does not go beyond "the individual's right to spend his own money to obtain the advice and assistance of . ”

“ These tell our brief story, and may I not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you will report to the Senate unanimously in favor of the sixteenth amendment, which we ask in order that the women of these United States who shall come after us may be saved the desecration of their homes which we have suffered, and our country may be relieved from the disgrace of refusing representation to that half of its people that men call the better half, because it includes their wives and daughters and mothers? ”

“ Our Constitution sets up a federal union, not a monolith.
This Court has heretofore held that various provisions of the Bill of Rights such as the freedom of speech and religion guarantees of the First Amendment, the prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures in the Fourth Amendment, the privilege against self-incrimination of the Fifth Amendment, and the right to counsel and to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment "are all to be enforced against the States under the Fourteenth Amendment according to the same standards that protect those personal rights against federal encroachment." ”

“ More careful investigation may prove the law to be unsound in principle. Experience may show it to be imperfect in detail and impracticable in execution. And then both reason and right combine not merely to justify but to require its repeal.
The Constitution, supreme, as it is, over all the departments of the Government—legislative, executive, and judicial—is open to amendment by its very terms; and Congress or the States may, in their discretion, propose amendment to it, solemn compact though it in truth is between the sovereign States of the Union. ”

“ Utah, 170 U.S. 343, 349, 18 S.Ct. 620, 42 L.Ed. 1061 (1898) , that the jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment consists 'of twelve persons, neither more nor less.' As I see it, the Court has not made out a convincing case that the Sixth Amendment should be read differently than it was in Thompson even if the matter were now before us de novo-much less that an unbroken line of precedent going back over 70 years should be overruled. ”

“ The foregoing discussion has shown, I think, how mistaken is the Court in implying that the Constitution has struck the balance in favor of the approach the Court takes. Ante, p. 479. Rather, precedent reveals that the Fourteenth Amendment, in practice, has been construed to strike a different balance, that the Fifth Amendment gives the Court little solid support in this context, and that the Sixth Amendment should have no bearing at all. Legal history has been stretched before to satisfy deep needs of society. ”

“ Yet, this concept of 'national defense' cannot be deemed an end in itself, justifying any exercise of legislative power designed to promote such a goal. Implicit in the term 'national defense' is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart. For almost two centuries, our country has taken singular pride in the democratic ideals enshrined in its Constitution, and the most cherished of those ideals have found expression in the First Amendment. ”

“ It is exceedingly doubtful. Neither a resolution of the Congress nor a [140] proclamation of a Secretary of State can supersede the Constitution itself. If the States of Arkansas, Florida, North Carolina, Alabama, South Carolina, and Louisiana were “in the Union” in 1865, when their ratifications of the Thirteenth Amendment were counted among the three-fourths necessary to adoption, it is impossible to understand how they legally could have been read out of the Union by the act of March 2, 1867, put under military dictatorship, and ordered to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment under duress. ”

“ We think that his omission to mention the case of crown servants cannot be regarded as a sufficient basis for holding, in the absence of other evidence, that the common-law rule was different in the colonies from that in England, much less that the Congress which proposed the Sixth Amendment, or the state Legislatures which ratified it, undertook to establish an absolute disqualification of all governmental employees beyond the control of the congressional power. ”

“ To the contrary, our cases hold that the Sixth Amendment entitles every defendant to object to a venire that is not designed to represent a fair cross section of the community, whether or not the systematically excluded groups are groups to which he himself belongs." 493 U.S., at 477, 110 S.Ct., at 805 (emphasis added) .
Thus, today's holding cannot be considered in accordance with our prior law. It is a clear departure. ”

“ Each added amendment makes this change in the status of the People, in that it gives new guaranties of freedom, and removes all pretense of right from any existing usurped power. People are slow to comprehend the change which has been effected by the decision as to State rights. One, claims that only the negro, or persons of African descent, were affected by it. Others claim, and among them, some prominent Republicans, that every civil right is by these amendments, thrown under national control. Recently, two or three suits have come before the United States on this apprehension. ”

“ A defendant has no Sixth Amendment right to spend another person's money for services rendered by an attorney, even if those funds are the only way that that defendant will be able to retain the attorney of his choice. A robbery suspect, for example, has no Sixth Amendment right to use funds he has stolen from a bank to retain an attorney to defend him if he is apprehended. The money, though in his possession, is not rightfully his; the Government does not violate the Sixth Amendment if it seizes the robbery proceeds and refuses to permit the defendant to use them to pay for his defense. ”

“ If the accused, however, is not represented by counsel and has not competently and intelligently waived his constitutional right, the Sixth Amendment stands as a jurisdictional bar to a valid conviction and sentence depriving him of his life or his liberty. A court's jurisdiction at the hearing of trial may be lost 'in the course of the proceedings' due to failure to complete the court-as the Sixth Amendment requires-by providing counsel for an accused who is unable to obtain counsel, who has not intelligently waived this constitutional guaranty, and whose life or liberty is at stake. ”

“ The Court has never explained the Confrontation Clause implications of a State's decision to adopt an exception not recognized at common law or one not recognized by a majority of the States. Our current jurisprudence suggests that, in order to satisfy the Sixth Amendment, the State would have to establish in each individual case that hearsay admitted pursuant to the newly created exception bears "particularized guarantees of trustworthiness," and would have to continue doing so until the exception became "firmly rooted" in the common law, if that is even possible under the Court's standard. ”