The rights and privileges of a citizen of the United States were defined by Congress in the Civil Rights Act of 1866: All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property as is enjoyed by white citizens, and shall be subject to like punishment, pains, penalties, taxes, licenses, and exactions of every kind, and to no other.
[5]Subsequently, on April 28, 1866, the Joint Committee of Fifteen voted in favor of a second draft proposed by Congressman Bingham, which would ultimately be adopted into the Constitution.
On May 10, 1866, in the closing debate on the House floor, Bingham nevertheless quoted Article IV: Contrary to the express letter of your Constitution, cruel and unusual punishments have been inflicted under State laws within this Union upon citizens, not only for crimes committed, but for sacred duty done, for which and against which the Government of the United States had provided no remedy and could provide none.
[8] Congress gave final approval to the Privileges or Immunities Clause when the House proposed the Fourteenth Amendment to the states for ratification on June 13, 1866.
The same authorities have held that the negro of African descent was not a citizen within the meaning of the term, as used in this and other articles of the Constitution; that he was not one of the "peoples" who ordained that sacred charter; that as a slave he was only three-fifth of a "number," but as a free man he was a whole number to be counted for representation, and a whole "person," who might be held to involuntary "service," and reclaimed in any State to which he might escape.
He could not change his residence, nor travel at pleasure; he could neither buy, sell nor hold property; he was liable to be enslaved under various circumstances, and such laws were often enforced.
The Fourteenth Amendment, it is believed, did not add to the privileges or immunities before mentioned, but was deemed necessary for the enforcement as an express limitation upon the powers of the States.
A broader interpretation opens into a field of conjecture limitless as the range of speculative theories, and might work such limitations of the power of the States to manage and regulate their local institutions and affairs as were never contemplated by the amendment.
In the 1947 case of Adamson v. California, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black argued in his dissent that the framers intended the Privileges or Immunities Clause to apply the Bill of Rights against the states.
Black argued that the framers' intent should control the Court's interpretation of the 14th Amendment, and he attached a lengthy appendix that quoted extensively from John Bingham's congressional statements.
What was previously forbidden only to Congress to do was, by the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, made equally forbidden to any state.Roger Pilon of the Cato Institute has said that the meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment depends upon the meaning of its counterpart in Article IV: the Privileges and Immunities Clause.
Pilon further urges that the Article IV Clause should be reinterpreted as protecting a wide variety of natural rights, despite "its more recent history of interpretation or enforcement".
[17] On the other hand, Kurt Lash of the University of Illinois College of Law has argued that, at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the privileges and immunities of "citizens of the United States" as referred to in the Fourteenth Amendment were understood as a class distinct from the privileges and immunities of "Citizens in the several States" as referred to in Article IV.
Under this interpretation of the Privileges or Immunities Clause as an "antebellum term of art", Slaughter-House is consistent with the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Regarding that interpretation of the older clause, Justice Clarence Thomas has noted that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment realized the Supreme Court had not yet "undertaken to define either the nature or extent of the privileges and immunities" in the original unamended Constitution.
Legal scholar Randy Barnett argues that since no other justice, either in majority or dissent, attempted to question his rationale, this constitutes a revival of the Privileges or Immunities Clause.
[23] The right of citizens to travel from one state to another was already considered to be protected by the Privileges and Immunities Clause of the original, unamended Constitution.