At the Crossroads of Civil Rights: Tension Between the Wartime Amendments in the Jurisprudence of Justice O’Connor

At the Crossroads of Civil Rights: Tension Between the Wartime Amendments in the Jurisprudence of Justice O’Connor

ALFRED SLOCUM*

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was assured a place in history on the day she was appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She took a seat that no wqman in the history of that august bench had ever been allowed to occupy. However, although she flies on the wings of destiny as the first woman to enjoy such an honor, destiny’s path and destination are now hers to choose. Cer tainly in the area of civil rights much of that path will be determined by how she ultimately inter prets the Equal Protection Clause of the Four teenth Amendment, and how she ultimately rec onciles its language of evenhandedness with the Thirteenth Amendment’s mandate to eliminate the badges and indicia of slavery.

The whole concept of the badges and indicia of slavery requires a close look at the Thirteenth Amendment’s historical antecedents, while the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment

-does not. It is impossible to eradicate the badges and indicia ofslavery without knowing what they are, and without understanding that the institu tion of slavery was founded on the notion of black inferiority-without, in short, an understanding that slavery was race-based. The claim of black inferiority is at the very heart of racial discrimina tion against blacks. So-called societal discrimina-

tion, manifested by varying degrees of black ex clusion from a host of activities,