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have a wider repercussion than the vote
on this amendment.
I urge you to defeat the amendment.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Mitchell.
DELEGATE MITCHELL: Delegate Bur-
gess, two minutes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Burgess.
DELEGATE BURGESS: Ladies and
gentlemen, if I have to classify myself in
an area of thinking, I guess I will classify
myself as a conservative. Let me read to
you from a document, which speaks as
follows :
"No state shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or im-
munities of citizens of the United States
nor shall any state deprive any person of
life or real property without due process
of law, nor deny any person within its
jurisdiction equal protection of the laws."
I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, if this
is not in substance what is being said in
the amendment as suggested by the
minority? It is simply this: fair is fair.
Let us call it as we see it.
The law is there and anybody who thinks
that we are going to get around the law,
or they are going to get around the law by
inserting or taking out a word or two, I am
afraid they are sadly mistaken.
The law is there. It is not going to
change. If a court wants to make a de-
termination, there is plenty of language
available to it but what I read to you was
the 14th Amendment, section 1, United
States Constitution.
Now, this is the law of the land. I sug-
gest to you that the minority amendment
does not appreciably broaden what I have
just read to you, but merely spells it out
for us in the State of Maryland.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Hardwicke.
DELEGATE HARDWICKE: Mr. Chair-
man, I yield three minutes to Delegate
Child.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Child.
DELEGATE CHILD: Mr. Chairman,
distinguished delegates of the Committee,
the Committee on Personal Rights is
bound by a set of rules which hardly ap-
plies to any other Committee.
We are supposed to put in the Bill of
Rights personal rights which the individ-
ual holds free from governmental action,
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not class rights, but personal rights. Not
personal rights as against another person,
but personal rights as against the gov-
ernment.
Secondly, our rule is this: That those
rights should be enforceable rights and not
merely statements of abstract principles,
or exhortatory statements, and third, and
this is what I am getting to here, they
should be plainly and briefly written.
Now, our Committee spent more time on
this due process clause than anything we
had before the Committee. We tried to
adopt, or tried to find out what the draft
article meant when it said, "discriminated
by law or other governmental action."
We had constitutional lawyers and no
one could tell us what governmental action
meant, and the same thing applies here,
when they say "discrimination by the
State".
I do not want to prolong the argument
here. We have said in concise language
here everything that the amendment says,
when we say "no person shall be discrimi-
nated against by law", we have said it
all. And the amendment is simply superflu-
ous. It is repetitious and should be defeated.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Mitchell.
DELEGATE MITCHELL: Delegate
Scanlan, two minutes.
THE CHAIRMAN: Delegate Scanlan.
DELEGATE SCANLAN: Mr. Chair-
man, fellow delegates, in arising to support
this amendment I suppose some would say
that I am being inconsistent.
Certainly it can be argued that the lan-
guage of the equal protection clause fur-
nishes all the protection that the language
proposed by the minority suggests. I think
there are two answers to that. I think we
should write a constitution for the ages and
for the decades to come. There are moments
when we should take into account the facts
of history.
The equal protection clause has been
interpreted by the Supreme Court to pro-
hibit the type of discrimination that the
minority would specifically prohibit. Those
are great moments in the history of the
Supreme Court.
Unfortunately, the state courts have not
always been quick to follow the Supreme
Court in applying equal protection clause
in this manner. They have abided by the
old doctrine that there is a legislative pre-
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