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Constitution Day: Observance

The Atlanta University Center has been a Federal Depository Library since 1962. This program, administered by the Government Publishing Office, allows libraries to obtain federal government publications while agreeing to maintain the collection.

The Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution

 Right to Vote Not Denied by Race

  Passed by Congress February 26, 1869. Ratified February 3, 1870

  The Fifteenth Amendment: Common Interpretation

   By Richard H. Pildes and Bradley A. Smith

Most Americans probably believe the “right to vote” is one of their most fundamental constitutional rights. It will come as a surprise, therefore, to learn that neither the original Constitution nor the Bill of Rights nor any other provision of the Constitution expressly guarantees the right to vote. Only in the 1960s, when the Supreme Court began to conclude that the Fourteenth Amendment implicitly protected the right to vote, did American constitutional doctrine begin to treat the right to vote as a fundamental constitutional right. Once the Court recognized the right to vote, decisions of the Supreme Court helped revolutionize the way voting was treated under American constitutional law. Most of the law concerning “the right to vote” developed under the Fourteenth Amendment, though important Court decisions also have relied at times on the Fifteenth Amendment.

The reason the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights do not expressly protect the right to vote is that doing so would have been too controversial and divisive at the time. Different states had different rules for who could vote (many states had property-holding requirements and differed on the amount; some states permitted women and free black men to vote, others did not).

The Constitution and its Observance

Constitutional Principles: Separation of Powers

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Jacquelyn Daniel
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Contact:
Phone 404-978-2016
Fax 404-978-2113