Conversely, Congress may enforce the provisions of the amendment whenever they are disregarded by either the legislative, the executive, or the judicial department of the State. The mode of the enforcement is left to its discretion. It may secure the right, that is, enforce its recognition, by removing the case from a State court, in which it is denied, into a federal court where it will be acknowledged.[1228] Similarly, Congress may provide that "no citizen, possessing all other qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the United States, or of any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude; and any officer or other person charged with any duty in the selection or summoning of jurors who shall exclude or fail to summon any citizen for the cause aforesaid shall, on conviction thereof, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, * * *"[1229] 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.[1230]
Whether its powers of enforcement enable Congress constitutionally to punish State officers who abuse their authority and act in violation of their State's laws is a question on which the Justices only recently have divided. Five Justices ruled in Screws v. United States[1231] that section 20 of the Criminal Code[1232] which provides "whoever, under the color of any law, statute, ordinance, * * *, willfully subjects, * * *, any inhabitant of any State, * * * to the deprivation of any rights, * * * protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States, * * *" could be the basis of a prosecution of Screws, a Georgia sheriff, and others, on charges of having, in the course of arresting a Negro, brutally beaten him to death and deprive him of "the right not to be deprived of life without due process of law."[1233] Holding that, "abuse of State power" does not create "immunity to federal power" these five Justices concluded that Ex parte Virginia[1234] and United States v. Classic[1235] had rejected for all time the defense that action by state officers in excess of their powers did not constitute state action "under color of law" and therefore was punishable, if at all, only as a crime against the State.[1236] The conviction of Screws was, however, reversed on the ground that the jury should have been instructed to say whether the accused had had the "specific intent" to deprive their victim of his constitutional rights, since in the absence of such a finding § 20 failed for indefiniteness.[1237] But this construction of the word "willfully" appears subsequently to have been abandoned, or at least considerably watered down. In Williams v. United States,[1238] decided in April 1951, the Court ruled, by a bare majority, that a conviction under § 20 was not subject to objection on the ground of the vagueness of the statute where the indictment made it clear that the constitutional right violated by the defendant was immunity from the use of force and violence to obtain a confession, and this meaning was also made clear by the trial judge's charge to the jury.[1239] To the same effect is the later case of Koehler v. United States[1240] in which the Court denied certiorari in a case closely resembling that of Screws, although the trial judge, while charging the jury that it must find specific intent, nevertheless went on to say:"'The color of the act determines the complexion of the intent. The intent to injure or defraud is presumed when the unlawful act, which results in loss or injury, is proved to have been knowingly committed. It is a well settled rule, which the law applies to both criminal and civil cases, that the intent is presumed and inferred from the result of the action.'"[1241]
Notes
[1] As to the other categories, see Art. I, § 8, cl. 4, Naturalization (see pp. [254-256]).
[2] Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393 (1897).
[3] Ibid. 404-406, 417-418, 419-420.
[4] By the Civil Rights Act of April 9, 1866 (14 Stat. 27), enacted two years prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, "All persons born in the United States and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States; * * *"
[5] 169 U.S. 649 (1898).—Thus, a person who was born in the United States of Swedish parents then naturalized here did not lose her citizenship and was therefore not subject to deportation because of her removal to Sweden during her minority, it appearing that her parents resumed their citizenship in that country, but that she returned here on attaining majority with intention to retain and maintain her citizenship.—Perkins v. Elg, 307 U.S. 325 (1939).
[6] 169 U.S. 682.