At Concurring Opinions, Gerard Magliocca: John Bingham and Thomas Jefferson. Here is an excerpt:
I think I’ve come across an interesting inflection point in constitutional discourse (or what others might call an example of intergenerational synthesis.)
In 1871, John Bingham gave an address on the House floor in support of the Ku Klux Klan Act that offered a detailed explanation of his view that Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment extended the Bill of Rights to the States. At one point, Bingham declared: “Jefferson well said of the first eight articles of amendments to the Constitution of the United States, they constitute the American Bill of Rights.”
Posted at 6:10 AM