Voting representation is only one-half of the three-fifth
compromise. The other half has to do with taxation. Article
I, Section 2, Clause 3, deals both with the apportionment of direct taxes
according to numbers, as well as representation. The price for
counting slaves for purposes of representation in the House was counting
slaves for purposes of apportioning the burden of funding the national
government, hence the compromise that reduced both representation and
apportionment of tax burden. Southerners would have preferred
higher representation by including the slaves in the apportionment, but
did not want to pay the taxes.
Calvin Johnson, Professor of Law at the University of Texas has written
about the direct taxation issue. I believe one of his articles is
published in Tax Notes.
Dan Simmons
At 01:00 PM 8/20/2004 -0400, you wrote:
National
Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice made the following statement:
"'And so far, said Rice, an African-American, Iraq's postwar leaders
have not made a compromise comparable to the one by the framers of the
U.S. Constitution, who ''made my ancestors three-fifths of a
man.'''
I have always been puzzled by
claims that the original Constitution was horrible--I'm not saying that
Rice is committed to this claim--because it made Africans three-fifths of
a person. In my view, the original Constitution was implicitly committed
to the position that Africans were non-persons, not even
"three-fifths of a man." The "three-fifths" language
goes to the question of what effect should slaves have in determining
state representation. In other words, it goes to the power of
Whites, and does not attribute any real value to Africans at all.
Is there any article of book which discusses this issue.
Thanks.
Bobby
Robert Justin Lipkin
Professor of Law
Widener University School of Law
Delaware
Daniel L. Simmons
Professor of Law
School of Law
University of California
400 Mrak Drive
Davis, California 95616
Telephone 530 752-2757
Fax 530 754-5311