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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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United States | News & Politics
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Take a closer look at the 13th amendment. It’s not as awesome as you were taught in school.
It essentially legalizes slave labor in prisons. For everyone.
Technically it doesn't legalize it, it just avoids the criminalization of it. This is significant because it makes it much easier to reform (which is how around half of states have reformed it at least a little), and this combined with the fact that most states lack significant reforms tells you a lot.
I think the text is pretty direct about permitting it. If it is listed as an exception to that which shall not exist, then it is explicitly allowed to exist.
It's not a de-facto exception by omission, it is named as permissable within the text of the amendment.
The previous commenter is technically correct— since slavery was already legal, the 13th simply carves out prison labor as an exception to the ban on slavery. And, as they pointed out, the legal distinction is important when it comes to individual states banning the practice of prison slave labor.
Sure, but also worth noting that some prisons are federally run, a state wouldn't have the jurisdiction to ban something that the fed controls. That is why reform needs to come from the top, not just at the state level.
Great!
Let's update that as well!
And again, the south can get representation back as soon as they start following the constitution.
The constitution is a living document. Any parts found to be “problematic” were designed to be updated. Garbage like the 2nd amendment - especially- was meant to be updated. And the 13th…
The problem with the 2nd amendment isn't that it wasn't updated, it's that it was.
The 14th amendment incorporated the other amendments such that they did not only restrict the power of the federal government upon the states and citizens, as the founders intended, but also restricted the states (so you couldn't have southern states being evil to their citizens).
But the 2nd amendment was incorporated radically under Heller, when it should have been incorporated in a more moderate way, such that regulations were possible, within reason, not the wild-west that Heller imposed.
The 13th should have been reinterpreted by the courts such that many of our current forms of incarcerated service were considered beyond the line and became de facto slavery, particularly when imposed by southern states as they were.
Honestly the fundamental problem with post-bellum American jurisprudence was giving southern states any benefit of the doubt of being remotely human when they repeatedly violated every such standard.