The Thirteenth Amendment’s drafters intended broad civil-rights power beyond chattel slavery

Evidence

“The debates demonstrated that both supporters and opponents of the [Thirteenth] amendment expected the constitutional change to provide sweeping power to protect civil rights. Section 2, as the congressmen understood it and the Supreme Court later interpreted it, provided the authority to end all manner of subjugation, not only chattel slavery. In the course of a contentious debate, a consensus developed that the Thirteenth Amendment would empower Congress to end arbitrary practices connected to the incidents of involuntary servitude.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 857

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the precise legal meaning of ‘incidents of involuntary servitude’ that underlies the saturated-system harm argument.
• XREF: connects to: Drafters concealed sweeping powers behind innocuous-sounding definitions. — Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the…, 776