NINETEENTH AMENDMENT - The Law Mind Legal Dictionary

NINETEENTH AMENDMENTAuthored

The Law Mind • 893 words

Definition

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on August 18, 1920, prohibits the federal government and the states from denying or abridging the right to vote on account of sex. Its text is modeled closely on the Fifteenth Amendment and reads: "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."

The Amendment operates as both a prohibition on sex-based voting restrictions and an affirmative grant of congressional enforcement authority. It did not merely extend suffrage to women as a matter of legislative grace — it constitutionalized that right, making any sex-based voting exclusion unconstitutional regardless of state law.

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Core Elements

The Amendment has two operative clauses:

1. THE ANTI-DISCRIMINATION CLAUSE: The right to vote cannot be denied or abridged on account of sex by any governmental actor — federal, state, or local. This clause is self-executing; no congressional legislation is required for it to operate as a bar against sex-based disenfranchisement.

2. THE ENFORCEMENT CLAUSE: Congress is empowered to enforce the Amendment through appropriate legislation, mirroring the enforcement structure of the Reconstruction Amendments. The scope of this enforcement power — particularly whether it extends beyond simple voting rights to broader sex-equality claims — remains an area of active scholarly and judicial attention.

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Why It Matters in Research

Several research traps attend this Amendment.

First, ratification date matters for case law chronology. The Amendment was ratified in 1920, but significant interpretive litigation came much later. Early cases largely addressed narrow questions of ballot access and voter registration. The broader question of whether the Amendment carries an anti-subordination principle applicable beyond the voting booth — sometimes called the "Nineteenth Amendment anticanon" debate — is a late-twentieth and twenty-first century development. Researchers reading pre-1970 sources will find almost no engagement with this question.

Second, the relationship between the Nineteenth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause is a live research area. For most of the twentieth century, sex-discrimination claims were litigated under the Equal Protection Clause rather than the Nineteenth Amendment. This means the Nineteenth Amendment was substantially dormant as litigation vehicle for decades after ratification. Researchers tracking sex-equality doctrine must look primarily to Fourteenth Amendment equal protection cases, not Nineteenth Amendment cases, for most of the twentieth century.

Third, the Amendment's interaction with felon disenfranchisement laws has generated renewed scholarly interest. Because many states simultaneously excluded women and felons from voting, the argument has been advanced that the Nineteenth Amendment's ratification swept away certain sex-specific exclusions embedded in voting law. This is contested terrain, but researchers in voting rights or criminal law should be aware the argument exists.

Fourth, congressional enforcement power under the second clause is undertheorized relative to analogous clauses in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The corpus of cases construing Nineteenth Amendment enforcement authority is thin. Researchers should not assume the robust Fourteenth Amendment enforcement-clause jurisprudence maps neatly onto this provision.

Fifth, the suffrage movement's historical record is a significant primary-source domain. Pre-ratification, the amendment was known as the "Susan B. Anthony Amendment" in advocacy literature. State-level suffrage laws preceded federal ratification in many western states; researchers examining pre-1920 women's voting rights must look to state constitutional and statutory sources, not federal law.

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Historical Dictionary Support

Bouvier's Law Dictionary (1914 edition) predates ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment by six years and contains no entry for it. The absence is historically significant: Bouvier's was current law at the height of the suffrage movement, and women's right to vote had no federal constitutional basis at the time of that edition. The Minor v. Happersett decision (1875) had foreclosed the argument that the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges or Immunities Clause already guaranteed women the vote, leaving the field to state law and the amendment process. Researchers consulting Bouvier's for this period will find the constitutional landscape just before the Amendment's adoption — a useful baseline for understanding what changed in 1920.

No historical law dictionary on the Law Mind shelf was published after 1920 and before the mid-twentieth century in a way that captures early interpretive development of the Amendment. This is a genuine gap. Post-ratification doctrine must be reconstructed from case reporters and secondary legal literature rather than from contemporary dictionary sources.

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Jurisdictional Note

The Nineteenth Amendment is a federal constitutional provision that binds all states uniformly. State variation in implementation — voter registration procedures, identification requirements, and related mechanisms — is governed by state law within federal constitutional limits, but no state may impose a sex-based voting restriction. Researchers examining pre-1920 state suffrage laws should treat those sources as historical only; they were superseded by ratification.

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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference

The Nineteenth Amendment — Women's Suffrage and Sex Equality (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)
Voting Rights — The Fourteenth, Fifteenth, Nineteenth, Twenty-Fourth, and Twenty-Sixth Amendments (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)

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NINETEENTH AMENDMENTmain

Bouvier's Law Dictionary • 1928

See CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES. NISI PRIUS (Lat. unless before). In Practice. For the purpose of holding trials by jury. Important words in the writ (venire) directing the sheriff to sum- mon jurors for the trial of causes depend- ing in the superior courts of law in Eng- land, which have come to be adopted, both in England and the United States, to de- note those courts or terms of court held for the trial of civil causes with the presence and aid of a jury. A The origin of the use of the term is to be traced to a period anterior to the institution of the com- mission of nisi prius in its more modern form. By Magna Charta it was provided that the common pleas should be held in one place, and should not follow the person of the king and by another clause, that assizes of novel disseisin and of mort d'ancestor, which were the two commonest forms of actions to recover land, should be held in the various counties before the justices in eyre. practice obtained very early, therefore, in the trial of trifling causes, to continue the cause in the su- perior court from term to term, provided the jus- tices in eyre did not sooner (nisi prius justiciarii) come into the county where the cause of action arose, in which case they had jurisdiction when they so came. Bracton, 1. 3, c. 1, § 11. By the statute of nisi prius, 13 Edw. I. c. 30, enforced by 14 Edw. III. c. 16, justices of assize were empowered to try common issues in trespass and other suits, and return them, when tried, to the superior court, where judgment was given. The clause was then left out of the continuance and inserted in the ve- nire, thus: "Præcipimus tibi quod venire facias coram justiciariis nostris apud Westm. in Octavis Scti Michælis, nisi talis et talis, tali die et loco, ad partes illas venerint, duodecim," etc. (we command you that you cause to come before our justices at Westminster, on the octave of Saint Michael, un- less such and such a one, on such a day and place, shall come to those parts, twelve, etc.). Under the provisions of 42 Edw. III. c. 11, the clause is omitted from the venire, and the jury is respited in the court above, while the sheriff summons them to ap pear before the justices, upon a habeas corpors juratorum, or, in the king's bench, a distringas. See Sell. Pr. Introd. lxv.; 1 Spence, Eq. Jur. 116; 8 Shars. Bla. Com. 352-354; 1 Reeve, Hist. Eng. Law 245, 382. See, also, AsSIZE; COURT OF ASSIZE AND NISI PRIUS; JURY.