When the Republicans read the Constitution in the House today, I wonder whether they'll just skip the Fourteenth Amendment.UPDATE: Apparently, they are leaving out a few unfortunate provisions of the Constitution's original text.UPDATE II: Just leaving out provisions that have been modified by later amendment is not the way most people understand constitutional amendment to work. Any copy of the Constitution I've ever seen includes the original text, followed by the amendments in sequential order. For example, copies of the Constitution don't leave out the 18th Amendment (prohibition) even though it was expressly repealed by the 21st. In any event, the 3/5 clause was never expressly "repealed" in the same way the 18th Amendment was. It was simply superseded by the 14th Amendment. Trying to figure out how later amendments affect the overall interpretation of the Constitution is a big part of what constitutional lawyers and scholars do. It's not a simple task.

Eduardo M. Peñalver is the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Cornell Law School. The views expressed in the piece are his own, and should not be attributed to Cornell University or Cornell Law School.

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