cause the denial by a State to any persons of the equal protection of the laws is prohibited by the Amendment, therefore Congress may establish laws for their equal protection. In fine, the legislation which Congress is authorized to adopt in this behalf is not general legislation upon the rights of the citizen, but corrective legislation,—that is, such as may be necessary and proper for counteracting such laws as the States may adopt or enforce, and which, by the Amendment, they are prohibited from making or enforcing, or such acts and proceedings as the States may commit or take, and which, by the Amendment, they are prohibited from committing or taking. It is not necessary for us to state, if we could, what legislation would be proper for Congress to adopt. It is sufficient for us to examine whether the law in question is of that character.
The dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan in the Civil Rights Cases may well challenge comparison in the history of constitutional debate. It is a massive structure; and yet acute perspicacity, delicate discrimination, lucidity, and comprehensiveness in the argument are everywhere apparent. In his exposition of the canons of constitutional construction, the resources of the lawyer and statesman seemed inexhaustible. In the unusual fearlessness of his freedom, Mr. Justice Harlan transgressed, or perhaps extended, the time-worn and long strictly-observed rules of judicial decorum. That sensitive judicial circumspection which often surmounts and dwarfs the opinions of the minority of the court did not seem to hamper his movements. With a proud and imposing air of superiority, armed with a magnificently stern array of precedents and authorities, he marched like a warrior into the camp of the majority of the court with the avowed object of demonstrating "that the opinion of the majority had proceeded upon grounds entirely too narrow and artificial, which had sacrificed by subtle and ingenious verbal criticism the substance and spirit of the law," which he explained by the remark, "It is not the words of the law but the internal sense of it that makes the law: the letter of the law is the body: the sense and reason of the law is the soul." On page 26, C. R. C., Mr. Justice Harlan says:
