limits these powers even as it grants them: The Congress may lay and
collect taxes, “But all duties ... shall be uniform throughout the
United States”; the Congress may raise and support armies, “but no
appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than
two years”; the Congress may provide for organizing and arming the
militia, “reserving to the States respectively the appointment of
the officers”; the Congress shall exercise exclusive power over the
seat of the national government, but its purchase of other places is
dependent upon “the consent of the legislature of the State in which
the same shall be.”
In Section 9, one of the clauses appears that the Supreme Court
was to forget in 1954--a provision specifically recognizing and
sanctioning the institution of slavery as a custom in no way
violative of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person may be
deprived of his liberty without due process of law. No friend of
the court yet has been able to explain exactly how a constitutional
provision that did not prohibit slavery could be interpreted to
prohibit racially separate but equal public schools in the District
of Columbia. No matter. The more significant provisions of Section 9
go to the nine flat prohibitions therein placed upon the Congress.
Here the States laid down the law to the joint government they were
creating: The Congress could not (1) interfere with the importation
of slaves prior to 1808; (2) suspend the privilege of the writ of
habeas corpus; (3) pass a bill of attainder or (4) an ex post facto
law; (5) impose a direct tax except in proportion to the census; (6)
place a tax or duty on articles exported from any State; (7) give
preference in any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of
one State over those of another; (8) draw money from the Treasury
except as a consequence of appropriations made by law, or (9) grant
titles of nobility.