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Titles of Nobility amendment
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The Titles of Nobility Amendment (TONA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution dating from 1810. It was submitted to the state legislatures during the 2nd Session of the 11th Congress via a resolution offered by U.S. Senator Philip Reed of Maryland. It has not been ratified by three-fourths of the states and so has never become part of the Constitution.
Proposal and rationale
The United States Senate approved the measure by a vote of 19-5 on April 27, 1810.
Discussion
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Encyclopedia
The Titles of Nobility Amendment (TONA) was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution dating from 1810. It was submitted to the state legislatures during the 2nd Session of the 11th Congress via a resolution offered by U.S. Senator Philip Reed of Maryland. It has not been ratified by three-fourths of the states and so has never become part of the Constitution.
Text
Proposal and rationale
The United States Senate approved the measure by a vote of 19-5 on April 27, 1810. It was then adopted by the United States House of Representatives with a vote of 87-3 on May 1, 1810. After its passage in the Congress, the amendment was presented to the state legislatures for ratification as prescribed by Article V of the Constitution.
If adopted, the amendment would expand upon Article I, Section 9 and Section 10 of the Constitution, which prohibit the states and the federal government from issuing titles of nobility or honour.
The amendment does not say anything about domestic titles of nobility—only those which might be issued by foreign powers.
There is speculation that the amendment was proposed by the Congress in response to the 1803 marriage of Napoleon Bonaparte's younger brother, Jerome and Betsy Patterson of Baltimore who gave birth to a boy for whom she wanted aristocratic recognition from France. The child, named Jérôme Napoleon Bonaparte, was not born in the United States, but in Great Britain on July 7, 1805—nevertheless, he would have held U.S. citizenship through his mother. Another theory is that his mother actually desired a title of nobility for herself and, indeed, she is referred to as the "Duchess of Baltimore" in many texts written about the amendment. The marriage had been annulled in 1805—well before the amendment's proposal by the 11th United States Congress. Nonetheless, Representative Nathaniel Macon of North Carolina is recorded to have said, when voting on the amendment that "he considered the vote on this question as deciding whether or not we were to have members of the Legion of Honor in this country."
Reaction in the state legislatures
This still-pending proposed amendment is known to have been ratified by the legislatures of the following 12 states:
- Maryland (December 25, 1810)
- Kentucky (January 31, 1811)
- Ohio (January 31, 1811)
- Delaware (February 2, 1811)
- Pennsylvania (February 6, 1811)
- New Jersey (February 13, 1811)
- Vermont (October 24, 1811)
- Tennessee (November 21, 1811)
- Georgia (November 22, 1811)
- North Carolina (December 23, 1811)
- Massachusetts (February 27, 1812)
- New Hampshire (December 9, 1812)
Although the act, on the part of state legislatures, of "rejecting" a proposed constitutional amendment has no legal recognition, such action does have political implications. The amendment was specifically rejected by lawmakers in New York on March 12, 1812; by those in Connecticut on May 13, 1813; and by those in Rhode Island on September 15, 1814. In the specific case of South Carolina, while its Senate voted to ratify the amendment on November 28, 1811, the state's House of Representatives rejected the amendment on December 21, 1814. As to Virginia's legislators, although it long has been maintained that no records survived of any action having been taken relative to officially ratifying, or rejecting, the amendment, state legislative records indicate that the Virginia House of Delegates approved the amendment on February 2, 1811 but the Virginia Senate rejected the amendment on February 14, 1811.
Today, with 50 states in the Union, it would take the approval of at least 38 state legislatures in order to achieve ratification. Per the ruling of the United States Supreme Court in the 1939 case of Coleman v. Miller, the amendment is technically still subject to being approved by the nation's state lawmakers, as no deadline for ratification was specified when Congress proposed the amendment for the consideration of the states. Thus, the legislatures of at least 26 more states would have to ratify the amendment in order for it to become part of the Constitution.
Long-standing misimpression
The misconception prevailed for decades that the TONA had in fact become part of the U.S. Constitution—indeed many printings of the Constitution during the 19th century erroneously referred to it as being the Thirteenth Amendment. Perhaps this misunderstanding could be traced to the mistaken belief that both chambers of South Carolina's legislature had acted favorably upon the TONA when, evidently, only one body had done so. Possibly, it can be attributed to the misapprehension that Virginia lawmakers had adopted the TONA, despite the long-standing belief that there was a lack of documentation that either chamber of Virginia's legislature ever even so much as considered the TONA.
That is not where the misunderstandings end. There is a further mistaken belief that the TONA was, at all stages, just one state's adoption shy of being incorporated into the federal Constitution.
When the TONA was offered by the Congress to the state legislatures on May 1, 1810, the approval of 13 of them would indeed have been required. However, with the addition of Louisiana into the Union on April 30, 1812, that threshold increased to 14 state approvals. Louisiana's statehood commenced after the Massachusetts ratification of the TONA, but prior to the New Hampshire ratification of it. Then, when Indiana was admitted on December 11, 1816, the bar was raised up to 15 approvals need to ratify the TONA. Although the admission of Mississippi on December 10, 1817, did not increase the numerical requirement, the entry of Illinois on December 3, 1818, did elevate that minimum to 16 state adoptions necessary for the TONA to be incorporated into the Constitution.
It should be clarified that the actual Thirteenth Amendment was ratified in December of 1865 and abolished slavery uniformly throughout the United States.
Theories
The assertion that the amendment actually was validly ratified has never been upheld by any court in the United States. In the few instances in which Courts have been confronted with the assertion that the amendment was indeed ratified, judges have brushed those claims aside. In Campion v. Towns, No.CV-04-1516PHX-ROS, *2 n.1 (D. Ariz. 2005), a tax protester raised the amendment as one of his defenses to a charge of tax evasion. The court replied that it would "correct any misunderstanding Plaintiff has concerning the text of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution":
In another case, Sibley v. Culliver, 243 F. Supp. 2d 1278, 1283 (M.D. Ala. 2003), aff'd 377 F.3d 1196 (11th Cir. 2004), a federal court in Alabama found that the defendant's invocation of the amendment actually worked to his detriment. The court took note of documents produced by the defendant, a convicted murderer who submitted documents in support of his appeal claiming that the amendment rendered his conviction invalid:
The Sibley court dismissed the appeal, concluding in part that the defendant was simply not seeking relief through the courts.
Furthermore, supporters maintain that—if ratified—the amendment would have consequences above and beyond those listed above. Among the its claimed additional effects would be:
- When someone in the United States becomes a lawyer, he or she often uses the title of "Esquire" (or an abbreviation thereof) to signify his or her status, much as a medical doctor attaches "M.D." to his or her name. Supporters of the TONA claim that this constitutes "a British title of gentry" because the state bar associations in the United States were franchises of the British International Bar Association in the early 1800s. Therefore, so the argument goes, any lawyer in the United States who uses the title "Esquire" is British gentry, and would forsake his or her American citizenship, and be unable to hold any U.S. government office.
- The word "honour" in the phrase "title of nobility or honour" should not be interpreted as "title of honour" in the traditional sense, but rather as "obtaining or having an advantage or privilege over another," which includes, among other things, the immunity to lawsuits which is held by various government officials.
See also
External links and sources
- , finding that neither is true.
- an extensive archive of information gathered by advocates in support of the idea that the TONA is part of the Constitution.
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