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The Law Of The United States Essay

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When the vagrancy law was out of the lawmaker reach, they found themselves back in the same problem they were in after slavery ended. Out of desperation to find a solution to their slave labor problem, the state took full advantage of the Tenth Amendment. The tenth Amendment “establishes a strong principle of states ' rights in the Constitution. Any powers not explicitly given to the federal government can be assumed to belong to the states, or directly to the people”. With this piece of legal document in their possession, they came up with the convict leasing program. Which gives state the right to lease prisoner to private business and people with large plantation to perform hard labor. It is because of this law our penal system in America has been heavily monetized by private companies today. Back then prisoner were taking to plantation, and now inmate are treated just about the same way. Our prison population was mainly flat throughout the 20th century, but it had change in the 1970s(13th). It was doing the president Richard M. Nixon period America was introduced to this term call, war on drug. The president had felt compared to wage war on drug, which affected the poor community tremendously. During his campaign, Nixon once said to his supporters, [1968 campaign] “This is a nation of laws and as Abraham Lincoln has said, "No one is above the law, no one is below the law," and we 're going to enforce the law and Americans should remember that if we 're going to

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