Thirteenth Amendment, Section 1

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court has recognized several limited historical exceptions to the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude. The Court has held that some forms of involuntary service do not violate the Thirteenth Amendment because they implicate public duties that a citizen owes to his government.1 These duties include compelled military service in a war that Congress has declared;2 mandatory road work required under state law;3 and, likely, jury service.4 The Court has indicated that the common law may also furnish exceptions to the Thirteenth Amendment’s prohibition on involuntary servitude.5 For example, the Court upheld federal laws requiring a sailor to serve on a ship in accordance with his contract because the common law had long recognized this duty.6

Footnotes

1

Butler v. Perry, 240 U.S. 328, 332–33 (1916) ( “[The Thirteenth Amendment] certainly was not intended to interdict enforcement of those duties which individuals owe to the State, such as services in the army, militia, on the jury, etc. The great purpose in view was liberty under the protection of effective government, not the destruction of the latter by depriving it of essential powers.” (citations omitted)).

2

Selective Draft Law Cases, 245 U.S. 366, 390 (1918) ( “[W]e are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, [and thus] we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.” ).

3

Butler, 240 U.S. at 332–33.

4

United States v. Kozminski, 487 U.S. 931, 943–44 (1988) (stating, in dicta, that the Thirteenth Amendment does not prevent the state or federal governments from compelling jury service by threatening criminal sanctions), superseded by statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1589; Hurtado v. United States, 410 U.S. 578, 589 n.11 (1973) (stating that the federal government’s $1-per-day payment to an incarcerated material witness before trial was not “so low as to impose involuntary servitude prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment” ); Butler, 240 U.S. at 332–33 (suggesting, in dicta, that the Thirteenth Amendment was not meant to prohibit mandatory jury service). See also Int’l Union v. Wis. Emp. Relations Bd., 336 U.S. 245, 251–52 (1949) (holding that, as applied, a Wisconsin statute authorizing the State Employment Relations Board to order employees of a labor union to cease unannounced work stoppages did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment), overruled by Int’l Ass’n of Machinists & Aerospace Workers v. Wis. Employment Rels. Comm’n, 427 U.S. 132 (1976); United States v. Petrillo, 332 U.S. 1, 12–13 (1947) (rejecting a facial Thirteenth Amendment challenge to a federal statute that criminalized coercing a communications licensee to employ more persons than necessary to conduct his business); Marcus Brown Holding Co. v. Feldman, 256 U.S. 170, 199 (1921) (determining that a state law did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment by making it a misdemeanor for a lessor or his agent to fail intentionally to furnish water, heat, light, and other essential services to tenants because the law did not compel the provision of personal services but rather services “attached to land” ).

5

Robertson v. Baldwin, 165 U.S. 275, 282–83 (1897) (determining that federal laws requiring a sailor to serve on a ship in accordance with his contract did not violate the Thirteenth Amendment because historically the “contract of the sailor has been treated as an exceptional one [involving] to a certain extent, the surrender of his personal liberty during the life of the contract” ).

6

Id. See also Patterson v. Bark Eudora, 190 U.S. 169, 174–75 (1903).