Immigrants and the Right to Petition - NYU Law Review

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NEW YORK UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW
[Vol. 78:667
and New Hampshire also guaranteed the right of "the people" to request
redress of grievances by petition and remonstrance, though like
Maryland and Delaware they required that the practice be undertaken
"in an orderly and peaceable manner." 1 51
What is more significant than the precise formulations used by
each state to enshrine the right to petition in its constitution was that
the practice of petitioning continued as it had before. The poor,
slaves, free blacks, and women-all disenfranchised, none members of
the formal political polity-continued to express their grievances and
request official relief by way of petition to state legislatures. 152
3. Drafting of the Petition Clause
During the ratification debates on the Constitution, some antifederalists
criticized the Constitution's failure to safeguard the right to
petition. 153 Though this was not a principal line of attack, 54 debates
at the state ratifying conventions nevertheless were an important influence
on the drafters of the Bill of Rights, and conventions in six
states yielded proposals, not always adopted in the state conventions,
for constitutional provisions to protect the right to petition. Of these
six proposals, one would have guaranteed the right to petition to
"every man," 155 two to "every person,"156 two to "every freeman,"' 157
151 Mass. Declaration of Rights § XIX (1780), reprinted in 1 Schwartz, supra note 109, at
339, 343; N.H. Bill of Rights § XXXII (1783), reprinted in 1 Schwartz, supra note 109, at
375, 378-79.
152 Bogin, supra note 112, at 396 n.16 (describing petitions by slaves and free blacks
regarding "political or legal status" and 1788 petition by sixty-six Charleston seamstresses
for higher import duties on clothing); id. at 407-12 (analyzing petitions by impoverished
debtors in New Hampshire, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Carolinas).
153 8 Documentary History, supra note 104, at xiv (noting antifederalist objection of
"Centinel" that unaccountable Congress "may deprive you even of the privilege of complaining"
(internal quotation omitted)); Mark, supra note 84, at 2205-07 (collecting antifederalist
writings on failure to include right to petition in Constitution).
154 8 Documentary History, supra note 104, at xiv ("Antifederalists raised the issue only
rarely during the ratification debate .... ).
155 At the Maryland convention, delegates rejected a set of antifederalist amendments
offered by former Governor William Paca, including a guarantee that "every Man hath a
Right to petition the Legislature, for the Redress of Grievances, in a peacable and orderly
Manner." 17 The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution: Commentaries
on the Constitution Public and Private 237, 240 (John P. Kaminski & Gaspare J.
Saladino eds., 1995). Paca's failed amendments were reprinted widely, however, and had
some influence on the debate in other state conventions. Id. at 237-39. The Paca proposal
tracked the language of § 11 of Maryland's 1776 state constitution. See Md. Const. § 11
(1776), reprinted in Neil H. Cogan, The Complete Bill of Rights: The Drafts, Debates,
Sources, and Origins 140 (1997).
156 See Cogan, supra note 155, at 140 (reprinting proposals from state conventions of
New York and Rhode Island). New York's ratifying convention proposal was more expansive
than the petition clause of its Bill of Rights, which guaranteed the petition rights only