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by birdofhermes 850 days ago
The 13th Amendment belongs to a different document than the Constitution proper and was ratified about eighty years later. From the standpoint of the dominant school of constitutional interpretation, the distinction matters.
1 comments

You're going to have to clarify what you mean on that. I'm not aware of any school of thought that thinks amendments to the constitution are somehow distinct or less valid. The original document provided processes for amending (i.e. modifying) it, and amendments were made under those rules. An "amendment" is literally a modification to a document; that's what the word means.

In fact, to the extent that there's a distinction, it's that amendments take priority over the previous version of the document. Obviously they'd have to; otherwise that would just mean you can't amend the original document.

According to the current version of the US constitution, which is the only one that matters, slavery is legal in exactly that one circumstance.

If you need to read the last sentence of OP with ā€œ. . . at the time of the framing,ā€ added to the end, then I’m fine with that.