Chapter IX: Section 8: defines the powers of the Congress, and characteristically

limits these powers even as it grants them: The Congress may lay and collect taxes, “But all duties ... shall be uniform throughout the United States”; the Congress may raise and support armies, “but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years”; the Congress may provide for organizing and arming the militia, “reserving to the States respectively the appointment of the officers”; the Congress shall exercise exclusive power over the seat of the national government, but its purchase of other places is dependent upon “the consent of the legislature of the State in which the same shall be.”

In Section 9, one of the clauses appears that the Supreme Court was to forget in 1954--a provision specifically recognizing and sanctioning the institution of slavery as a custom in no way violative of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee that no person may be deprived of his liberty without due process of law. No friend of the court yet has been able to explain exactly how a constitutional provision that did not prohibit slavery could be interpreted to prohibit racially separate but equal public schools in the District of Columbia. No matter. The more significant provisions of Section 9 go to the nine flat prohibitions therein placed upon the Congress. Here the States laid down the law to the joint government they were creating: The Congress could not (1) interfere with the importation of slaves prior to 1808; (2) suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus; (3) pass a bill of attainder or (4) an ex post facto law; (5) impose a direct tax except in proportion to the census; (6) place a tax or duty on articles exported from any State; (7) give preference in any regulation of commerce or revenue to the ports of one State over those of another; (8) draw money from the Treasury except as a consequence of appropriations made by law, or (9) grant titles of nobility.