g, or such
acts and proceedings as the States may commit or take, and which, by the
amendment, they are prohibited from committing or taking."[1227]

Conversely, Congress may enforce the provisions of the amendment
whenever they are disregarded by either the legislative, the executive,
or the judicial department of the State. The mode of the enforcement is
left to its discretion. It may secure the right, that is, enforce its
recognition, by removing the case from a State court, in which it is
denied, into a federal court where it will be acknowledged.[1228]
Similarly, Congress may provide that "no citizen, possessing all other
qualifications which are or may be prescribed by law shall be
disqualified for service as grand or petit juror in any court of the
United States, or of any State, on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude; and any officer or other person charged with any
duty in the selection or summoning of jurors who shall exclude or fail
to summon any citizen for the cause aforesaid shall, on conviction
thereof, be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, * * *"[1229] However, the
Supreme Court declined to sustain Congress when, under the guise of
enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment by appropriate legislation, it
enacted a statute which was not limited to take effect only in case a
State should abridge the privileges of United States citizens, but
applied no matter how well the State might have performed its duty, and
would subject to punishment private individuals who conspired to deprive
anyone of the equal protection of the laws.[1230]

Whether its powers of enforcement enable Congress constitutionally to
punish State officers who abuse their authority and act in violation of
their State's laws is a question on which the Justices only recently
have divided. Five Justices ruled in Screws _v._ United States[1231]
that section 20 of the Criminal Code[1232] which provides "whoever,
under the color of any law, statute, ordinance, * * *, willfully
subjects, * * *, any inhabitant of any State, * * * to the deprivation
of any rights, * * * protected by the Constitution and laws of the
United States, * * *" could be the basis of a prosecution of Screws, a
Georgia sheriff, and others, on charges of having, in the course of
arresting a Negro, brutally beaten him to death and deprive him of "the
right not to be deprived of life without due process of law."[1233]
Holding that, "abuse of State power" does not c