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Fourteenth Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, ratified on July 9, 1868, is one of three Reconstruction Amendments enacted after the Civil War to redefine citizenship and constrain state authority over individual rights.^[1]^[2] Its first section establishes birthright citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the United States, guarantees privileges or immunities of citizenship against state abridgment, and bars states from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law or denying equal protection of the laws.^[1] Additional sections adjust congressional representation to reduce a state's apportionment if it denies voting rights to male citizens over twenty-one, disqualify certain former Confederate officials from office absent congressional approval, affirm the validity of the national public debt while voiding obligations incurred in aid of rebellion or for emancipated slaves, and authorize congressional enforcement.^[1]^[2] Passed by Congress in 1866 amid efforts to counter Southern Black Codes that restricted freed slaves' freedoms, the amendment sought to embed federal protections for civil rights and override state-level discrimination, extending Bill of Rights liberties against state infringement through later judicial doctrines like selective incorporation.^[1]^[3] Early Supreme Court rulings, including the 1873 Slaughter-House Cases, confined its privileges or immunities clause to narrow federal citizenship rights, preserving broad state police powers, though due process and equal protection provisions later underpinned expansive applications in cases dismantling racial segregation in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), invalidating interracial marriage bans in Loving v. Virginia (1967), and incorporating criminal procedure safeguards against states.^[4]^[5] The amendment's interpretation has fueled persistent controversies over original public meaning versus evolving standards, the legitimacy of substantive due process in economic regulation and unenumerated rights, and tensions between federal supremacy and state sovereignty, with critics arguing post-New Deal expansions deviated from Reconstruction-era intent to target racial discrimination rather than broadly empower judicial policymaking.^[5]^[4]

Historical Context and Drafting

Antebellum Citizenship and Slavery Issues

The original U.S. Constitution omitted any explicit definition of national citizenship, leaving its scope to state laws and common law interpretations, which created inconsistencies and exclusions particularly for African Americans. This absence meant that citizenship status depended on local determinations, often denying free blacks federal recognition or protections despite their birth on U.S. soil, as states varied widely in granting or withholding rights like voting, property ownership, and legal standing.^[6] Such decentralization allowed discriminatory practices to persist without uniform federal override, fueling antebellum debates over whether birthright alone conferred citizenship absent explicit constitutional language. The Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford on March 6, 1857, crystallized these ambiguities by holding that African Americans, whether enslaved or free, could never become U.S. citizens under the Constitution.^[7] Chief Justice Roger B. Taney argued that blacks were not parties to the constitutional compact and possessed "no rights which the white man was bound to respect," thereby invalidating their access to federal courts and protections.^[8] This decision, affecting an estimated 250,000 free blacks nationwide, underscored the federal judiciary's endorsement of racial exclusions and intensified calls for constitutional clarification to prevent state and national authorities from perpetuating such denials.^[9] State-level restrictions further exemplified the causal vulnerabilities of this system, as legislatures in both slave and free states enacted laws curtailing free blacks' liberties to maintain social hierarchies. In Ohio, the 1804 Black Laws mandated that free African Americans provide proof of freedom and post a $500 bond upon entry, while 1807 amendments barred them from testifying against whites in court.^[10] Comparable measures in Texas prohibited free blacks from voting, serving on juries, or testifying except in cases involving other blacks, often requiring bonds or registration to reside.^[11] These empirical patterns of state discrimination—limiting mobility, armament, and due process—revealed how localized authority enabled abuses without federal recourse, highlighting the imperative for a national citizenship standard to supersede variable and prejudicial state policies.^[12]

Civil War and Immediate Aftermath

The American Civil War (1861–1865) exposed critical constitutional vulnerabilities, including ambiguities in citizenship for African Americans under prior rulings like Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which denied blacks national citizenship, and uncertainties in enforcing loyalty from seceded states, as Confederate forces rejected federal authority over slavery and Union integrity. These issues manifested empirically through the war's disruption of the slave system, freeing over three million slaves by 1865 via Union military advances, yet leaving their legal status precarious without federal overrides of state laws.^[13] President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, effective January 1, 1863, declared approximately 3.5 million slaves in Confederate-controlled areas free as a military necessity to weaken the rebellion, but its scope was limited to rebel territories, exempting border states and Union-held areas where slavery persisted legally. This executive action, grounded in war powers rather than peacetime constitutional authority, failed to grant citizenship, voting rights, or equal protection, resulting in freed persons facing immediate risks of re-enslavement, vagrancy laws, or violence upon areas coming under Union control, as states retained plenary power over domestic relations absent explicit federal constraints.^[14]^[15] The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified December 6, 1865, abolished slavery and involuntary servitude nationwide, ending the institution that had underpinned Southern economies and state sovereignty claims, but it addressed neither citizenship definitions nor mechanisms to prevent state reprisals, such as discriminatory labor contracts or mob violence. Post-Appomattox (April 9, 1865), empirical data from federal reports documented rising attacks on freed blacks—over 1,000 murders in 1865–1866 alone in states like Texas and Louisiana—demonstrating states' causal resistance to emancipation without enforced national standards, as local authorities often ignored or abetted such acts to restore pre-war social hierarchies.^[16]^[17] Congress responded with the Freedmen's Bureau, established March 3, 1865, within the War Department to distribute rations to 4 million freed people and 150,000 refugees, negotiate labor contracts, and adjudicate disputes, distributing over 15 million rations by 1866 while founding 4,300 schools for black education. However, Southern resistance—manifest in non-cooperation, Bureau agent assaults (over 100 killed by 1868), and President Andrew Johnson's veto of its 1866 extension citing states' rights—highlighted the realism that voluntary state compliance was illusory, as empirical outcomes showed freedmen relegated to sharecropping debt peonage akin to slavery, necessitating constitutional overrides for uniform protections.^[18]

Reconstruction Policies and Black Codes

Following the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment on December 6, 1865, which abolished slavery, Southern state legislatures rapidly enacted Black Codes to regulate the labor and conduct of approximately 4 million newly freed African Americans.^[19] These laws, passed between late 1865 and early 1866 in states including Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana, and others, effectively sought to recreate elements of the antebellum slave system by imposing severe restrictions on freedmen's mobility, employment, and personal autonomy.^[20] Mississippi's November 1865 code, for instance, declared all freedmen over age 18 without "lawful employment or business" to be vagrants subject to arrest, fines up to $50, and involuntary labor until the penalty was worked off, often on plantations.^[19] Similar provisions appeared in South Carolina's code, which mandated annual labor contracts and penalized contract breaches with forfeiture of wages, while authorizing local officials to compel unemployed freedmen into service.^[19] Central to the Black Codes were apprenticeship statutes that bound orphaned or indigent black children—often as young as 10—to former slaveholders or white employers without parental consent, prioritizing "the interest and welfare of the apprentice" as determined by courts sympathetic to white landowners.^[20] Mississippi's law explicitly allowed former masters preference in such bindings, with apprentices receiving minimal education but no compensation beyond basic sustenance, effectively perpetuating hereditary labor coercion.^[21] Additional curbs included prohibitions on freedmen owning firearms without white testimony of good character, restrictions on assembling in groups larger than five without permission, and bans on testifying in court against whites except in cases involving other blacks.^[20] These measures, rooted in state-level assertions of sovereignty, curtailed freedmen's ability to negotiate fair wages, relocate freely, or achieve economic independence, as vagrancy arrests could result in auctioning offenders to the highest bidder for up to a year of unpaid labor.^[22] In response, the Republican-controlled Congress, viewing the Codes as a direct challenge to emancipation and evidence of states exploiting federalism to reinstitute oppression, passed the Civil Rights Act on April 9, 1866, over President Andrew Johnson's veto.^[23] The Act declared all persons born in the United States (excluding Native Americans) to be citizens entitled to equal rights in making contracts, owning property, suing in court, and enjoying due process and equal protection under federal law, explicitly nullifying discriminatory state enactments like the Black Codes.^[24] However, as a mere statute, it remained susceptible to repeal by a future Congress, particularly if Democrats regained influence, prompting Radical Republicans—led by figures like Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner—to advocate for constitutional entrenchment.^[23] They argued that statutory remedies alone could not counter the causal dynamic of unchecked state authority enabling systemic subjugation, necessitating permanent federal overrides to prevent recidivist abuses absent enduring structural restraints.^[25] This impetus, galvanized by reports of widespread Code enforcement yielding thousands of forced labor convictions in states like Mississippi by mid-1866, directly informed the drive for the Fourteenth Amendment's drafting in December 1866.^[20]

Congressional Formulation and Debates

The Joint Committee on Reconstruction, comprising nine members from the House of Representatives and six from the Senate, was established by a resolution of December 13, 1865, to investigate conditions in the former Confederate states and propose measures for their readmission to the Union.^[26] The committee conducted extensive deliberations in early 1866, reviewing testimony from Southern witnesses and drafting constitutional amendments to constitutionalize protections akin to those in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, particularly emphasizing citizenship rights for freed slaves against state-level discrimination.^[27] Thaddeus Stevens, a Radical Republican serving on the committee and later introducing the amendment in the House, pushed for provisions securing fundamental privileges of citizenship, such as equal legal standing and protection from arbitrary state laws like the Black Codes, while incorporating feedback to balance Radical demands with prospects for broader congressional approval.^[28] Floor debates in both chambers highlighted partisan tensions between Radical Republicans seeking robust federal enforcement of racial equality and moderate Republicans wary of alienating border states or risking Democratic obstruction.^[29] Proponents, including Stevens, argued that the Privileges or Immunities Clause aimed to prevent states from abridging core civil rights—such as making contracts, owning property, and accessing courts—extended to all citizens irrespective of race, drawing directly from the 1866 Civil Rights Act without intending to confer novel national positive entitlements like economic redistribution.^[29] Amendments proposing expansive federal powers, such as direct congressional authority over state economic policies or broader welfare guarantees, were rejected in favor of clauses prohibiting state discrimination and empowering Congress to enforce negative protections against infringement, reflecting a pragmatic focus on empirical vulnerabilities faced by freedmen rather than ideological overreach that could derail ratification.^[30] The House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment on May 10, 1866, after brief debate, with the Senate approving a version on June 8, 1866, by a vote of 33 to 11.^[31] The House concurred with Senate amendments on June 13, 1866, by a margin of 120 to 32, margins indicative of internal Republican compromises to prioritize racial safeguards amid Democratic opposition charging the measure with centralizing excessive power.^[29] These narrow approvals underscored the amendment's design as a targeted response to Southern states' post-war enactments denying blacks basic legal equality, rather than a wholesale reconfiguration of federal-state relations.^[30]

Ratification

Passage by Congress

The Fourteenth Amendment originated as House Joint Resolution 127, introduced by the Joint Committee on Reconstruction and debated extensively in both chambers amid partisan divisions. The House of Representatives passed the resolution on May 10, 1866, by a vote of 128 to 37, exceeding the two-thirds majority required for constitutional amendments.^[32] Following Senate amendments, the House concurred on June 13, 1866, by a vote of 120 to 32.^[33] The Senate had approved its version on June 8, 1866, by 33 to 11.^[29] These tallies reflected strong Republican support, with Democrats largely opposing the measure as an unwarranted expansion of federal authority over state matters. Congressional passage occurred against the backdrop of President Andrew Johnson's veto of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 on March 27, which Congress overrode on April 9 by substantial margins, including 122 to 41 in the House.^[34] Johnson objected to the Act's federal enforcement of civil rights, arguing it discriminated against white citizens and infringed on states' rights to regulate internal affairs.^[35] This override demonstrated Congress's resolve to embed similar protections constitutionally, as the Act's provisions influenced the amendment's drafting to prevent future repeal risks.^[36] Johnson similarly opposed the amendment, urging Southern states to reject it as an overreach that centralized power unduly.^[37] During debates, several proposed amendments were rejected, underscoring the framers' intent to confine the measure to civil and political rights rather than broader economic or property guarantees. For instance, efforts to expand Section 1 to mandate federal protection of property rights beyond due process safeguards or to incorporate redistributive elements failed, as proponents like John Bingham emphasized limitations to fundamental liberties against state infringement.^[29] Immediately after passage, Congress linked the amendment to Reconstruction enforcement through the First Reconstruction Act of March 2, 1867, passed over Johnson's veto, which imposed military governance on unreconstructed Southern states and conditioned their congressional readmission on ratifying the Fourteenth Amendment alongside new constitutions guaranteeing Black male suffrage.^[38] This procedural linkage addressed Southern resistance and Johnson's lenient policies, ensuring federal oversight until compliance.^[39]

State-by-State Ratification Process

The ratification process for the Fourteenth Amendment began immediately following its proposal by Congress on June 13, 1866, necessitating approval by legislatures in three-fourths of the 37 states, or 28 states total.^[40] Early approvals clustered geographically in Northern and Midwestern states, reflecting strong support in Union-held territories, with Connecticut leading on June 30, 1866, followed closely by New Hampshire on July 7, 1866, and Tennessee—then the only former Confederate state to act promptly—on July 9, 1866.^[40] This initial wave continued through 1867, encompassing 21 states by June, predominantly from the Northeast (e.g., New York, Massachusetts), Midwest (e.g., Illinois, Ohio), and emerging Western states (e.g., Nevada, Oregon), demonstrating a pattern of swift legislative action in regions unscarred by secession.^[40] A notable delay emerged after mid-1867, as former Confederate states withheld ratification until the Reconstruction Acts of March 1867 imposed conditions for their reintegration into the Union, prompting a secondary cluster of approvals in 1868 beginning with Iowa on March 9 and Arkansas on April 6.^[40] Complicating the tally, Ohio rescinded its January 11, 1867, ratification via resolution on January 15, 1868, and New Jersey similarly withdrew consent on February 20, 1868, after its September 11, 1866, approval (though New Jersey repassed ratification on March 24, 1868).^[40] These rescission efforts, along with Oregon's post-proclamation withdrawal on October 15, 1868, were deemed ineffective under congressional precedent, which prioritized initial affirmative votes in determining validity.^[41] The amendment reached the required 28 states with Georgia's ratification on July 21, 1868, prompting Secretary of State William H. Seward to proclaim its adoption as part of the Constitution on July 28, 1868, establishing empirical legal finality irrespective of subsequent state actions or irregularities.^[40] The chronological sequence of initial state ratifications, highlighting the 1866–1868 pattern of Northern/Midwestern precedence followed by Southern entries, is as follows:

State	Ratification Date	Notes on Rescission (if applicable)
Connecticut	June 30, 1866
New Hampshire	July 7, 1866
Tennessee	July 9, 1866
New Jersey	September 11, 1866	Withdrew February 20, 1868; repassed March 24, 1868
Oregon	September 19, 1866	Withdrew October 15, 1868 (post-proclamation)
Vermont	October 30, 1866
New York	January 10, 1867
Ohio	January 11, 1867	Withdrew January 15, 1868
Illinois	January 15, 1867
West Virginia	January 16, 1867
Michigan	January 16, 1867
Kansas	January 17, 1867
Minnesota	January 17, 1867
Maine	January 19, 1867
Nevada	January 22, 1867
Indiana	January 23, 1867
Missouri	January 26, 1867
Rhode Island	February 7, 1867
Pennsylvania	February 12, 1867
Wisconsin	February 13, 1867
Massachusetts	March 20, 1867
Nebraska	June 15, 1867
Iowa	March 9, 1868
Arkansas	April 6, 1868
Florida	June 9, 1868
North Carolina	July 2, 1868
South Carolina	July 8, 1868
Louisiana	July 9, 1868
Alabama	July 13, 1868
Georgia	July 21, 1868	Ratified again February 2, 1870

Subsequent ratifications by remaining states, such as Virginia on October 8, 1869, served as confirmatory but did not alter the 1868 threshold achievement.^[40]

Opposition and Coercive Elements

Democratic opponents in Congress and Southern legislatures criticized the Fourteenth Amendment as an unconstitutional expansion of federal power that centralized authority at the expense of state sovereignty, arguing it imposed perpetual punishment on the South long after the Civil War's conclusion.^[42] Figures such as Senator Garrett Davis of Kentucky contended that the amendment's clauses, particularly those addressing citizenship and equal protection, undermined traditional federalism by dictating state policies on civil rights and representation, effectively treating Southern states as conquered territories rather than equals in the Union.^[43] State resolutions from Southern legislatures, including those in Georgia and South Carolina, echoed these views, rejecting the amendment in 1866 as a "radical" measure that violated Article V's ratification process by coercing assent through exclusion from congressional representation.^[44] The Reconstruction Acts of March 2, 1867, formalized federal coercion by dividing the former Confederate states (excluding Tennessee) into five military districts under Union generals, suspending civil governments, and conditioning readmission to the Union on ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment alongside new state constitutions granting Black male suffrage.^[45] This framework, passed over President Andrew Johnson's vetoes, explicitly linked political restoration to amendment approval, rendering Southern legislatures—dominated by ex-Confederates—effectively powerless without compliance.^[39] Historians note that these acts created a causal duress, as military oversight suppressed dissent and facilitated the election of Reconstruction governments amenable to ratification, with states like Arkansas and North Carolina approving the amendment by April 1868 under provisional regimes.^[42] This coerced process led to swift but contested Southern ratifications between June 1868 and July 1868, after which Congress seated representatives from complying states, yet opponents highlighted the lack of genuine popular consent amid martial law.^[43] Legal scholars have argued that such conditions deviated from Article V's requirement for uncoerced state assent, with Southern delegations later attempting rescissions—such as Louisiana's in 1868—that Congress disregarded to secure the amendment's certification on July 9, 1868.^[46] Post-ratification resentments manifested in Southern political rhetoric emphasizing nullification of federal overreach, contributing to the collapse of Reconstruction by 1877 as Democrats regained control and enacted Black Codes evading the amendment's intent through state-level evasion.^[47] These sentiments, rooted in perceptions of illegitimate imposition, fueled ongoing state rights advocacy, including Democratic platforms in the 1870s that challenged federal enforcement under Section 5 as tyrannical extensions of wartime powers.^[42]

Provisions

Citizenship Clause

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment states: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."^[48] This provision, ratified on July 9, 1868, primarily aimed to constitutionalize birthright citizenship (jus soli) for individuals born within U.S. territory, directly repudiating the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had declared that persons of African descent, whether enslaved or free, were ineligible for U.S. citizenship and lacked standing to sue in federal courts.^[49]^[50] Prior to the Civil War, free Black Americans often faced statelessness, as states could deny them citizenship rights despite birth on U.S. soil, a vulnerability the clause addressed by vesting citizenship at the national level to override state discretion.^[50] The clause's framers in the 39th Congress sought to ensure citizenship for approximately four million newly emancipated slaves and their descendants, preventing post-war Southern states from reimposing exclusions akin to pre-war Black Codes.^[51] By declaring citizenship a federal guarantee, it shifted authority from states, which had historically defined citizenship variably under Article IV, to a uniform national standard rooted in birth or naturalization.^[50] This federalization responded to empirical realities of Reconstruction, where Southern legislatures enacted laws questioning freedmen's status, thereby securing legal personhood and access to federal protections against state-level nullification.^[29] The phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" qualifies birthright citizenship, denoting full allegiance to U.S. authority rather than mere physical presence.^[51] Congressional debates clarified exclusions for children of foreign diplomats (immune from U.S. law), members of invading armies, and Native American tribal members owing primary allegiance to sovereign tribes rather than the United States—groups not fully within U.S. political jurisdiction, as evidenced by untaxed Indians' separate status under federal treaties.^[29] Senator Jacob Howard, who introduced the clause on May 30, 1866, affirmed it applied to "every other class of persons" born in the U.S. except those categories, emphasizing complete subjection to national laws without foreign sovereign claims.^[52] In its seminal interpretation, the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) upheld citizenship for a child born in San Francisco in 1873 to Chinese immigrant parents who were legal residents but ineligible for naturalization under the Chinese Exclusion Act.^[53] The 6-2 decision affirmed the clause's jus soli principle for children of non-citizen residents domiciled in the U.S., distinguishing such cases from excluded categories like diplomats or tribal Indians, while grounding the holding in English common law precedents adopted by the framers.^[54] The Court noted the clause's core purpose remained overturning Dred Scott's racial exclusions, extending birthright status to those owing undivided allegiance through territorial birth, absent diplomatic or hostile immunities.^[53]

Privileges or Immunities Clause

The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States."^[1] This provision, ratified in 1868, aimed to secure fundamental rights associated with national citizenship against state infringement, particularly to protect freed slaves from discriminatory Black Codes enacted post-Civil War.^[55] During congressional debates in 1866, Senator Jacob Howard explained that the clause encompassed "privileges and immunities" such as those arising from the federal Constitution, including habeas corpus, access to seaports, and rights under treaties, drawing from pre-existing understandings of national citizenship rights akin to the Article IV Privileges and Immunities Clause.^[56] Proponents emphasized protection of enumerated constitutional rights and natural liberties, including the right to pursue lawful occupations free from arbitrary state monopolies, rather than a wholesale incorporation of the Bill of Rights against states.^[57] In the Slaughter-House Cases (1873), the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling that severely curtailed the clause's scope by adopting a dual citizenship framework, distinguishing between state citizenship (encompassing most civil rights, like the right to practice a trade) and narrow federal citizenship privileges (limited to rights derived solely from the National Government, such as protection on the high seas or interstate travel).^[58] Justice Samuel Miller's majority opinion upheld a Louisiana law granting a slaughterhouse monopoly, arguing that the clause did not federalize broad economic or common-law rights, thereby preserving extensive state regulatory authority over local matters.^[59] This interpretation effectively neutralized the clause for future litigation, as only a handful of federal-specific rights—none of which were at issue in most cases—fell within its ambit, prompting critics to contend that it rendered the provision redundant and shifted constitutional protections toward the Due Process Clause.^[60] Originalist scholarship argues that the clause's original public meaning, informed by antebellum comity principles and Reconstruction-era intent, extended to fundamental economic liberties, such as freedom of contract and the right to labor without unreasonable state interference, which framers viewed as inherent to citizenship.^[61] Evidence from 1866 debates and contemporary treatises supports this view, positing that the clause targeted state violations of rights like equal access to markets and protection against discriminatory licensing, aligning with the Amendment's goal of nationalizing core civil freedoms beyond mere political privileges.^[57] While rarely invoked post-Slaughter-House, these arguments highlight the clause's textual design to enforce a uniform baseline of national rights against parochial state laws, distinct from plenary state police powers.^[62]

Due Process Clause

The Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".^[63] This language directly mirrors the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment, which imposes the same limitation on the federal government, but extends the requirement to state actions following ratification in 1868.^[64] Adopted amid Reconstruction efforts to curb arbitrary state exercises of power, particularly against newly freed African Americans, the clause aimed to ensure deprivations occurred only through established legal processes rather than executive whim or legislative caprice.^[63] Rooted in English common law traditions traceable to Magna Carta's guarantee of judgment by one's peers or the law of the land, the clause reflected framers' intent to mandate fair, law-governed procedures without creating novel substantive entitlements.^[65] Congressional debates, led by figures like John A. Bingham, emphasized procedural safeguards drawn from pre-existing Anglo-American legal norms to prevent states from denying basic rights through irregular means, such as ex parte proceedings or summary seizures.^[66] Representative James Wilson, for instance, argued during House discussions that the provision reinforced constitutional enforcement of settled due process principles already implicit in federal protections, without expanding into unenumerated rights beyond procedural regularity.^[66] In its early judicial construction, the Supreme Court in Hurtado v. California (1884) interpreted the clause as preserving fundamental principles of justice under law, but not incorporating every specific procedural safeguard from the Bill of Rights against the states.^[65] The Court upheld California's use of an information rather than grand jury indictment for a capital offense, reasoning that due process historically connoted protection against arbitrary action through orderly judicial processes, not rigid adherence to English common law forms adapted in the Fifth Amendment.^[67] Justice Matthews' opinion traced the clause's essence to "the very essence of constitutional liberty and justice" lying in subjection to legal standards, thereby limiting its original scope to preventing capricious deprivations while allowing states flexibility in procedural mechanisms.^[65]

Equal Protection Clause

The Equal Protection Clause states: "nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."^[1] This provision requires states to enforce laws impartially among persons within their jurisdiction, prohibiting arbitrary classifications that withhold legal protections or benefits from specific groups.^[68] Its core aim was to mandate uniform application of state laws, ensuring that no group—particularly newly freed African Americans—faced systemic denial of rights through discriminatory statutes.^[69] Enacted in response to the Black Codes, which Southern states passed immediately after the Civil War's end in 1865 to restrict the freedoms of emancipated slaves, the clause sought to nullify such measures.^[19] These codes imposed severe limitations, including vagrancy laws that criminalized unemployment among African Americans and forced them into involuntary labor contracts resembling slavery, apprenticeship systems binding minors to former enslavers without consent, and prohibitions on owning firearms or testifying against whites. By December 1865, every former Confederate state except Tennessee had enacted versions of these codes, prompting Northern Congress members to view them as direct violations of the Thirteenth Amendment's abolition of slavery.^[19] The Equal Protection Clause was crafted to dismantle these race-based discriminations, ensuring states could not reenact de facto servitude through unequal legal enforcement.^[70] Representative John A. Bingham of Ohio, the principal architect of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment, emphasized during congressional debates that the clause imposed an affirmative duty on states to safeguard rights equally, declaring it recognized "the absolute equality before the law of every human being whatever his nationality, complexion, or race."^[71] Bingham's formulations underscored "protection" as active state intervention to prevent harm from discriminatory laws, rather than mere passive nondiscrimination or mandates for outcome-based equality.^[66] This intent focused on invalidating statutes that explicitly or functionally singled out racial groups for inferior treatment, without envisioning judicially imposed hierarchies of scrutiny or extensions to non-racial categories.^[69] An early judicial affirmation came in Strauder v. West Virginia, 100 U.S. 303 (1880), where the Supreme Court invalidated a West Virginia statute confining jury service to white males.^[72] The Court held that such exclusion denied African American defendants the equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment, as it systematically impaired impartial jury trials by ensuring no representation of their race in the jury pool.^[73] Justice William Strong's opinion clarified that the clause prohibited states from withholding "the equal protection of the laws" in criminal proceedings, interpreting it as a bar on race-based disqualifications that undermined fair adjudication.^[74] This ruling directly applied the clause to strike down a discriminatory practice akin to the Black Codes' legacy, reinforcing its role in prohibiting overt racial classifications in state legal processes.^[75]

Section 2: Apportionment and Voting Rights

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides for the apportionment of representatives among the states according to their total population, excluding Indians not taxed, thereby superseding the three-fifths clause of Article I, Section 2, which had partially counted enslaved persons for representation purposes.^[1]^[48] The provision further stipulates that if a state denies or abridges the voting rights of male citizens aged twenty-one or older—except for participation in rebellion or other crime—at specified elections, its basis of representation shall be reduced proportionally to the number of such disenfranchised citizens relative to all eligible male citizens in that state.^[1] This penalty clause was designed as an indirect safeguard for the voting rights of newly freed Black males, counting their full population for apportionment while incentivizing enfranchisement to avoid loss of congressional seats.^[76] During the Thirty-ninth Congress's debates in 1866, the clause emerged as a compromise among Republicans: radicals sought direct federal imposition of Black male suffrage, but moderates opposed it to ensure broader support for ratification and to sidestep accusations of overriding state autonomy on suffrage, which had traditionally been a state matter.^[76] Instead, the penalty offered Southern states a choice—extend the vote or forfeit representation equivalent to the disenfranchised population, potentially diminishing Southern House seats by dozens, as full population counting post-slavery would otherwise amplify their influence compared to the prewar three-fifths allocation of approximately eighteen seats.^[76] Proponents calculated that without the penalty, denying votes while gaining full population-based seats would enable Southern dominance in Congress, undermining Reconstruction aims; empirical projections indicated reductions up to one-third of seats in states like South Carolina, where Black males comprised a majority of the adult male population.^[76] Despite widespread abridgment of Black voting rights in Southern states through mechanisms such as poll taxes, property requirements, and residency tests—evident in post-1868 elections where Black turnout plummeted from over 70 percent in some areas to under 10 percent by the 1880s—the penalty was never enforced by Congress.^[77] Calculations for reduction were occasionally considered, as in 1871 when the Joint Select Committee on Southern Outrages estimated penalties for states like Mississippi and Louisiana totaling several seats, but political expediency prevailed amid efforts to restore national unity and fears that enforcement would alienate white Southern voters or disrupt partisan balances in the House.^[77] Judicial deference reinforced non-enforcement; in Saunders v. Wilkins (1946), the Supreme Court held that apportionment adjustments under Section 2 fall exclusively to congressional discretion, not judicial mandate, leaving implementation to legislative inaction.^[77] The ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment on February 3, 1870, which explicitly bars denial or abridgment of suffrage on account of race, color, or previous servitude, superseded Section 2's utility for addressing racial disenfranchisement, as states could no longer legally abridge votes on those grounds without violating the later amendment, thereby precluding such abridgments as triggers for the penalty.^[40] While the clause theoretically applied to non-racial abridgments—such as those based on sex, later addressed by the Nineteenth Amendment (1920), or poll taxes, prohibited federally by the Twenty-fourth Amendment (1964)—its age-specific reference to twenty-one-year-olds became obsolete with the Twenty-sixth Amendment (1971) lowering the voting age to eighteen, rendering the provision largely vestigial in practice.^[48] No reductions have occurred, despite ongoing debates over its dormant potential for other voting restrictions.^[78]

Section 3: Disqualification for Insurrection and Rebellion

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that no person who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, a United States officer, a state legislator, or a state executive or judicial officer to support the Constitution, shall hold specified federal or state offices if they subsequently engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States or gave aid or comfort to its enemies.^[1]^[79] The provision explicitly bars such individuals from serving as senators, representatives, presidential electors, or holding any civil or military office under the United States or any state, reflecting a targeted mechanism to exclude oath-breakers from positions of public trust.^[80] Enacted primarily to address former Confederate participants in the Civil War—who had sworn oaths of allegiance prior to secession but then led or supported the rebellion—Section 3 functioned as a punitive safeguard during Reconstruction to restore loyal governance in Southern states.^[81] Its framers intended it as a self-executing bar, applicable upon violation without requiring prior congressional legislation for enforcement, though ambiguities arose in determining what constituted "insurrection or rebellion" and who bore the burden of proof in disqualification challenges.^[82] Congress retained authority to remove the disqualification by a two-thirds vote in each house, allowing flexibility for rehabilitation based on demonstrated loyalty.^[1] In practice, following the amendment's ratification on July 9, 1868, Section 3 disqualified numerous ex-Confederates from office during early Reconstruction, enforcing loyalty oaths as a prerequisite for state readmission and federal recognition.^[83] Enforcement waned as political reconciliation advanced; Congress granted partial amnesties in 1868 and 1869 before passing the comprehensive Amnesty Act on May 22, 1872, which removed disabilities under Section 3 for all but approximately 500 high-ranking Confederate officials, such as generals and former U.S. senators.^[83] This widespread lifting—prompted by Southern electoral shifts and national desires for unity—revealed the clause's design as a temporary measure for post-bellum accountability rather than a permanent political exclusion, prioritizing causal restoration of stable governance over enduring retribution.^[84] Subsequent applications remained rare, with the disqualification invoked sporadically in congressional seating disputes but no broad revival, underscoring its role in ensuring immediate loyalty amid the era's existential threats to constitutional order.^[85]

Section 4: Public Debt and Confederate Obligations

Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that "the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned," while stipulating that neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, nor any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave, holding all such debts, obligations, and claims illegal and void.^[86] This clause constitutionalized the Union's commitment to its wartime obligations, which had ballooned to approximately $2.6 billion by the end of the Civil War in 1865, amid concerns that returning Southern representatives might push for repudiation to alleviate fiscal burdens or gain political leverage.^[87]^[88] The provision's repudiation of Confederate debts and slave emancipation claims served to uphold fiscal integrity by denying validation to obligations that financed rebellion, estimated in the hundreds of millions through bonds and currency, thereby preventing former Confederate states from demanding federal absorption or using unpaid liabilities as bargaining chips for reconstruction concessions or reparations.^[2]^[89] President Andrew Johnson had conditioned Southern readmission on such repudiation, and the clause reinforced this by eliminating moral hazard, ensuring that treasonous expenditures yielded no postwar recovery and blocking compensation to slaveholders, which would have contradicted emancipation's core rationale.^[90] This dual affirmation of Union creditworthiness and rejection of rebel claims facilitated stable reintegration without compromising the North's victory costs or rewarding insurrection.^[91] Judicial invocation of Section 4 has been exceedingly rare, reflecting its success as a declarative safeguard rather than a contested legal battleground; post-ratification in 1868, Southern states ceased honoring Confederate bonds, rendering holder claims untenable without federal or state assumption, and no major historical Supreme Court cases directly tested the clause's application to these repudiated obligations.^[86] The absence of significant litigation underscores the provision's effectiveness in preempting disputes, as compliance averted defaults that could have invited foreign creditor interventions or prolonged sectional tensions over fiscal accountability.^[92]

Section 5: Congressional Enforcement Authority

Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment provides that "The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."^[1] This clause, drafted primarily by Representative John Bingham of Ohio, was intended to empower the federal government to secure the amendment's guarantees against state noncompliance, as Bingham argued that without such authority, the protections of Section 1 would amount to mere declarations lacking coercive force.^[93]^[94] Bingham emphasized during congressional debates that the power was necessary to counteract state laws or actions depriving citizens of due process or equal protection, framing it as a mechanism to enforce existing constitutional restraints rather than to originate new federal mandates.^[93] Congress exercised this authority soon after ratification through the Enforcement Acts, which targeted post-Civil War violations in Southern states. The first Enforcement Act, passed on May 31, 1870, prohibited state officials from denying voting rights on the basis of race, color, or previous servitude and authorized federal supervision of elections where needed.^[95] A supplemental act followed on February 28, 1871, expanding protections for voter registration and jury service.^[95] The Ku Klux Klan Act of April 20, 1871, further enforced the amendment by criminalizing conspiracies to deprive individuals of constitutional rights, permitting federal removal of cases from state courts, and allowing the president to deploy military forces against domestic insurrections obstructing enforcement.^[96] These statutes, numbering three principal acts between 1870 and 1871, focused on remedying specific state failures to protect freedmen's rights amid widespread violence and discrimination.^[95] Originalist scholarship interprets Section 5's "appropriate legislation" as confined to remedial measures—those preventing or redressing state deprivations of the amendment's enumerated protections—rather than substantive expansions that redefine rights or impose novel affirmative duties on states.^[97]^[94] This view aligns with the framers' debates, where enforcement was tied to negative prohibitions against state action (e.g., barring unequal laws or deprivations without process) without extending to positive rights creation, such as mandating state provision of services or overriding non-violative policies.^[93] Subsequent statutes, like the Civil Rights Act of 1875 attempting broader public accommodations mandates, illustrated tensions over this boundary, as they ventured toward substantive regulation beyond clear remedial responses to proven violations.^[98] Proponents of a narrower scope argue that expansive uses risk federal overreach, echoing concerns from the 39th Congress that Section 5 should not transform the amendment into a general warrant for rewriting state laws absent evidence of constitutional breach.^[97]

Judicial Interpretation

Early Supreme Court Cases and Narrow Constructions

The Slaughter-House Cases of 1873 represented the Supreme Court's first major interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, decisively narrowing its scope to protect only those privileges and immunities arising from national citizenship, rather than broad economic liberties against state regulation. In a 5-4 decision, Justice Samuel Freeman Miller, writing for the majority, upheld a Louisiana law granting a monopoly on livestock slaughtering in New Orleans, rejecting claims that it violated the Privileges or Immunities Clause by distinguishing between state and federal citizenship rights; the Court held that the Amendment aimed primarily to secure federal protections for freed slaves, such as access to ports and national waterways, without extending to common-law rights like the right to pursue a trade free from state interference.^[99] This ruling effectively neutralized the Clause as a vehicle for substantive economic rights, confining federal oversight to a limited class of national privileges and preserving states' authority over local matters.^[58] Subsequent decisions reinforced this restraint, as seen in United States v. Cruikshank (1876), where the Court overturned convictions under the Enforcement Act of 1870 for private violence against Black citizens during the Colfax Massacre of April 13, 1873. Chief Justice Morrison Waite's opinion emphasized that the Bill of Rights and Fourteenth Amendment constrained only federal action, not private conspiracies, and that rights like assembly and bearing arms applied against the government, not individuals; thus, federal prosecutors could not reach purely private acts of intimidation absent state involvement. The ruling underscored state sovereignty in policing internal affairs, limiting Congress's enforcement powers under Section 5 to correcting state denials of rights rather than broadly prohibiting private harms, which effectively hampered federal intervention in Southern racial violence. The Civil Rights Cases of 1883 further exemplified this narrow construction by invalidating key provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which had mandated equal access to public accommodations like inns and theaters regardless of race. In an 8-1 decision authored by Justice Joseph P. Bradley, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses authorized Congress to remedy only state action discriminating against citizens, not private discrimination by individuals or businesses; Bradley distinguished innkeepers as private actors unless states delegated public functions to them, rejecting broader interpretations that would federalize social relations. Justice John Marshall Harlan's lone dissent argued for Congress's authority to enforce equality in quasi-public spheres, but the majority's view prevailed, curtailing federal civil rights enforcement and signaling deference to states in regulating private conduct until state violations occurred. These early rulings collectively emphasized an originalist reading tied to the Amendment's post-Civil War context—safeguarding federal citizenship for freedmen—while resisting expansions that could erode federalism by imposing nationwide economic or social mandates.

Evolution of the Incorporation Doctrine

The selective incorporation doctrine, applying specific Bill of Rights protections to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, originated in Gitlow v. New York (1925), where the Supreme Court first held that states are bound by the First Amendment's free speech and free press guarantees, although it upheld Gitlow's conviction for distributing anarchist literature.^[100]^[101] This decision marked an initial departure from prior rulings like Barron v. Baltimore (1833), which had confined the Bill of Rights to federal actions, but incorporation remained limited until the post-1930s era.^[102] Incorporation accelerated during the Warren Court period (1953–1969), with the Court applying protections case-by-case based on whether they were deemed "fundamental to the American scheme of justice," as articulated in Palko v. Connecticut (1937), though later refined to favor verbatim application of federal standards.^[103] Key examples include Mapp v. Ohio (1961), which extended the Fourth Amendment's exclusionary rule for unreasonable searches to state courts, and subsequent rulings incorporating the Sixth Amendment right to counsel in Gideon v. Wainwright (1963) and the right to jury trial in Duncan v. Louisiana (1968).^[104]^[105] By the 1970s, nearly all provisions of the Bill of Rights applicable to criminal procedure—excluding the Third Amendment, Fifth Amendment grand jury requirement, and Seventh Amendment civil jury—had been incorporated, effectively federalizing state judicial processes and overriding variations in state constitutions.^[106] Originalist scholars, such as Raoul Berger, have critiqued this evolution as a departure from the Fourteenth Amendment's original meaning, arguing that the Due Process Clause was intended to secure procedural fairness against arbitrary state action rather than to transplant specific Bill of Rights protections, which would undermine the framers' respect for state autonomy and federalism.^[107] Berger contended that Reconstruction-era debates, led by figures like John Bingham, envisioned privileges or immunities as incorporating fundamental rights but not via due process, and that selective incorporation lacks historical warrant, representing judicial overreach that centralizes power in federal courts.^[108] Such critiques emphasize that the Amendment targeted post-Civil War abuses like black codes without intending wholesale uniformity, preserving states' ability to experiment with their own safeguards.^[109]

Substantive Due Process: From Economic Liberties to Personal Rights

Substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause protects certain fundamental liberties from arbitrary state deprivation, extending beyond mere procedural safeguards to substantive limits on legislative power.^[110] Originally rooted in common-law traditions against arbitrary governance, the Clause's text—"nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law"—primarily ensured fair procedures for deprivations, as evidenced by antebellum applications focused on process rather than policy outcomes.^[111] By the late nineteenth century, however, the Supreme Court began interpreting "liberty" to encompass substantive economic rights, marking an initial expansion that prioritized individual autonomy against regulatory overreach. The doctrine's economic phase peaked during the Lochner era (approximately 1897–1937), where the Court invalidated state laws interfering with freedom of contract. In Lochner v. New York, 198 U.S. 45 (1905), a 5–4 majority struck down a New York statute capping bakers' hours at ten per day or sixty per week, deeming it an unjustified infringement on the Due Process Clause's protection of contractual liberty between employers and workers.^[112]^[113] Justice Peckham's opinion emphasized that such regulation lacked a reasonable relation to public health or safety, reflecting framers' views of liberty as including economic self-determination free from class-based legislation favoring labor over business. This approach struck down over 200 economic regulations, including wage and price controls, on grounds that they exceeded police powers and violated substantive liberty.^[114] Economic substantive due process waned amid the Great Depression and New Deal pressures, culminating in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U.S. 379 (1937), where the Court upheld a Washington minimum-wage law for women, overruling prior precedents like Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923) and deferring to legislative economic judgments.^[115]^[116] Justice Hughes reasoned that states could regulate employment contracts to protect vulnerable workers, signaling the end of heightened scrutiny for economic liberties and a shift toward rational-basis review in commercial matters. This retreat aligned with broader judicial restraint, allowing federal and state expansions of regulatory authority without due process challenges.^[114] Post-1937, substantive due process pivoted to noneconomic personal rights, particularly privacy and autonomy. Early cases like Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) protected parental rights to direct education, but the modern turn came in Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), invalidating a state ban on contraceptives for married couples as violating a "penumbral" right to privacy inferred from Bill of Rights amendments and incorporated against states.^[117] Justice Douglas's plurality opinion framed marital intimacy as a fundamental liberty shielded from state intrusion, extending substantive protections to intimate conduct without direct textual enumeration.^[118] This privacy framework expanded in Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), where the Court held that the Due Process Clause encompassed a woman's right to abortion, applying strict scrutiny to state restrictions before fetal viability (around 24–28 weeks).^[119] Justice Blackmun located the right in personal liberty traditions, balancing it against state interests in maternal health (post-first trimester) and potential life (post-viability), though without historical consensus on abortion as a protected liberty.^[120] The decision influenced subsequent rulings on family and bodily autonomy but faced empirical critique for lacking deep roots in Anglo-American law, where abortion regulations dated to the nineteenth century.^[121] The arc's reversals underscore substantive due process's vulnerabilities to judicial invention. In Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, 597 U.S. 215 (2022), a 6–3 majority overruled Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), holding that abortion rights fail the "deeply rooted in history" test for unenumerated liberties and lack textual basis in the Constitution.^[122] Justice Alito's opinion criticized prior expansions as egregiously wrong, enabling unelected judges to impose moral policy nationwide and eroding federalism by centralizing authority over state-regulated matters like family and health.^[123] This return to democratic processes highlights causal risks of substantive due process: deviations from original procedural moorings invite overreach, as seen in fluctuating protections from economic contracts to contested personal choices, often amplifying federal influence at states' expense.^[124]

Equal Protection Clause Applications: Race, Gender, and Beyond

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld a Louisiana statute requiring racial segregation in railway accommodations, ruling that such "separate but equal" facilities did not violate the Equal Protection Clause so long as the accommodations were substantively equivalent.^[125]^[126] This doctrine permitted de jure segregation across public facilities for nearly six decades, enabling states to enforce racial classifications under a facade of equality, though empirical evidence often revealed stark disparities in quality and access.^[125] The "separate but equal" framework was repudiated in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), where the Court unanimously held that racial segregation in public schools inherently deprived minority children of equal educational opportunities, violating the Equal Protection Clause irrespective of facility parity.^[127]^[128] This decision, grounded in social science data on segregation's psychological harms, catalyzed desegregation efforts and laid foundational causal groundwork for subsequent civil rights legislation, though enforcement faced resistance via "massive resistance" tactics and delayed implementation until federal interventions in the 1960s and 1970s.^[129]^[130] Racial classifications now trigger strict scrutiny, requiring the government to demonstrate a compelling interest and narrow tailoring; this standard invalidated Virginia's ban on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia (1967), deeming racial distinctions "odious" and subjecting them to the "most rigid scrutiny."^[131]^[132] Strict scrutiny has similarly constrained affirmative action, as in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (2023), where the Court ruled 6-3 that race-conscious admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina lacked measurable objectives, perpetuated stereotypes, and deviated from the Equal Protection Clause's color-blind mandate by imposing penalties on non-favored racial groups—effectively "reverse discrimination" without sufficient justification.^[133]^[134] Proponents argue such programs remedy historical disparities, yet critics, including the majority opinion, contend they undermine merit-based equality and invite endless racial balancing, contradicting the Fourteenth Amendment's aim to eradicate caste-like systems rather than entrench them.^[133]^[134] Gender-based distinctions receive intermediate scrutiny, mandating an important governmental objective and substantial relation to achievement; this emerged in Craig v. Boren (1976), striking down an Oklahoma law permitting females over 18 but not males until 21 to purchase low-alcohol beer as an underinclusive discrimination lacking empirical support for traffic safety claims.^[135]^[136] Unlike strict scrutiny's near-fatal presumption, intermediate scrutiny allows classifications serving substantial ends, such as military combat exclusions upheld in Rostker v. Goldberg (1981) for conscription needs, balancing biological differences against equal protection without presuming invalidity.^[137] This tier accommodates causal realities like sex-based physical variances while rejecting arbitrary stereotypes, though it has expanded to invalidate policies like male-only draft registration absent updated justification. Other classifications, including age, disability, and economic status, typically invoke rational basis review—the lowest tier—upholding laws if rationally related to a legitimate state interest, permitting broad deference absent fundamental rights implications.^[138] This deferential standard sustains measures like age-based voting restrictions or wealth taxes, prioritizing legislative flexibility over heightened judicial intervention, though "animus" or pretextual applications may fail if no conceivable rational purpose exists.^[138] The tiered framework, while providing structured causality in adjudication, draws critique for subjective line-drawing—strict scrutiny's rarity of success (upheld in under 40% of cases historically) versus rational basis's near-universal deference—potentially incentivizing evasion through facially neutral policies with disparate impacts.^[138]

Controversies and Criticisms

Original Intent Versus Expansive Modern Readings

The framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, particularly Representative John A. Bingham, the primary architect of Section 1, intended its privileges or immunities, due process, and equal protection clauses to enforce fundamental civil rights protections specifically against state infringements targeting newly freed African Americans in the post-Civil War South.^[93]^[1] Bingham emphasized in congressional debates that the amendment empowered Congress to secure citizens' rights "against deprivation by any State," drawing from the Bill of Rights to prevent states from reenacting Black Codes that denied freed slaves basic liberties like contract enforcement and property ownership, without extending to broad unenumerated rights or general welfare provisions beyond this racial context.^[139] Similarly, Senator John Sherman supported the measure as a targeted response to Southern states' denial of equal civil status to former slaves, rejecting broader interpretations that would federalize all state laws unrelated to emancipation's aftermath.^[140] These debates, recorded in the Congressional Globe, reveal no evidence of intent for the clauses to incorporate evolving societal norms or substantive liberties disconnected from anti-slavery enforcement, as framers repeatedly invoked the amendment's necessity to counter discriminatory state actions against the "colored race" rather than universalize federal oversight of domestic policy.^[141] Historical application diverged from this narrow focus, with the amendment largely sidelined during the Progressive Era for expansive regulatory reforms, as courts initially construed its due process clause to protect economic contracts under Lochner v. New York (1905) but permitted racial segregation via Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), illustrating an empirical disconnect from framers' racial remediation goals.^[142]^[91] This selective invocation—prioritizing laissez-faire economics over egalitarian protections for African Americans—contrasts with mid-20th-century revivals that repurposed the clauses for nationwide centralization, such as incorporating personal autonomy rights unforeseen in 1868 ratification debates, despite the amendment's dormancy amid earlier state-level expansions of welfare and labor laws without federal intervention.^[94] Such shifts highlight causal tensions: the clauses' original tethering to congressional enforcement under Section 5 for freedmen's rights yielded to judicially driven reinterpretations, empirically enabling policy overrides absent democratic ratification of new meanings. Contemporary originalists advocate restoring the privileges or immunities clause—narrowed by the Slaughter-House Cases (1873) to federal citizenship perks—as the vehicle for faithful incorporation of Bill of Rights protections aligned with 1868 understandings, rather than expansive due process inventions.^[143] Critics of modern "living constitution" readings, however, contend that these judicial expansions embody supremacy doctrines where unelected courts impose substantive policy preferences, supplanting Congress's explicit Section 5 role and undermining self-government by converting textual limits into elastic mandates for unratified rights like privacy derivations untethered from anti-slavery origins.^[144]^[145] This tension persists, as original meaning prioritizes verifiable 1860s public understandings over evolving judicial glosses, with empirical evidence from ratification records showing framers' rejection of amendments that would have explicitly broadened beyond racial equality enforcement.^[146]

Federalism Erosion and Centralization of Power

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, was designed to remedy targeted abuses by former Confederate states against freed slaves and other citizens, particularly through prohibitions on state denial of privileges or immunities, due process, and equal protection, without intending a wholesale transfer of policymaking authority to the federal government.^[147] Its framers, including key figures like Representative John Bingham, emphasized remedial constraints under Section 5, requiring congressional enforcement to be proportionate and congruent to documented state violations, thereby maintaining the pre-existing federal-state equilibrium where states retained primary sovereignty over domestic affairs.^[148] This original framework reflected Reconstruction Republicans' focus on curbing specific racial discriminations and civil rights denials, not authorizing expansive national oversight that could supplant state experimentation in areas like criminal law or local governance.^[29] Subsequent judicial developments, particularly the selective incorporation doctrine applied through the Due Process Clause, progressively federalized nearly all provisions of the Bill of Rights—originally binding only the federal government per Barron v. Baltimore (1833)—imposing uniform national standards on states for rights including free speech (Gitlow v. New York, 1925), unreasonable searches (Mapp v. Ohio, 1961), and speedy trials (Klopfer v. North Carolina, 1967).^[149]^[150] By the mid-20th century, this had incorporated ten of the first eight amendments' protections, transforming state autonomy by subjecting diverse local procedures—such as varying evidentiary rules or assembly regulations—to centralized Supreme Court review and invalidation.^[151] The causal result was a marked reduction in state-level variation: pre-incorporation, states operated as "laboratories of democracy" with independent interpretations of common-law rights, allowing policy divergence (e.g., differing libel standards or militia regulations); post-incorporation, federal due process mandates homogenized outcomes, limiting innovation and increasing reliance on national precedents over local traditions.^[149] This centralization has drawn criticism for inverting the amendment's intent, as evidenced by congressional debates where opponents like Senator Reverdy Johnson warned against provisions that could enable federal "arbitrary assumption of power" and consolidate authority akin to the unitary systems rejected during the founding era.^[29] Originalist analyses contend that the shift facilitated the regulatory state's expansion by providing a constitutional hook for federal courts to override state economic and procedural choices, contravening framers' explicit aversion to national dominance expressed in Bingham's assurances that the amendment would not "transfer[]... general jurisdiction" from states.^[148]^[152] Empirical markers of this erosion include the surge in Supreme Court reversals of state laws under the Fourteenth Amendment—from fewer than 10 major cases pre-1920 to over 150 by 2000—correlating with diminished state discretion in core functions like law enforcement and property regulation.^[4] Such dynamics, critics argue, prioritized remedial uniformity over the decentralized structure that had sustained American federalism since 1789, fostering dependency on federal adjudication rather than state self-correction.^[153]

Judicial Activism in Substantive Due Process and Equal Protection

The doctrine of substantive due process, initially applied in Lochner v. New York (1905) to invalidate state regulations on economic liberties such as maximum working hours for bakers under the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause, represented an early judicial imposition of unenumerated rights beyond procedural protections.^[112] This approach was largely abandoned by the 1930s amid criticisms of judicial interference with legislative economic policy, as seen in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish (1937), which upheld minimum wage laws. However, substantive due process was revived in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), where the Court struck down a state ban on contraceptives for married couples by inferring a right to privacy from "penumbras" of the Bill of Rights incorporated via the Fourteenth Amendment, marking a pivot from economic to personal autonomies without textual or historical anchorage.^[117] This evolution culminated in Roe v. Wade (1973), which extended the privacy rationale to declare abortion a fundamental right, devising a trimester framework to balance state interests despite lacking deep roots in the nation's history or traditions, thereby enabling judges to define policy thresholds unverifiable by empirical standards or original constitutional design.^[120] Critics, including dissenting justices, contended that such rulings substituted judicial value judgments for democratic processes, fabricating liberties not enumerated and risking arbitrary expansions, as the Due Process Clause textually limits government to fair procedures rather than substantive outcomes.^[122] The unverifiable assertion of "fundamental" status allowed causal overreach, where courts preempted legislative experimentation on issues like fetal viability without evidence-based consensus. Under the Equal Protection Clause, originally intended to secure civil rights for freed slaves against racial discrimination in the post-Civil War context, as evidenced by congressional debates focusing on Black citizenship and state abuses, judicial applications expanded to non-racial classifications.^[68] In Romer v. Evans (1996), the Court invalidated a Colorado constitutional amendment prohibiting special protections for sexual orientation under a novel "animus" theory within rational basis review, despite the clause's historical emphasis on racial equality and no textual mandate for heightened scrutiny of moral or behavioral distinctions.^[154] Justice Scalia's dissent highlighted this as overstepping judicial bounds, arguing the ruling nullified a democratic voter initiative without suspect-class justification, deviating from the amendment's empirical focus on remedying racial subjugation.^[155] The 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization offered a partial correction by overruling Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), holding that the Constitution confers no abortion right due to its absence from text, history, or tradition, and critiquing substantive due process for inviting "dangerous" judicial policymaking that bypasses elected branches.^[122] By returning regulation to state legislatures, Dobbs underscored the perils of undemocratic rulings that impose nationwide edicts on contested moral questions, though it preserved substantive due process for other unenumerated rights, leaving potential for future deviations.^[122] This shift emphasized causal realism, prioritizing verifiable historical evidence over abstract judicial intuitions.

Section 3 Enforcement and Political Weaponization

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment has seen limited enforcement historically, largely due to congressional amnesties that restored eligibility to most disqualified individuals shortly after Reconstruction. The Amnesty Act of May 22, 1872, removed Section 3 disabilities from all but a small number of former Confederate leaders, enabling their return to public office and effectively sidelining the provision for subsequent decades.^[84] Subsequent amnesties in 1898 and 1906 further diminished its application, reflecting a congressional preference for national reconciliation over perpetual disqualification.^[83] Recent disputes over Section 3 enforcement peaked following the January 6, 2021, Capitol events, with attempts to disqualify former President Donald Trump from state ballots on grounds of alleged insurrectionary involvement. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court initially ruled Trump ineligible for the 2024 presidential primary ballot under Section 3, but this was overturned unanimously by the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson on March 4, 2024.^[156] The Court held that states lack unilateral authority to disqualify candidates for federal offices like the presidency absent congressional legislation, emphasizing the need for uniform national standards to avoid a patchwork of state-level disqualifications that could disenfranchise voters across jurisdictions.^[156] This ruling underscored Section 3's non-self-executing nature for presidential elections, requiring affirmative action by Congress under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment to enforce against federal officeholders.^[157] Efforts to apply Section 3 to January 6 participants empirically faltered due to evidentiary thresholds, including requirements for prior oath-taking as an officeholder and direct engagement in insurrection. Federal courts dismissed multiple challenges against Trump and others, finding insufficient proof of insurrectionary acts under the clause's terms, as no congressional declaration of insurrection occurred and criminal convictions under the federal insurrection statute (18 U.S.C. § 2383) were absent in relevant cases.^[158] For instance, a 2022 disqualification of a New Mexico county commissioner for January 6 participation succeeded only because he held office and admitted oath-violating conduct, but such outcomes remained rare amid broader failures to establish the requisite findings.^[159] Critics, including Supreme Court justices in concurring opinions, warned against post-hoc labeling of political disputes as "insurrections," noting the clause's original focus on Civil War-era rebellion rather than expansive modern interpretations.^[156] The partisan risks of selective Section 3 enforcement pose threats to electoral integrity, as uneven application—predominantly targeting one political side—invites reciprocal abuse and erodes public confidence in outcomes. Without congressional guardrails, state-level or judicial invocations could enable factions to disqualify opponents preemptively, inverting the clause's intent to ensure loyalty in governance into a tool for circumventing voter choice.^[160] This dynamic, evident in the one-sided January 6 litigation absent parallel scrutiny of other unrest, highlights enforcement's potential to centralize disqualification power in unelected actors, contravening the Amendment's post-war aim of stabilizing governance through defined, non-arbitrary loyalty tests.^[161]

Impact and Legacy

Advancements in Civil Rights for Freed Slaves

The Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified on July 9, 1868, explicitly granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction, thereby overturning the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, which had denied citizenship to African Americans.^[162] This provision constitutionalized the principle of birthright citizenship, directly repudiating the prior ruling that blacks could never be citizens regardless of birthplace or status.^[163] By establishing federal citizenship as primary, it provided a legal foundation to challenge state-level restrictions on freed slaves, including precursors to Jim Crow laws such as the Black Codes enacted in Southern states immediately after the Civil War.^[23] The amendment's protections, reinforced by federal Enforcement Acts, enabled significant initial advancements in political participation for freed slaves. The Enforcement Act of 1870, also known as the First Ku Klux Klan Act, criminalized interference with voting rights on the basis of race and prohibited state officials from discriminating in voter registration against former slaves.^[95]^[164] By 1868, over 80 percent of eligible black men in the South had registered to vote, reflecting a sharp reduction in state-imposed barriers to suffrage and office-holding that had persisted under Black Codes limiting freedmen's mobility, contracts, and assembly.^[17] This facilitated the election of approximately 1,500 African American officeholders during Reconstruction (1865–1877), including 16 members of the U.S. Congress—such as Hiram Revels, the first black senator, seated in 1870, and Joseph Rainey, the first black representative, also in 1870.^[165] In Reconstruction-era governments, black participation drove tangible gains, particularly in public education and legal equality. African American delegates, comprising a majority of Republican voters in Southern states, helped revise state constitutions to establish free public school systems, prioritizing education for black children and boosting literacy rates among the freed population.^[166]^[167] These Republican-led state governments, formed under congressional Reconstruction Acts, initially curtailed discriminatory state practices by integrating blacks into juries, militias, and legislatures, though such advancements proved temporary following the federal troop withdrawals after the Compromise of 1877.^[168]^[165]

Broader Societal and Legal Transformations

The Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection and due process clauses established a constitutional basis for challenging state-sanctioned discrimination, symbolically underpinning mid-20th-century civil rights legislation despite the 1964 Civil Rights Act's primary reliance on congressional commerce authority to ban segregation in public facilities and employment discrimination.^[169] This framework enabled federal courts to enforce national standards against disparate state practices, fostering societal shifts toward integrated public spheres, including transportation and accommodations, where de jure barriers eroded post-1950s litigation invoking the Amendment.^[1] Through the incorporation doctrine, the Amendment standardized Bill of Rights protections against states, progressively applying safeguards like freedom of speech and fair trial rights nationwide via due process, with the Supreme Court incorporating nearly all provisions by the late 20th century and markedly increasing federal invalidations of state laws from the 1920s onward.^[151] This nationalization reduced interstate disparities in civil liberties, empirically reflected in heightened litigation volumes addressing state infringements, such as criminal procedure reforms that aligned local practices with federal minima by the 1960s.^[170] In education, the Amendment catalyzed desegregation via Brown v. Board of Education (1954), which struck down racially separate schools as violating equal protection, prompting gradual implementation amid resistance; Southern Black enrollment in majority-white schools climbed from under 2% in 1964 to peaks exceeding 40% by the 1970s-1980s following intensified federal mandates like Green v. County School Board (1968).^[171]^[172] Employment transformations paralleled this, as equal protection principles informed challenges to state-endorsed barriers, yielding integrated workplaces through intertwined constitutional and statutory enforcement, though measurable gains in minority hiring accelerated post-1964 amid broader legal uniformity.^[130]

Critiques of Unintended Consequences and Overreach

Critics argue that the Fourteenth Amendment, despite its Reconstruction-era intent to protect the civil rights of freed slaves, inadvertently enabled judicial interpretations that permitted the resurgence of state-sanctioned racial segregation. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court upheld Louisiana's Separate Car Act requiring racial separation in public accommodations, ruling that the Amendment's equal protection clause did not bar "separate but equal" facilities so long as they were substantively equivalent.^[173] This decision, rendered just three decades after ratification, allowed Southern states to enact Jim Crow laws systematically disadvantaging blacks, undermining the Amendment's privileges or immunities and equal protection guarantees intended to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1866.^[174] Scholarly analyses highlight this as an unintended failure of the Amendment's text to constrain narrow judicial readings, resulting in over a half-century of de jure segregation until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) partially rectified it.^[175] Expansive post-Lochner applications of substantive due process have drawn critique for suppressing the Amendment's original safeguards of economic liberties, thereby facilitating the growth of the administrative welfare state. During the Lochner era (roughly 1897–1937), courts invoked the due process clause to strike down state regulations infringing freedom of contract and property rights, aligning with framers' views that the Amendment incorporated protections akin to those in the Fifth Amendment against arbitrary deprivation.^[173] However, the 1937 shift in cases like West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish deferred to legislative economic interventions, enabling New Deal programs that expanded federal regulatory power without textual warrant, originalists contend.^[176] This pivot, prioritizing noneconomic personal rights over contract and property freedoms, is seen as judicial overreach that eroded the Amendment's role in limiting state economic intrusions, contributing causally to unchecked welfare expansions by the mid-20th century.^[62] The Amendment's Section 5 enforcement power and incorporation doctrine have been faulted for accelerating federalism's erosion, centralizing authority in the national government and judiciary at states' expense. Through decisions beginning with Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Supreme Court selectively incorporated Bill of Rights provisions against states via due process, subjecting diverse state policies to uniform federal standards—a process Raoul Berger's Government by Judiciary (1977) deems ahistorical, as Reconstruction framers aimed to remedy racial discrimination without broadly federalizing rights adjudication.^[177] This centralization, per federalism originalists, fostered states' increasing reliance on Washington for funding and policy, with federal grants-in-aid rising from under 1% of state revenues in 1902 to over 20% by 1970, diminishing local sovereignty and incentivizing compliance with D.C. mandates.^[148] Such dynamics, critics assert, politicized the Amendment by transforming it into a tool for nationwide uniformity, unintendedly weakening the constitutional balance of divided powers.^[177]

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Lochner v. New York | 198 U.S. 45 (1905)
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[115]
West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish | 300 U.S. 379 (1937)
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[PDF] 19-1392 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (06/24/2022)
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Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (2022)
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[124]
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Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) - National Archives
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Plessy v. Ferguson - Oyez
A case in which the Court held that state-mandated segregation laws did not violate the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
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[128]
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[129]
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka | 347 U.S. 483 (1954)
The case ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits states from segregating public school students by race, even if facilities are equal.<|separator|>
[130]
Brown v. Board of Education | The Case that Changed America
On May 17, 1954, a decision in the Brown v. Board of Education case declared the “separate but equal” doctrine unconstitutional.
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Loving v. Virginia | Oyez
In a unanimous decision, the Court held that distinctions drawn according to race were generally "odious to a free people" and were subject to "the most rigid ...
[132]
Loving v. Virginia | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
The Court, in an opinion written by Chief Justice Warren, rejected Virginia's arguments and applied strict scrutiny to their prohibition on interracial marriage ...
[133]
Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard ...
The Harvard admissions program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 majority opinion.
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[PDF] 20-1199 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows ...
Jun 29, 2023 · The question pre- sented is whether the admissions systems used by Harvard College and UNC are lawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the ...
[135]
Craig v. Boren | 429 U.S. 190 (1976)
Oklahoma's gender-based differential constitutes an invidious discrimination against males 18-20 years of age in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
[136]
Craig v. Boren | Oyez
A case in which the Court decided that having different ages at which men and women can drink alcoholic beverages was against the Equal Protection Clause of ...
[137]
intermediate scrutiny | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Intermediate scrutiny is used in equal protection challenges to gender classifications, as well as in some First Amendment cases.Missing: race | Show results with:race
[138]
equal protection | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
These include strict scrutiny, intermediate scrutiny, and rational basis review. The level applied depends on the nature of the classification and the rights ...
[139]
[PDF] Speech Introducing the Fourteenth Amendment by John Bingham ...
Jun 4, 2020 · This constitutional amendment proposes to give Congress "power to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper to secure to the citizens of ...Missing: intent | Show results with:intent<|separator|>
[140]
[PDF] Searching for the Intent of the Framers of Fourteenth Amendment
congressional action taken primarily for the protection of the former slaves receive such widespread support from a racist society? That question is ...
[141]
[PDF] The Departure from the Original Intent of the 14th Amendment. By ...
Jan 28, 2023 · The equal protection clause requires that all individuals be treated equally under the law. Therefore, no law may treat another differently or ...
[142]
[PDF] THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT: RECALLING WHAT THE ...
61. At any rate, much of the vision for national protection of fundamental rights was quickly forgotten or simply ignored by the Supreme Court. 1. The Bill of ...
[143]
[PDF] Originalism and the Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment
have repealed their rescission resolutions or voted again to re-ratify: Oregon did so in 1973; New Jersey and Ohio did so in 2003.267 On top of that, four ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[144]
[PDF] Congressional Originalism
As an initial matter, many originalists reject judicial supremacy in favor of departmentalism. ... ject Supreme Court interpretations with which they disagree. It ...
[145]
A Deeper Originalism: From Court-Centered Jurisprudence to ...
Dec 20, 2023 · If originalism is to move in this direction, it must avoid the exploitation of judicial discretion as the entrée to judicial supremacy, first by ...
[146]
[PDF] Fourteenth Amendment Originalism
An originalist who believes that the Fourteenth Amendment incorpo- rated against state governments some or all of the rights protected by the Bill of Rights ...
[147]
The Fourteenth Amendment Enforcement Clause | Constitution Center
Moreover, the remedies provided by federal statures must be “proportionate” and “congruent” to the scope of proven constitutional violations.
[148]
[PDF] Federalism and the Original Fourteenth Amendment
[the States' abuses of power] not by an arbitrary assumption of power, but by amending the Constitution of the United States, expressly prohibiting the States.Missing: intent | Show results with:intent
[149]
incorporation doctrine | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Under selective incorporation, the Supreme Court incorporated certain parts of certain amendments, rather than incorporating an entire amendment at once. Some ...Missing: evolution | Show results with:evolution
[150]
Amdt14.S1.4.1 Overview of Incorporation of the Bill of Rights
The Bill of Rights, comprising the first ten amendments to the Constitution, protects certain rights belonging to individuals and states against infringement ...Missing: experimentation | Show results with:experimentation
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[PDF] The Incorporation of the Bill of Rights: After 1947 - SMU Scholar
The decision to incorporate most of the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states, “transformed the basic structure of constitutional safeguards for ...Missing: federalization reduction
[152]
[PDF] The Fourteenth Amendment: the Framers' Design - Scholar Commons
Addressing this very issue, Justice Harlan declared: "When the Court disregards the express intent and understanding of the Framers, it has invaded the realm ...Missing: consolidation | Show results with:consolidation
[153]
Federalism-Based Limitations on Congressional Power: An Overview
Jan 31, 2023 · Federalism is said to be a "check on abuses of government power," because "a healthy balance of power between the States and the Federal ...
[154]
Romer v. Evans | 517 U.S. 620 (1996)
The central thesis of the Court's reasoning is that any group is denied equal protection when, to obtain advantage (or, presumably, to avoid disadvantage), it ...
[155]
Romer, Governor of Colorado, et al. v. Evans et al., 517 U.S. 620 ...
May 20, 1996 · The trial court rejected respondents' argument that homosexuals constitute a "suspect" or "quasi suspect" class, and respondents elected not to ...<|separator|>
[156]
[PDF] 23-719 Trump v. Anderson (03/04/2024) - Supreme Court
Mar 4, 2024 · Trump, who seeks the Presidential nomination of the Republican Party in this year's election, from becoming President again. The Colorado ...
[157]
Trump v. Anderson and Enforcement of the Insurrection Clause ...
Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3: No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, ...
[158]
Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment - Congress.gov
Anderson issued a per curiam opinion that unanimously held that the Colorado Supreme Court erred in ordering former President Trump excluded from the 2024 ...
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Historical Context, Current Challenges & Recommendations ...
Sep 29, 2022 · The basic precept of Section 3 is to ensure that any officeholder who violates an oath to uphold the Constitution by participating in an insurrection is barred ...
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What the Supreme Court Got Wrong in Trump v. Anderson
... Amendment to disqualify former President Donald Trump from running for the presidency in the 2024 election. Section 3, the Court ruled, is not self-enforcing.
[161]
Section 3 Disqualification Answers—and Many More Questions
Mar 4, 2024 · The Supreme Court's ruling in Trump v. Anderson punts several questions about disqualifying Donald Trump under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.
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Interpretation: The Citizenship Clause | Constitution Center
Section 5. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State ...
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Reconstructing Citizenship
to define African Americans as equal ...
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Civil Rights Act of 1870 | Federal Judicial Center
The act provided criminal penalties for those attempting to prevent African Americans from voting by using or threatening to use violence or engaging in other ...
[165]
Reconstruction and Black Political Activism - History, Art & Archives
The panel, known as the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, was made up of nine Representatives and six Senators. ... When Congress approved the Fourteenth ...<|separator|>
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Reconstruction (U.S. National Park Service)
Jan 29, 2024 · Reconstruction (1865-1877), the period that followed the American Civil War, is perhaps the most controversial era in American history.
[167]
The Legacy of the Reconstruction Era's Black Political Leaders
Feb 7, 2022 · Historians say one of Black officeholders' biggest contribution was their role in establishing state-sponsored public schools. Black lawmakers ...
[168]
Political and socioeconomic effects of Reconstruction in the ... - CEPR
Mar 31, 2024 · Reconstruction led to higher education, literacy, occupational status, and property ownership among the Black population. But changing laws and ...
[169]
Civil Rights Act (1964) | National Archives
Feb 8, 2022 · It banned discriminatory practices in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries, and public schools.
[170]
[PDF] The Congruent Constitution (Part One): Incorporation
Dec 10, 2022 · Justice Black advanced the theory that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment had intended for the Amendment to incorporate the Bill of Rights, ...
[171]
The Return of School Segregation in Eight Charts | FRONTLINE - PBS
Jul 15, 2014 · In the wake of the Brown decision, the percentage of black students in majority white southern schools went from zero to a peak of 43.5 percent ...
[172]
70 years after Brown v. Board of Education, new research shows ...
May 6, 2024 · The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
[173]
[PDF] Does the Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment Protect ...
In my view, the evidence that the original meaning Fourteenth Amendment protects rights of private property and contract is overwhelming.
[174]
[PDF] Unintended Consequences of the Fourteenth Amendment and What ...
I suggest those unintended consequences include the effect of the Citizenship Clause on the force of the Fourteenth Amendment; the unintended impotency of the ...Missing: critiques centralization
[175]
[PDF] The Once and Future Equal Protection Doctrine?
Aynes, Unintended. Consequences of the Fourteenth Amendment and What They Tell Us About Its Interpretation, 39. AKRON L. REV. 289, 303-07 (2006) (describing ...
[176]
The 14th Amendment Protects Economic Liberties
Jan 14, 2016 · Its principal argument against the position that Privileges or Immunities Clause protected such liberties was to argue that it protected a ...
[177]
[PDF] Government by Judiciary: The Transformation of the Fourteenth ...
In Part I of Government by Judiciary, Professor. Berger analyzes the legislative history of the amendment and con- cludes that its framers saw their language as ...Missing: critique | Show results with:critique