essay on the 14th amendment

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14th Amendment

By: History.com Editors

Updated: December 20, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” One of three amendments passed during the Reconstruction era to abolish slavery and establish civil and legal rights for Black Americans, it became the basis for many landmark Supreme Court decisions over the years.

In its later sections, the 14th Amendment authorized the federal government to punish states that violated or abridged their citizens’ right to vote by proportionally reducing the states’ representation in Congress, and mandated that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States could not hold civil, military or elected office (without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate).

It also upheld the national debt, but exempted federal and state governments from paying any debts incurred by the former Confederate states.

Reconstruction

Abraham Lincoln ’s assassination in April 1865 left his successor, President Andrew Johnson , to preside over the complex process of incorporating former Confederate states back into the Union after the Civil War and establishing former enslaved people as free and equal citizens.

Johnson, a Democrat (and former slaveholder) from Tennessee , supported emancipation, but he differed greatly from the Republican-controlled Congress in his view of how Reconstruction should proceed. Johnson showed relative leniency toward the former Confederate states as they were reintroduced into the Union.

But many northerners were outraged when the newly elected southern state legislatures—largely dominated by former Confederate leaders—enacted black codes , which were repressive laws that strictly regulated the behavior of Black citizens and effectively kept them dependent on white planters.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

In creating the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress was using the authority given it to enforce the newly ratified 13th Amendment , which abolished slavery, and protect the rights of Black Americans.

Johnson vetoed the bill, and though Congress successfully overrode his veto and made it into law in April 1866—the first time in history that Congress overrode a presidential veto of a major bill—even some Republicans thought another amendment was necessary to provide firm constitutional grounds for the new legislation.

Thaddeus Stevens

In late April, Representative Thaddeus Stevens introduced a plan that combined several different legislative proposals (civil rights for Black people, how to apportion representatives in Congress, punitive measures against the former Confederate States of America and repudiation of Confederate war debt), into a single constitutional amendment. After the House and Senate both voted on the amendment by June 1866, it was submitted to the states for ratification.

President Johnson made clear his opposition to the 14th Amendment as it made its way through the ratification process, but Congressional elections in late 1866 gave Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate.

Southern states also resisted, but Congress required them to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments as a condition of regaining representation in Congress, and the ongoing presence of the Union Army in the former Confederate states ensured their compliance.

On July 9, 1868, Louisiana and South Carolina voted to ratify the 14th Amendment, making up the necessary three-fourths majority .

Section One: 14th Amendment

The opening sentence of Section One of the 14th Amendment defined U.S. citizenship: “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.”

This clearly repudiated the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision , in which Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that a Black man, even if born free, could not claim rights of citizenship under the federal constitution.

Section One's next clause was: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” This greatly expanded the civil and legal rights of all American citizens by protecting them from infringement by the states as well as by the federal government.

The third clause, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” expanded the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to apply to the states as well as the federal government.

Over time, the Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to guarantee a wide array of rights against infringement by the states, including those enumerated in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, right to bear arms, etc.) as well as the right to privacy and other fundamental rights not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution .

Finally, the “equal protection clause” (“nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”) was clearly intended to stop state governments from discriminating against Black Americans, and over the years would play a key role in many landmark civil rights cases.

Section Two: 14th Amendment

Section Two of the 14th Amendment repealed the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3) of the original Constitution, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning congressional representation. With slavery outlawed by the 13th Amendment, this clarified that all residents, regardless of race, should be counted as one whole person. This section also guaranteed that all male citizens over age 21, no matter their race, had a right to vote.

Southern states continued to deny Black men the right to vote using a collection of state and local statutes during the  Jim Crow era. Subsequent amendments to the Constitution granted women the right to vote and lowered the legal voting age to 18.

Section Three: 14th Amendment

Section Three of the amendment, gave Congress the authority to bar public officials, who took an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, from holding office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution. The intent was to prevent the president from allowing former leaders of the Confederacy to regain power within the U.S. government after securing a presidential pardon. It states that a two-thirds majority vote in Congress is required to allow public officials who had engaged in rebellion to regain the rights of American citizenship and hold government or military office.

It states that: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Section Four: 14th Amendment

Section Four of the 14th Amendment states 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." Historians believe the clause was intended to ensure the federal government would not repudiate its debts, as some former Confederate states had done.

It also prohibited payment of any debt owed to the defunct Confederate States of America and banned any payments to former enslavers as compensation for the loss of human "property" (enslaved people).

Section Five: 14th Amendment

The fifth and final section of the 14th Amendment (“Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”) echoed a similar enforcement clause in the 13th Amendment.

In giving Congress power to pass laws to safeguard the sweeping provisions of Section One, in particular, the 14th Amendment effectively altered the balance of power between the federal and state governments in the United States.

Nearly a century later, Congress used this authority to pass landmark civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 .

Impact of the 14th Amendment

In its early decisions involving the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court often limited the application of its protections on a state and local level.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court ruled that racially segregated public facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, a decision that would help establish infamous Jim Crow laws throughout the South for decades to come.

But beginning in the 1920s, the Supreme Court increasingly applied the protections of the 14th Amendment on the state and local level. Ruling on appeal in the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York , the Court stated that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protected the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech from infringement by the state as well as the federal government.

And in its famous 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , the Supreme Court overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson , ruling that segregated public schools did in fact violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In other landmark rulings, the Supreme Court has cited the 14th Amendment in cases involving the use of contraception (1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut ), interracial marriage (1967’s Loving v. Virginia ), abortion (1973’s Roe v. Wade ), a highly contested presidential election (2000’s Bush v. Gore ), gun rights (2010’s McDonald v. Chicago ) and same-sex marriage (2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges ).

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Amendment XIV, Constitution Center . Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography ( New York : Random House, 2005). Fourteenth Amendment, HarpWeek . 10 Huge Supreme Court Cases About the 14th Amendment, Constitution Center .

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The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified on July 9, 1868. The amendment granted citizenship to those born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed freedom, due process, and equal protection under the law to all Americans. In doing so, it expanded the scope of the Constitution’s protection of individual liberty; now the Constitution protected rights not only from infringement by the federal government, but from infringement by state and local government as well.

The Fourteenth Amendment’s ratification generated some controversy for a time, particularly from legal scholars of the South who claimed that the amendment was invalid because of its ratification process. Despite withdrawing their approval of the amendment, two states (Ohio and New Jersey) were counted as ratifiers of the amendment. Aware of this difficulty, Secretary of State Seward waited until Alabama and Georgia had additionally ratified before officially certifying the Fourteenth Amendment on July 28. Southerners still argued that the amendment was invalid, however, because the beaten southern states, then ruled by federal military commissions, were forced to ratify the amendment in order to regain their full legal status.

Since the 1860s,  all of the originally dissenting states have approved the Fourteenth Amendment, putting to rest any question of its legal status. A number of landmark Supreme Court cases have relied on Section 1’s provisions for due process, equal protection, and privileges and immunities for all U.S. citizens.

Below is a collection of resources recognizing this important piece of American law. Browse these resources or jump from section to section by clicking the links below:

Full text of the Fourteenth Amendment

Relevant supreme court cases from the first amendment library.

Selected online resources

Commentary and articles from JMC fellows

Amendment XIV Section 1. 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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. Section 4. 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. But 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, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Explore the 14th Amendment at NCC’s Interactive Constitution >>

From JMC’s First Amendment Library:

Gitlow v. New York (1925)

Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bill of Rights applied only to the federal government, and did not restrict state legislatures. In Gitlow , the Supreme Court decided that the Fourteenth Amendment extended the freedom of speech and press provisions in the Bill of Rights to apply to the individual states. During the first Red Scare in the wake of World War I, Benjamin Gitlow was charged under New York’s “Anarchy Law of 1902” for publishing a “Left Wing Manifesto” in a socialist newspaper. The court upheld Gitlow’s conviction, with vigorous dissents from Justice Brandeis and Justice Holmes, but in doing so ruled that the case fell under federal authority.

Read more about Gitlow v. New York >>

Cantwell v. Connecticut (1940)

In Cantwell v. Connecticut , the Court applied the Free Exercise Clause to state and local government for the first time. Prior to the Fourteenth Amendment, constitutional rights, such as those enumerated in the Bill of Rights, applied only to the federal government. In the Cantwell decision, the Free Exercise clause from the First Amendment was “incorporated” into the Court’s understanding of the protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment against both federal and state authority.

Read more about Cantwell v. Connecticut >>

Everson v. Board of Education (1947)

The Court examined whether a New Jersey law allowing reimbursements to parents who sent their children on buses operated by the public transportation system to public and private schools, including parochial Catholic schools, was indirect aid to religion and thus a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. In a 5-4 decision, the Court ruled that the law was constitutional, because the transportation reimbursements were provided to all students regardless of religion. Also, the reimbursements were made directly to parents and not to any religious institution. This case also applied the Establishment Clause to the actions of state governments.

Read more about Everson v. Board of Education >>

Selected Online Resources

Selected online resources on the Fourteenth Amendment:

National Constitution Center’s Interactive Constitution

The National Constitution Center offers a collection of introductory essays by top liberal and conservative legal scholars that give overviews of each clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as agreed upon by both authors, as well as separate brief statements of these scholars’ disagreements about the meaning of each clause.

Visit NCC’s Interactive Constitution >>

The Library of Congress Web Guide to the Fourteenth Amendment

The Library of Congress has amassed a variety of resources on the Fourteenth Amendment, including primary documents from the time of ratification and related exhibitions and websites.

Explore the Library of Congress web guide >>

Harper’s Weekly Resources on the Fourteenth Amendment

Harper’s Weekly was one of the most widely read journals during the Civil War era. HarpWeek , an organization that has indexed all of Harper’s Weekly , has a webpage devoted to the journal’s coverage of the Fourteenth Amendment. The primary source materials on the site are include editorials, stories, illustrations, cartoons, as well as documents from key political and military figures of the time. Additionally, HarpWeek has added an annotated timeline, biographical sketches, and a glossary of terms.

Visit the HarpWeek Fourteenth Amendment page >>

The Heritage Guide to the Constitution

The Heritage Foundation’s Guide to the Constitution includes scholarly essays on each component of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Explore Heritage’s essays on the Fourteenth Amendment >>

* If you are a JMC fellow who’s published on the Fourteenth Amendment or its history and controversies, and would like your work included here, send it to us at [email protected] . 

Commentary and articles from JMC fellows:

The Impact of the Fourteenth Amendment

Rogers Smith, “Birthright Citizenship and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 and 2008.” ( University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law 11, 2009)

Keith E. Whittington (co-author), American Constitutionalism: Powers, Rights, and Liberties . (Oxford University Press, 2014) TEXTBOOK

Keith E. Whittington, “Congress Before the Lochner Court.” ( Boston University Law Review 85.3, 2005)

Michael Zuckert, “Congressional Power under the Fourteenth Amendment.” ( Constitutional Commentary 3.123, 1986)

Michael Zuckert, “The Fourteenth Amendment.” ( Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia , Greenwood Press, 2005)

Reconstruction

Keith E. Whittington, “The Road Not Taken: Dred Scott, Constitutional Law, and Political Questions.” ( Journal of Politics 63.2, 2001)

Incorporation

George Thomas, “The Riddle of the Fourteenth Amendment: A Reply to Professor Wildenthal.” ( Ohio State Law Journal 68, 2007)

The Equal Protection Clause

Rogers Smith, “Equal Protection Remedies: The Errors of Liberal Ways and Means.” ( Journal of Political Philosophy 1.3, 1993)

The Due Process Clause and Privileges or Immunities Clause

George Thomas, “Who’s Afraid of Original Meaning?” ( Policy Review , Hoover Institution, December 2010 & January 2011)

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The Fourteenth Amendment and Incorporation

The Bill of Rights originally applied only to the national government. Given the concerns about centralized power shared by Federalist and Anti-Federalists alike, this is no surprise. Federalist arguments for strong national power always presupposed strong power in states as well. Tellingly, all the states who proposed any amendments at all suggested the principle of the Tenth Amendment: if the Constitution does not give the national government a certain power, that power is kept by the states and the people. The idea that a distant national government knew better than the people of each individual state what kinds of laws that state should have would have been puzzling to most people during the Founding era and for the first century of the republic.

Not long after the amendment was ratified, its Due Process Clause became the subject of scrutiny. What did it mean for a state to deprive a citizen of life, liberty, or property without due process of law? What was “liberty”? What was “due process”?

The Supreme Court building of the United States.

The Supreme Court would begin to tackle these questions. In the case of U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), the Court held that the First Amendment right to freely assemble and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms did not apply to state governments. States could limit these rights without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

Over the next seventy-five years, the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment increased. It used the Due Process clause to strike down many state laws and to incorporate parts of the Bill of Rights.

In the process of using its power to bring the states under the provisions of the Bill of Rights, several Supreme Court justices wondered how far incorporation should go. In 1937, Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote that the Court was “selectively incorporating” rights it considered “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.” These fundamental rights, Cardozo added, included only those “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

Justice Benjamin Cardozo

Cardozo’s words, unfortunately, give little guidance for determining what rights are fundamental. The most famous debate on incorporation was waged between Justices Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter. Dissenting in  Adamson v. California  (1947), Black supported “total incorporation,” the idea that every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to the states. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Black argued, protects the life, liberty and property of Americans, and the most complete expression of American liberty is found in the Bill of Rights.

Black argued: “The words ‘No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ seem an eminently reasonable way of expressing the idea that henceforth the Bill of Rights shall apply to the states.”

But of course, the Fourteenth Amendment does not say that the Bill of Rights would now apply to the states. Its authors could have written that it would, but they did not. And so the debate raged. Justice Frankfurter argued that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require incorporation of any provision of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, the idea that the Due Process Clause meant the Bill of Rights would apply to the states was expressly rejected by the Court early on. Rather, it requires states to honor principles of “fundamental fairness.” While these principles might overlap with the Bill of Rights, they are not inevitably connected. In  Rochin v. California  (1952), Frankfurter argued that the Court should indeed apply the Bill of Rights when actions taken by a state “shock the conscience.”

Black retorted that Frankfurter’s flexible philosophy “must inevitably imperil all the individual liberty safeguards” found in the Bill of Rights.

Incorporation increased the Supreme Court’s power to define rights, and changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights from a series of limits on government power to a set of rights belonging to the individual and guaranteed by the federal government. With incorporation, the Supreme Court became busier and more influential.

The effect of the Fourteenth Amendment may or may not have been anticipated by its authors or the generation that ratified it. Some historians say that the post-Civil War amendments so fundamentally altered the Constitution that the time period was, in effect, a revolution and a new Founding. Looking back over the American history you have studied so far, and your knowledge of constitutional principles as the Founders understood them, what do you think?

The individual liberty safeguards in the Bill of Rights go beyond a list of rights. Individuals have natural rights that are not listed in the Bill of Rights. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make clear that rights and powers not listed remain with the people. One consequence of incorporation has been for the Court to seemingly place more value on those individual rights which are enumerated in the Bill of Rights than those natural rights which are not listed. The Founders had worried that future generations might think that listing some rights would cause people to think that the others were less important. This worry was one reason the Federalists had opposed adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment was among the amendments added in 1791 for that reason.

As the Supreme Court’s responsibilities increased along with the legal protections afforded American citizens, the federal government has become larger, especially since 1900. The federal government has expanded in regard to business regulation in the early 1900s, New Deal programs (1930s), military strength during World War II, anti-poverty Great Society programs (1960s), environmental regulation and education (1970s), the war on drugs (1980s), health entitlements (1990s), education (2000s), and a mandate for individuals to buy health insurance in the 2010s.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

During the same period, state governments have also expanded. All this growth in local, state, and federal activities has extended the Supreme Court’s reach as the number of possible conflicts involving the law has risen.

Related Content

The Bill of Rights, setting limitations on Congress, originally applied only to the national government. In the effort to protect individual rights of the freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. It differs from every previous amendment because it limits what state governments may do. Over the next seventy-five years, the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment increased. It used the Due Process clause in that amendment to strike down many state laws and to selectively incorporate parts of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment so as to make them apply to states as well as the federal government. This practice, known as “incorporation,” increased the Supreme Court’s power to define rights for the entire Union, and reduced the power of the states as compared to federal power. It also reduced the power of Congress as opposed to the Supreme Court, to define which rights are properly constitutional. This changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights from a series of limits on government power to a set of rights belonging to the individual and guaranteed by the federal government.

14th Amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment addresses many aspects of citizenship and the rights of citizens. The most commonly used -- and frequently litigated -- phrase in the amendment is " equal protection of the laws ", which figures prominently in a wide variety of landmark cases, including Brown v. Board of Education (racial discrimination), Roe v. Wade (reproductive rights), Bush v. Gore (election recounts), Reed v. Reed (gender discrimination), and University of California v. Bakke (racial quotas in education). See more ...

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Amendment xiv.

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. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age , and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

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. But 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, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

wex resources

Privileges and Immunities Clause

Civil Rights

Slaughterhouse Cases

Due Process

Substantive Due Process

Right of Privacy: Personal Autonomy

Territorial Jurisdiction

Equal Protection

Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Plyer v. Doe (1982)

Enforcement Power

Commerce Clause

Milestone Documents

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)

Citation: The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, June 16, 1866; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog

View Transcript

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.

Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

Another equally important provision was the statement that “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments.

On June 16, 1866, the House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states. On July 28, 1868, the 14th amendment was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State, ratified by the necessary 28 of the 37 States, and became part of the supreme law of the land.

Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the first section of the 14th Amendment, intended that the amendment also nationalize the Bill of Rights by making it binding upon the states. When introducing the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan specifically stated that the privileges and immunities clause would extend to the states “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments.” Historians disagree on how widely Bingham's and Howard's views were shared at the time in the Congress, or across the country in general. No one in Congress explicitly contradicted their view of the amendment, but only a few members said anything at all about its meaning on this issue. For many years, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment did not extend the Bill of Rights to the states.

Not only did the 14th Amendment fail to extend the Bill of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of Black citizens. A legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle of Black and White citizens to make the promise of the 14th Amendment a reality. Citizens petitioned and initiated court cases, Congress enacted legislation, and the executive branch attempted to enforce measures that would guard all citizens’ rights. While these citizens did not succeed in empowering the 14th Amendment during Reconstruction, they effectively articulated arguments and offered dissenting opinions that would be the basis for change in the 20th century.

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AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1. 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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. 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. But 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, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

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The 14th Amendment

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Cristina Kim

Devin Katayama

Of all the amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the 14th is a big one. It's shaped all of our lives, whether we realize it or not: Roe v. Wade, Brown v. Board of Education, Bush v. Gore, plus other Supreme Court cases that legalized same-sex marriage, interracial marriage, access to birth control — they've all been built on the back of the 14th. The amendment was ratified after the Civil War, and it's packed full of lofty phrases like due process, equal protection, and liberty. But what do those words really guarantee us? Today on the show: how the 14th Amendment has remade America – and how America has remade the 14th.

Guests: Kenneth Mack, the Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law and Affiliate Professor of History at Harvard University. Vernon Burton, the Judge Matthew J. Perry Distinguished Professor of History at Clemson University.

To access bonus episodes and listen to Throughline sponsor-free, subscribe to Throughline+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/throughline .

The Fourteenth Amendment – Constitutional Law Essay

The end of the Civil War led to the defeat of the Confederacy (Ville 179). Abraham Lincoln’s administration declared the slaves free. However, there was still a hovering dilemma concerning the defunct Confederate states and the position of slaves within the United States. Responding to this dilemma, Congress introduced three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment that provided for the rights of the newly-freed slaves was among the three amendments.

After the Civil War, Congress presented the three amendments to the states as part of the United States’ Reconstruction initiative to ensure equal legal and civil rights for black American citizens (Ville 179). The Fourteenth Amendment aimed at granting citizenship to all individuals naturalized or born in the United States.

Secondly, the Amendment prohibited states from depriving any person of property, liberty, or life without following due process, or disallowing any American the equal rights under the law. The Amendment, thus, implied that both federal and state governments had a responsibility to ensure due process and equal protection of the law. In 1868, three-quarters of the states had ratified the Amendment, making it part of the Constitution (Epps 184).

The second section of the Amendment allowed for the repeal of the three-fifths clause of the original Constitution that reckoned slaves as a three-fifths of a person with respect to the apportionment of Congressional representation (Ville 180).

Since the Thirteenth Amendment had outlawed slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment made it clear that all Americans, regardless of their race, must be reckoned as one whole person. This part of the Amendment also provided that all male residents with twenty-one years and above, regardless of their race, were eligible to vote. In practice, many states during the Jim Crow administration had devised tactics to lock out blacks from voting (Epps 175).

The third part of the Amendment prohibited the president from allowing former Confederacy leaders to amass power after their acquisition of full citizenship rights through a pretended presidential pardon. The Amendment stipulated that former Confederates could regain their citizenship rights only through a two-thirds Congress majority.

Thus, they could not vote in federal elections or hold federal offices unless they received a two-thirds vote. The purpose of this provision was to restrict the Republican lawmakers from disputing with Andrew Johnson’s administration with respect to the treatment of states of the former Confederacy (Ville 201).

The fourth section provided for the prohibition of payment of pending debts to the outmoded Confederate states. It also provided for the banning of payments to former owners of slaves as compensation for losing their human property (Ville 208). The function of this section was to invalidate slavery and bring a new order in the United States that promote respect for fundamental human rights.

The major aim of the provision was to uphold the Civil Rights Act. However, the decisions of the court limited the Equal Protection clause. For instance, the Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson allowed states to segregate citizens given that the facilities accommodated both whites and blacks. Though the Supreme Court had become more sympathetic to the rights of minorities, it continued to restrain the relevance of the Equal Protection provision to causes of state action.

This limitation made Congress rely on its supremacy in the commerce clause of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to ban segregation in public accommodation. The ban resulted in the creation of the separate but equal doctrine. The court believed that this principle adequately satisfied the provisions of the 14th Amendment. In 1954, a half-century later, the case of Brown v Board of Education overturned the decision in the Plessy Case by ruling that segregation was unconstitutional (Ville 180).

The Fourteenth Amendment also provides that both state and federal governments should abide by the Bill of Rights. The provision, in effect, meant that both governments had to abide by the Equal Protection Clause. The Amendment formed an effective basis for the Civil Rights Movement that was very proactive between 1955 and 1968 and numerous segregation lawsuits (Lee 2).

Ultimately, the Supreme Court used the due process provided to apply the main guarantees of the Bill of Rights to both federal and state governments via the process of ‘incorporation’ or ‘absorption.’ Throughout the twentieth century, corporate lawyers implored courts to reckon corporations as ‘persons’ under the law. The court’s jurisprudence has extended the meaning of the word ‘person’ to include a corporation. Thus, the Amendment also grants equal protection and due process to all corporations (Lee 2).

Even though the Fourteenth Amendment led to far-reaching results, it was difficult for the courts and lawmakers to interpret (Steiner, Mason and Hayes 24). There was a huge conflict between the plans to protect former slaves, and the desire of the Constitution to protect the federal arrangement that put emphasis on state decision-making. After the Reconstruction period and the withdrawal of federal troops from the Confederate states, the country’s desire to shift back to normalcy resulted in less support for black rights.

Currently, the greatest contention with respect to the Fourteenth Amendment is that the framers did not put into account the effects of birthright citizenship (Steiner, Mason and Hayes 25). At the time of creating the Amendment, there were no unlawful immigrants in the country. It is interesting that the framers did not have any consideration for immigration because their concern was to accord equal rights to the enslaved blacks.

Steiner and colleagues point out that over 75% of the children to illegal immigrants are citizens of the United States (26). The illegal immigrants also enjoy all constitutional provisions intended for American nationals such as the Fourth Amendment privacy protections.

The overwhelming immigration into the United States has led to increased views that either statutory or constitutional amendments should be made to limit automatic birthright citizenship. The proposed amendments intend to restrain individuals born in America to mothers who are illegally residing in the country from acquiring citizenship.

The Fourth Amendment, as part of the supreme law of the land, cannot be changed easily. States proposing immigration reforms have planned to establish laws that will provide for two types of citizenship: the first type is for children to legal parents while the second is for children to illegal parents. Opponents to these reforms contend that it is not constitutional for a state to make such laws because citizenship is a federal issue (Steiner, Mason and Hayes 28).

Today, the Fourteenth Amendment is still a critical foundation for a democratic country. Alongside the 13th and 15th Amendments, the 14th Amendment still maintains the pledge of the United States that all people have equal rights before the law regardless of nationality, racial, or gender differences (Ville 184). This Amendment has a strong constitutional principle making it difficult to correct the negative outcomes arising from the same.

Works Cited

Epps, Garrett. “The Antebellum Political Background of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Law and Contemporary Problems (2004): 175-211. Web.

Lee, Margaret. Birthright Citizenship under the 14 th Amendment of Persons Born in the United States to Alien Parents . Washington DC: Diane Publishing, 2011. Print.

Steiner, Niklaus, Mason Robert, and Anna Hayes. Migration and Insecurity: Citizenship and Social Inclusion in a Transitional Era . 711 Third Avenue, New York: Routledge, 2012. Print.

Ville, John. A Companion to the United States Constitution and Its Amendments . Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 2010. Print.

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The first amendment, 10 supreme court cases about the 14th amendment.

July 9, 2020 | by NCC Staff

On the anniversary of the 14th Amendment's ratification, Constitution Daily looks at 10 historic Supreme Court cases about due process and equal protection under the law.

On July 9, 1868, Louisiana and South Carolina voted to ratify the amendment, after they had rejected it a year earlier. The votes made the 14 th Amendment officially part of the Constitution. But in the ensuing years, the Supreme Court was slow to decide how the new (and old) rights guaranteed under the federal constitution applied to the states.

In the early Supreme Court decisions about the 14 th Amendment, the Court often ruled in favor of limiting the incorporation of these rights on a state and local level. But starting in the 1920s, the Court embraced the application of due process and equal protection, despite state laws that conflicted with the 14th Amendment.

Here is a look at 10 famous Court decisions that show the progression of the 14th Amendment from Reconstruction to the era of affirmative action.

The Slaughter-House Cases (14 Apr 1873) ―In the Slaughter-House Cases , waste products from slaughterhouses located upstream of New Orleans had caused health problems for years by the time Louisiana decided to consolidate the industries into one slaughterhouse located south of the city. Slaughterhouse owners were incensed; they sued Louisiana and argued that the state-sanctioned monopoly infringed on their newly ratified 13th and 14th Amendment rights. Justice Samuel Miller dismissed the butchers' claims regarding due process and involuntary servitude. He then looked to Article IV, which entitled “the Citizens of each State” to “all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States” and to the 14th Amendment, which guaranteed the protection of the “ Privileges or Immunities  of citizens of the United States.” Miller reasoned that the two clauses protected different bundles of rights, with Article IV protecting the rights of state citizenship and the 14th Amendment protecting rights of national citizenship. The privileges and immunities of U.S. citizenship were narrow and only those specified in the Constitution, which included the right to freely travel throughout the states. Not included, Miller said, was the right to one’s livelihood or be protected against a monopoly. 

Plessy v. Ferguson (18 May 1896) ―The Louisiana legislature had passed a law requiring black and white residents to ride separate, but equal, train cars. In 1892, Louisiana police arrested Homer Adolph Plessy—who was seven-eighths Caucasian—for taking his seat on a train car reserved for “whites only” because he refused to move to a separate train car reserved for blacks. Plessy argued that the Louisiana statute violated the 13th and 14th Amendments by treating black Americans inferior to whites. Plessy lost in every court in Louisiana before appealing to the Supreme Court in 1896. In a 7-1 decision, the Court held that as long as the facilities were equal, their separation satisfied the 14th Amendment. Justice John Marshall Harlan authored the lone dissent. Passionately he clarified that the Constitution was color-blind, railing the majority for an opinion which he believed would match Dred Scott in infamy.

Lochner v. New York (17 Apr 1905) ―Lochner, a baker from New York, was convicted of violating the New York Bakeshop Act, which prohibited bakers from working more than 10 hours a day and 60 hours a week. The Supreme Court struck down the Bakeshop Act, however, ruling that it infringed on Lochner’s “right to contract.” The Court extracted this “right” from the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, a move that many believe exceeded judicial authority.

Gitlow v. New York (08 June 1925) ― Before 1925, provisions in the Bill of Rights were not always guaranteed on the local level and usually applied only to the federal government. Gitlow illustrated one of the Court’s earliest attempts at incorporation, that is, the process by which provisions in the Bill of Rights has been applied to the states. A socialist named Benjamin Gitlow printed an article advocating the forceful overthrow of the government and was arrested under New York state law. Gitlow argued that the First Amendment guaranteed freedom of speech and the press. On appeal, the Supreme Court expressed that the First Amendment applied to New York through the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. However, the Court ultimately ruled that Gitlow’s speech was not protected under the First Amendment by applying the “clear and present danger” test. The Court’s ruling was the first of many instances of incorporating the Bill of Rights.

Brown v. Board of Education (17 May 1954) ―It is impossible to mention the victories of the Civil Rights Movement without pointing to Brown v. Board of Education . Following the Court’s ruling in 1896 of Plessy v. Ferguson , segregation of public schools based solely on race was allowed by states if the facilities were “equal.” Brown overturned that decision. Regardless of the “equality” of facilities, the Court ruled that separate is inherently unequal. Thus public school segregation based on race was found in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

Mapp v. Ohio (19 Jun 1961) ―What happens when the police obtain evidence from an illegal search or seizure? Before the Court’s decision in Mapp , the evidence could still be collected, but the police would be censured. Police had received a tip that a bombing suspect might be located at Dollree Mapp’s home in suburban Cleveland, Ohio. When police asked to search her home, Mapp refused unless the police produced a warrant. The police used a piece of paper as a fake warrant and gained access to her home illegally. After searching the house without finding the bombing suspect, police discovered sexually explicit materials and arrested Mapp under state law that prohibited the possession of obscene materials. Mapp was convicted of possessing obscene materials and faced up to seven years in prison before she appealed her case on the argument that she had a First Amendment right to possess the material. The Court held that evidence collected from an unlawful search should be excluded from her trial. Justice Tom Clark’s majority opinion incorporated the Fourth Amendment’s protection of privacy using the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, a very controversial move.

Gideon v. Wainwright (18 Mar 1963) ― Before 1962, indigent Americans were not always guaranteed access to legal counsel despite the Sixth Amendment. Gideon, a Florida resident, was charged in Florida state court for breaking and entering into a poolroom with the intent to commit a crime. Due to his poverty, Gideon asked the Florida court to appoint an attorney for him. The court declined to do this and pointed to state law which said that the only time indigent defendants could be appointed an attorney was when charged with a capital offense. Left with no other choice, Gideon represented himself in trial and lost. He filed a petition of habeas corpus to the Florida Supreme Court, arguing that he had a constitutional right to be represented with an attorney, but the Florida Supreme Court did not grant him any relief. A unanimous United States Supreme Court said that state courts are required under the 14th Amendment to provide counsel in criminal cases to represent defendants who are unable to afford to pay their attorneys, guaranteeing the Sixth Amendment’s similar federal guarantees.

Griswold v. Connecticut (07 Jun 1965) ―You know when you’re walking down the street at night with lights in front of you and behind you, and you get that really dark shadow? In the scientific community, that shadow is known as an “umbra.” Flanking that dark shadow on the ground are two or more, half-shadows, not quite as dark, but darker than the well-lit sidewalk around you. Those shadows are known as “penumbras” and were used to explain the most controversial issue of arguably the most controversial Supreme Court case in the 20 th century. Estelle Griswold was the director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Connecticut when she was arrested for violating a state statute that prohibited counseling and prescription of birth control to married couples. The question before the Supreme Court was whether the Constitution protected the right of married couples to privately engage in counseling regarding contraceptive use and procurement. Justice Douglas articulated that although not explicit, the penumbras of the Bill of Rights contained a fundamental “right to privacy” that was protected by the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Griswold ’s “right to privacy” has been applied to many other controversial decisions such as Roe v. Wade. It remains at the core of substantive due process debate today.

Loving v. Virginia (12 Jun 1967) ―By 1967, 16 states had still not repealed their anti-miscegenation laws that forbid interracial marriages. Mildred and Richard Loving were residents of one such state, Virginia, who had fallen in love and wanted to get married. Under Virginia’s laws, however, Richard, a white man, could not marry Mildred, a woman of African-American and Native American descent. The two traveled to Washington D.C. where they could be married, but they were arrested in Virginia under a state law that prohibited inter-racial marriage. Because their offense was a criminal conviction, after being found guilty, they were given a prison sentence of one year. The trial judge suspended the sentence for 25 years on the condition that the couple left Virginia. On Appeal, the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia ruled that the state had an interest in preserving the “racial integrity” of its constituents and that because the punishment applied equally to both races, the statute did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The United States Supreme Court in a unanimous decision reversed the Virginia Court’s ruling and held that the Equal Protection Clause required strict scrutiny to apply to all race-based classifications. Furthermore, the Court concluded that the law was rooted in invidious racial discrimination, making it impossible to satisfy a compelling government interest. The Loving decision still stands as a milestone in the Civil Rights Movement.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (26 Jun 1978) — Allan Bakke, a white man, had been denied access to the University of California Medical School at Davis on two separate occasions. The medical school set aside 16 spots for minority candidates in an attempt to address unfair minority exclusion from medical school. Bakke contested that his exclusion from the Medical School was entirely the result of his race. The Supreme Court ruled in a severely fractured plurality that the university’s use of strict racial quotas was unconstitutional and ordered that the medical school admit Bakke, but it also said that race could be used as one of several factors in the admissions process. Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. cast the deciding vote ordering the medical school to admit Bakke. However, in his opinion, Powell said that the rigid use of racial quotas violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

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The Crucial Importance of the 14th Amendment in American History

This essay about the 14th Amendment highlights its crucial role in shaping American civil rights and legal history. It emphasizes the amendment’s significance in promoting equality, protecting citizenship rights, and defining the relationship between the federal government and individual states. By prohibiting discrimination and granting citizenship to all born or naturalized in the United States, the 14th Amendment has been instrumental in advancing social progress and addressing systemic injustices. This summary encapsulates the essay’s exploration of the enduring importance and impact of the 14th Amendment on American society. On PapersOwl, there’s also a selection of free essay templates associated with American History.

How it works

The 14th Amendment is like the backbone of American civil rights law. It’s been around since 1868, and let me tell you, it’s been a game-changer. This little piece of legal jargon has done wonders for making sure everyone gets a fair shake under the law, especially those who’ve been pushed to the sidelines.

One of the coolest things about the 14th Amendment is how it’s all about equal treatment. Basically, it says that states can’t go around treating people differently based on stuff like race or background.

That might not seem like a big deal now, but back in the day, it was revolutionary. This part of the amendment has been the driving force behind a bunch of court cases that have torn down segregation, boosted voting rights, and made sure everyone can love who they want to love.

But wait, there’s more! The 14th Amendment also tackles the whole citizenship thing. It says that if you’re born or naturalized in the good ol’ U.S. of A., you’re automatically a citizen. That might not sound like newsflash material today, but back when it was written, it was a huge deal. It basically said to everyone, “Hey, you belong here, no matter where your ancestors came from.” That’s some powerful stuff right there.

And let’s not forget about how the 14th Amendment shook things up between the federal government and the states. It gave the feds more power to step in and make sure everyone’s rights were being respected. So when issues like education or housing discrimination popped up, Uncle Sam could roll up his sleeves and do something about it. It was a real game-changer in terms of making sure everyone had a fair shot at the American Dream.

Therefore, although the 14th Amendment may appear to be just another legalese, it really is quite important. It has been upholding justice and serving as a constant reminder that we are all in this together for more than a century. And that’s something to celebrate in a nation as diverse and complex as ours.

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