How the 14th amendment and other amendments had an affect on slavery.

The 14th Amendment is one of the most cited amendments in litigation even today.  There is often one forgotten fact or should I state, neglected to mention fact about the 14th amendment is that it was spearheaded and driven by Republicans, notably Rep. John Bingham of Ohio.   The republican’s sole purpose was to protect blacks and ensure their properties and right to life, liberty, and their fair due process was ensured by the law of the land.   The equal protection clause was written to protect those freed slaves that had no fair due process or legal rights in states with black codes.   States with black codes, mainly southern states, blacks could not sue, bear witness, provide evidence, and received server penalties and punishments than whites under the same laws.  The equal protection clause demanded that the states enforce the same laws with equal treatment.  The framers for the 14th amendment also ensured that the states were subject to the Bills of Rights.
The key clauses to the 14th Amendment are:

1. State and federal citizenship for all persons regardless of race both born or naturalized in the United States was reaffirmed.
2. No state would be allowed to abridge the “privileges and immunities” of citizens.
3. No person was allowed to be deprived of life, liberty,or property without “due process of law.”
4. No person could be denied “equal protection of the laws.”

The fourteenth amendment is a ‘reconstruction amendment’, meaning it is one of the 2 other amendments that were adopted after the civil war.  All three of the reconstruction amendments, the 13th, 14th, and 15th, eradicated discrimination in some form, be it race, color, sex, creed, to be used as a form to block a U.S. citizen enjoying the same rights as any other  citizen.  The 13th abolished slavery, the 14th gave Due process, and the 15th granted the right to vote (with the exception to women, which was the 19th amendment).   While the 14th Amendment did not provide the freedom that the Republicans wanted, because the true civil rights, especially in states that found ways to continue to use black codes to discriminate did not occur until the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was signed into law, the 14th amendment laid the foundation and some like Constitutional Scholar Garrett Epps, considers the 14th Amendment on of the most important Amendment to the Unite States Constitution.
Some notable legal cases citing the 14th Amendment are:

1. Pleassy v. Ferguson 1896
2. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka 1954
3. Bolling v. Sharpe 1954
4. Mcdonald v. Chicago (cited 2nd Amendment and 14th Amendment).

Religion, Abortion, and the due pprocess, what do you think? *EXPLICIT

Cases of The due process clauses over the years.

McAuliffe v. Mayor of New Bedford, 155 Mass. 216, 220, 29 N.E. 2d 517, 522 (1892).


Bailey v. Richardson, 182 F.2d 46 (D.C. Cir. 1950)


Adler v. Board of Educ., 342 U.S. 485 (1952).


Barsky v. Board of Regents, 347 U.S. 442 (1954).



Perry v. Sinderman, 408 U.S. 593, 597 (1972). 


Speiser v. Randall, 357 U.S. 513 (1958).


 Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603 (1960).


419 U.S. 565 (1975). Cf. Carey v. Piphus, 435 U.S. 247 (1978) (measure of damages for violation of procedural due process in school suspension context).

O'Bannon v. Town Court Nursing Center, 447 U.S. 773 (1980) (statutory entitlement of nursing home residents protecting them in the enjoyment of assistance and care.)





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What about the death penalty???

What do you think? does the death penalty violate the 14th amendment? Why do you think it does or does not? 

1. Does the death penalty violate the 14th Amendment?
PRO (YES)	CON (NO)
Ivan Eland, MBA, PhD, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, in his Aug. 18, 2003 article titled "Death to Capital Punishment," posted on the Independent Institute website, wrote: "Juries mete out the death penalty unfairly. The implementation of capital punishment includes discrimination on the basis of race, gender, and social class. That bias violates the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee that all persons will have equal protection under the law." Aug. 18, 2003 Ivan Eland, MBA, PhD	In Gregg v. Georgia (decided July 2, 1976),the US Supreme Court, in a decision written by Justice Potter Stewart, held that: "We now consider specifically whether the sentence of death for the crime of murder is a per se violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. We note first that history and precedent strongly support a negative answer to this question. The imposition of the death penalty for the crime of murder has a long history of acceptance both in the United States and in England. The common law rule imposed a mandatory death sentence on all convicted murderers." July 2, 1976 Gregg v. Georgia (365 KB)

What is the 14th Amendment Due Process Clause?

A question to think about....

Is a law too vague? Is it applied fairly to all? Does a law presume guilt? A vagrancy law might be declared too vague if the definition of a vagrant is not detailed enough. A law that makes wife beating illegal but permits husband beating might be declared to be an unfair application. A law must be clear, fair, and have a presumption of innocence to comply with procedural due process.

Griswold v. Connecticut (1965)

In this personal liberty case, the court held that Connecticut could not outlaw the use of birth control by married couples. The Court explained that the right to privacy was inherent in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Amendments, and that states must honor it based on the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause and the doctrine of incorporation. The Bill of Rights creates “zones of privacy” into which the government cannot intrude. “The First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion…while it is not expressly included in the First Amendment its existence is necessary in making the express guarantees fully meaningful.” The Court concluded that privacy within marriage was older than the Bill of Rights and was a personal zone off limits to the government.
The case touched on constitutional principles including due process, liberty, and natural rights

Fourteenth Amendment: Due Process (1868)

Amendment XIV (1868)

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.


This clause echoes the language of the Fifth Amendment, but applies to the states. It protects procedural rights – states cannot take peoples’ “life, liberty , or property without due process of law.” These rights of process include, for example, a trial by an impartial jury with evidence obtained in compliance with the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. The due process clause was a basis for the Supreme Court rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Roe v. Wade (1973).  Further information can be found in the following website.

http://billofrightsinstitute.org/resources/educator-resources/americapedia/amendments/fourteenth-amendment-general/fourteenth-due-process/

The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: A History

The Constitution states only one command twice. The Fifth Amendment says to the federal government that no one shall be "deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law." The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, uses the same eleven words, called the Due Process Clause, to describe a legal obligation of all states. These words have as their central promise an assurance that all levels of American government must operate within the law ("legality") and provide fair procedures. Found on the following website address:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process