The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment PDF Author: Randy E. Barnett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674257766
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 489

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Book Description
A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendmentÕs key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment PDF Author: Randy E. Barnett
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674257766
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 489

Get Book

Book Description
A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendmentÕs key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Second Founding

The Second Founding PDF Author: Ilan Wurman
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108843158
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 199

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Book Description
In The Second Founding: An Introduction to the Fourteenth Amendment, Ilan Wurman provides an illuminating introduction to the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment's famous provisions 'due process of law,' 'equal protection of the laws,' and the 'privileges' or 'immunities' of citizenship. He begins by exploring the antebellum legal meanings of these concepts, starting from Magna Carta, the Statutes of Edward III, and the Petition of Right to William Blackstone and antebellum state court cases. The book then traces how these concepts solved historical problems confronting framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, including the comity rights of free blacks, private violence and the denial of the protection of the laws, and the notorious abridgment of freedmen's rights in the Black Codes. Wurman makes a compelling case that, if the modern originalist Supreme Court interpreted the Amendment in 'the language of the law,' it would lead to surprising and desirable results today.

The history and meaning of the fourteenth amendment

The history and meaning of the fourteenth amendment PDF Author: Hermine Herta Meyer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Original Meaning Jurisprudence

Original Meaning Jurisprudence PDF Author: United States. Department of Justice. Office of Legal Policy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 202

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Original Meaning Jurisprudence

Original Meaning Jurisprudence PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Constitutional law
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment

The Adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment PDF Author: Horace Edgar Flack
Publisher: Read Books Ltd
ISBN: 1447496337
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
This early academic work on the fourteenth amendment is both expensive and hard to find in its first edition. It contains a study on the history of the fourteenth amendment and its appearance before congress. This is a fascinating work and thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in American political history. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship

The Fourteenth Amendment and the Privileges and Immunities of American Citizenship PDF Author: Kurt T. Lash
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 113986758X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
This exhaustively researched book presents the history behind a revolution in American liberty: the 1868 addition of the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It follows the evolution in public understanding of 'the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States', from the early years of the Constitution to the election of 1866. For 92 years nothing in the American Constitution prevented states from abridging freedom of speech, prohibiting the free exercise of religion, or denying the right of peaceful assembly. The suppression of freedom in the southern states convinced the Reconstruction Congress and supporters of the Union to add an amendment forcing the states to respect the rights announced in the first eight amendments. But rather than eradicate state autonomy, the people embraced the Fourteenth Amendment that expanded the protections of the Bill of Rights and preserved the Constitution's original commitment to federalism and the principle of limited national power.

Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment

Congress and the Fourteenth Amendment PDF Author: William B. Glidden
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739185748
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 189

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Book Description
The discrepancy between the fourteenth amendment’s true meaning as originally understood, and the Supreme Court’s interpretation of its meaning over time, has been dramatic and unfortunate. The amendment was intended to be a constitutional rule for the promotion and protection of people’s rights, administered by the states as front-line regulators of life, liberty, and property, to be overseen by Congress and supported by federal legislation as necessary. In this book, William B. Glidden makes the case that instead, the amendment has operated as a judge-dominated, negative rights-against-government regime, supervised by the Supreme Court. Whenever Congress has enacted legislation to protect life, liberty, or property rights of people in the states, the laws were often overturned, narrowly construed, or forced to rely on the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce, under the Supreme Court’s constraining interpretations. Glidden proposes that Congress must recover for itself or be restored to its proper role as the designated federal enforcement agency for the fourteenth amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment and the States

The Fourteenth Amendment and the States PDF Author: Charles Wallace Collins
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781333031657
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Excerpt from The Fourteenth Amendment and the States: A Study of the Operation of the Restraint Clauses of Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States Amendment - Relation of the negro race to the opera tion of the Amendment Digest at all cases involving the negro problem under the Amendment. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Constitution and Economic Regulation

The Constitution and Economic Regulation PDF Author: Michael Conant
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351298305
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
This study uses basic economic analysis as a technique to comment critically on the original meaning and the interpretation of those clauses of the Constitution that have particular bearing on the economy. Many new conclusions are markedly different from those of the Supreme Court and earlier commentators. Conant's view is that the commerce clause and the equal protection clause, if they had been construed consistently with their comprehensive original meanings, would have given much greater federal protection against state laws that impaire free markets. Economic policy for the nation was vested in Congress. To the extent that special interests could buy congressional favor for their anticompetitive activities, free markets were impaired within constraints as interpreted by the court. These decisions have been criticized for their failure to incorporate the antimonopoly tradition in the Ninth Amendment and their failure to recognize equal protection of laws incorporated into the Fifth Amendment. Conant holds that statutory controls of the economy are justifiable in economic theory if they are designed to remedy market failures and thereby increase efficiency. If statutes are passed to interfere with markets and create market inefficiencies for the benefit of special interest groups, they should be condemned under the standards of normative microeconomics. There are four main classes of market failure: monopoly, externalities, public goods, and informational asymmetry. This masterful analysis examines all four reasons for market failure in depth. Litigation costs are analogous to transaction costs. If legal principles and rules are clearly and precisely defined by the Supreme Court when they are first appealed, litigation and its costs should be minimized. Conant claims that if legal principles or rules are uncertain because they lack definable standards, the number of legal actions filed and litigation costs will be much greater. This promotes additional litigation challenging the many statutes enacted to remedy asserted market failures in an expanding industrial economy. This work brilliantly addresses the danger to the economy in court rulings seeking to legislate standards of reasonableness.