Fourteenth Amendment

With the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment (ratified 1865), the Confederate states sought readmission to the Union and to Congress. Under Article I, section 2 of the Constitution, a slave had been counted as three‐fifths of a person for purposes of representation. Because of the abolition of slavery, Southern states expected a substantial increase in their representation in the House of Representatives. The Union, having won the war, feared it might lose the peace.

Reconstruction

In 1865–1866, southern states and localities enacted black Codes to regulate the status and conduct of the newly freed slaves. The codes deprived blacks of many basic rights accorded to whites, including full rights to own property, to testify in court in cases in which whites were parties, to make contracts, to travel, to preach, to assemble, to speak, and to bear arms. To Republicans, the Black Codes were only the latest southern attack on individual rights. Before the war, southern states had suppressed fundamental rights, including free speech and press, in order to protect the institution of slavery. Although the Supreme Court had ruled in 1833 that guarantees of the Bill of Rights did not limit the states (Barron v. Baltimore), many Republicans thought state officials were obligated to respect those guarantees. The Court in Scott v. Sandford (1857) had held that blacks, including free blacks, were not citizens under the Constitution and therefore were entitled to none of the rights and privileges it secured. Republicans also rejected Scott and thought the newly freed slaves should be citizens entitled to all the rights of citizens (See Citizenship).

The Fourteenth Amendment was proposed by Congress in 1866 and ratified by the states in 1868. It reflected Republican determination that southern states should not be readmitted to the Union and Congress without additional guarantees. Section 1 made all persons born within the nation citizens both of the United States and of the states where they resided (thereby reversing Scott) and prohibited states from abridging privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States and from depriving persons of due process of law or equal protection of the laws. Section 2 reduced the representation of any state that deprived a part of its male population of the right to vote, an indirect attempt to protect the voting rights of blacks. Other sections protected the federal war debt, prohibited payment of the Confederate debt, and disabled from holding office those who had sworn to uphold the Constitution but who had engaged in rebellion. Section 5 empowered Congress “to enforce, by appropriate legislation,” the preceding sections.15

Early Interpretation

The first major interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment's effect came in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), in which the Court held that the basic civil rights and liberties of citizens remained under control of state law. The Court limited the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States referred to in the amendment to relatively narrow rights such as protection on the high seas and the right to travel to and from the nation's capital. The Slaughterhouse Cases drastically curtailed the protection afforded by the amendment against state violations of fundamental guarantees of liberty. One reason for the majority's narrow construction of the amendment was its fear that a more expansive reading would threaten the basic functions of state governments, both by federal judicial action and through enforcement by federal statutes that might displace large areas of state law (See Federalism).

Contrary to the expectations of some of the amendment's framers, the Supreme Court held that it did not overrule Barron v. Baltimore (1833) to require states and local governments to respect the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. The Court also held that because the amendment provided that “no state shall” deprive persons of the rights it guaranteed, Congressional legislation protecting blacks and Republicans from Ku Klux Klan violence exceeded the power of the federal government. In the Civil Rights Cases (1883), the Court nullified provisions of the 1875 Civil Rights Act guaranteeing equal access to public accommodations. It held that the amendment reached only state action, not purely private action.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court held that state‐mandated racial segregation of railway cars did not violate the amendment's Equal Protection Clause (See Segregation, De Jure). In 1908 it upheld a state statute requiring segregation of private colleges (Berea College v. Kentucky). Justice John Marshall Harlan registered eloquent but lonely dissents to the Court's decisions sanctioning state‐imposed segregation. The Court also held, in Bradwell v. Illinois (1873) and Minor v. Happersett (1875), respectively, that the amendment did not protect the right of women to practice law or to vote (See Gender).

Although the Court first embraced a narrow reading of the amendment, it gradually expanded its protection of corporate and property interests. In 1886 the Court declared that a corporation was a “person” for purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment (Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co.). By 1897 it had begun reading the amendment as protecting freedom of contract, finding in Allgeyer v. Louisiana that a state statute restricting out‐of‐state insurance companies violated due process. In Lochner v. New York (1905), it held that a law limiting bankers to a sixty‐hour week violated the liberty of contract secured by the amendment's Due Process Clause.

Liberty Protections

After the constitutional crisis of 1937 (See Court‐Packing Plan), the Court repudiated its decisions striking down economic regulation. But while the amendment shrank as a protection of economic interests, it grew as a protection of other liberty interests. Much of this modern growth has resulted from extension of the Bill of Rights to the states. Since World War II, the Equal Protection Clause has emerged from obscurity. Under it, the Court has subjected racial discrimination to increasingly strict (usually fatal) scrutiny. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Court found that segregated education denied minority schoolchildren the equal protection of the laws.

In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Court ruled that malapportioned state legislative districts also violated the Equal Protection Clause (See Reapportionment Cases). Other discrimination, such as that against aliens, was also subjected to strict judicial scrutiny and struck down (See Alienage and Naturalization). While state legislation restricting fundamental rights is subject to strict judicial scrutiny, economic regulation is usually measured by a more relaxed test that merely requires the court to find some rational purpose for the classification, which it usually does. Discrimination based on sex or illegitimacy has been scrutinized less strictly than discrimination based on race, but more strictly than purely economic regulation.

By a broader reading of what constituted state action, the Court has reached a wide range of action once considered private and therefore outside the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment. In Shelley v. Kraemer (1948), the Court outlawed judicial enforcement of racially restrictive covenants in housing (See Housing Discrimination). In United States v. *Guest (1966), six justices in dicta indicated that congressional power under the Fourteenth Amendment could reach racially motivated private violence.

Another major area of expansion of the Fourteenth Amendment was in the application of the Bill of Rights to the states. As early as 1908, in Twining v. New Jersey, the Court suggested that some Bill of Rights guarantees might limit the states through the Due Process Clause. In Gitlow v. New York (1925), the Court began to apply guarantees of speech, press, assembly, religion, and counsel to the states. The guarantees applied to the states were those the Court considered essential to ordered liberty (Palko v. Connecticut, 1937). A majority of the Court thought that many rights in the Bill of Rights—trial by jury and the privilege against self‐incrimination, for example—did not meet that test. The incorporation of the Bill of Rights accelerated under the Warren Court. By 1969 most Bill of Rights guarantees had been incorporated as limits on state power.

In addition to applying the Bill of Rights to the states, the Court found that other fundamental rights, although not specifically set out in the Constitution, were entitled to protection under the Due Process Clause. These included a right to privacy that embraced the right of married couples to use birth‐control devices (Griswold v. Connecticut, 1965) and the right of women to obtain an abortion (Roe v. Wade, 1973). The abortion decision has been subjected to severe political attack (). Recently, the Court has questioned the rationale of the privacy decisions. In 1986, in Bowers v. Hardwick, the Court held that the right to privacy did not protect consenting adults from prosecution for homosexual conduct under state sodomy laws (See Homosexuality). The decision criticized prior privacy cases as having “little or no textual support in the constitutional language” and suggested that they were of questionable legitimacy (p. 191).

By 1968 the Warren Court's decisions, particularly in areas of criminal procedure, provoked political criticism. President Richard Nixon's appointees to the Court, followed by those of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush, have espoused a narrower view of guarantees of liberty, particularly as they affect the rights of the accused. So the Fourteenth Amendment remains, as it has been through most of its history, a center of controversy, and it continues both to mirror and to shape changes in American society.

See also Guarantee Clause; Race and Racism; Reconstruction; Speech and the Press.

See also Contraception

Bibliography

• Michael Kent Curtis, No State Shall Abridge: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights (1986).
• William E. Nelson, The Fourteenth Amendment: From Political Principle to Judicial Doctrine (1988).
• Laurence H. Tribe, American Constitutional Law, 2d ed. (1988)

— Michael Kent Curtis

An amendment to the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1868. Its five sections established the citizenship of African Americans. It also excluded from political office those who aided the Confederacy, and it declared that the U.S. government was not responsible for the debts of the Confederacy or liable for claims arising from the loss of slaves.

See the Introduction, Abbreviations and Pronunciation for further details.

Adopted after the Civil War in 1869, this amendment to the US Constitution was intended to incorporate the ‘privileges and immunities’ enumerated in the Bill of Rights at the level of the states, and compel state authorities to ensure ‘equal protection of the laws’ for all their citizens. Although the purpose of the Amendment was to guarantee newly freed slaves recognition of their citizenship by state governments, it has been used subsequently to justify the modern Supreme Court's ‘judicial activism’ in a variety of policy areas (most notably in its 1954 Brown ruling outlawing segregation in state educational facilities). See also due process.

— Stewart Wood

The Fourteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution reads:

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.

The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, has generated more lawsuits than any other provision of the U.S. Constitution. Section 1 of the amendment has been the centerpiece of most of this litigation. It makes "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States" citizens of the United States and citizens of the state in which they reside. This section also prohibits state governments from denying persons within their jurisdiction the "privileges or immunities" of U.S. citizenship, and guarantees to every such person "due process" and "equal protection of the laws." The Supreme Court has ruled that any state law that abridges freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to trial by jury, the right to counsel, the right against self-incrimination, the right against unreasonable searches and seizures, or the right against cruel and unusual punishments will be invalidated under section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. This holding is called the incorporation doctrine.

Sections 2 to 5 have been the subject of far fewer lawsuits. Some of these sections seem anachronistic today because they reflect the immediate concerns of the Union's political leadership following the North's victory over the South in the Civil War (1861-65). Section 2, for example, penalized any state that attempted to abridge the voting rights of its black male residents by reducing the state's representation in Congress (no female resident of any race was afforded the constitutional right to vote in the United States until 1920). Section 3 prohibited from holding state or federal office any person who engaged in "insurrection or rebellion" or otherwise gave "aid or comfort to the enemies" during the Civil War. Section 4 reaffirmed the United States' commitment to pay its Civil War debt, while declaring all debts and obligations incurred by the Confederate government "illegal and void." Section 5 enabled, and continues to enable, Congress to pass "appropriate legislation" to enforce the provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to alleviate several concerns harbored by many U.S. citizens prior to its ratification. The most obvious concern related to the status of the recently freed slaves. Five years before hostilities commenced in the Civil War, the Supreme Court declared that people of African descent living in the United States were not "citizens" of the United States, but merely members of a "subordinate and inferior class of human beings" deserving no constitutional protection whatsoever (Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. [19 How.] 393, 15 L. Ed. 691 [1856]). The Fourteenth Amendment vitiated the Supreme Court's holding in Dred Scott by making all blacks "born or naturalized in the United States" full-fledged citizens entitled to the same constitutional rights provided for every other U.S. citizen.

The racist attitudes expressed in Dred Scott also manifested themselves after the Civil War. In 1865, the southern states began enacting the Black Codes, which deprived African Americans of many basic rights afforded to white Americans, including the right to travel, bear arms, own property, make contracts, peaceably assemble, and testify in court. The Black Codes also authorized more severe punishments for African Americans than would be imposed on white persons for committing the same criminal offense. The Fourteenth Amendment offered an antidote to these discriminatory laws by guaranteeing to members of all races "due process of law," which requires the legal system to provide fundamentally fair trial procedures, and "equal protection of the laws," which requires the government to treat all persons with equal concern and respect.

Dred Scott was not the only Supreme Court decision that influenced the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment. Barron v. City of Baltimore, 32 U.S. (7 Pet.) 243, 8 L. Ed. 672 (1833), also played a significant role. This case involved a Maryland wharf owner who brought a lawsuit against the city of Baltimore for violating the Fifth Amendment's Eminent Domain Clause, which prohibits the government from taking private property without "just compensation." Baltimore defended against the wharf owner's lawsuit by arguing that the Fifth Amendment only provides relief against action taken by the federal government, and offers no protection against state governments or their political subdivisions. The Supreme Court agreed with Baltimore.

Writing for the Court, Chief Justice John Marshall asserted that the Constitution created the federal government, and the provisions of the Constitution were designed to regulate the activity of the federal government. The people of each state enacted their own constitution, Marshall contended, to regulate the activities of their state and local governments. Thus, Marshall reasoned that the U.S. Constitution operates only as a limitation on the powers of the federal government, unless one of its provisions expressly restricts the powers of state governments, as does Article I, Section 10.

Article I, Section 10, provides that "[n]o State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation," or "pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts." This wording, Marshall maintained, demonstrates that the Framers understood the type of clear and unequivocal language that must be used to make a provision of the federal Constitution binding on the states. Because neither the Fifth Amendment nor any of the other first eight amendments to the Constitution contain any similar language restricting the powers of state governments, Marshall concluded that the Bill of Rights was inapplicable to the states.

The Supreme Court's decision in Barron weighed heavily on the mind of John Bingham, the Republican representative from Ohio who was the primary architect of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Bingham said he "noted … certain words in the opinion of Marshall" when he was "reexamining that case of Barron." The chief justice, Bingham stressed, denied the wharf owner's claim because the Framers of the Bill of Rights, unlike the Framers of Article I, Section 10, had not chosen the type of explicit language that would clearly make the Bill of Rights applicable to state governments. "Acting upon" Marshall's "suggestion" in Barron, Bingham said, he "imitated" the Framers of Article I, Section 10: "As [these Framers had written] ‘no state shall … pass any Bill of Attainder … ' I prepared the provision of the first section of the fourteenth amendment."

Bingham's remarks shed light on the Supreme Court's decision to make most of the provisions contained in the Bill of Rights applicable to state governments through the doctrine of incorporation. Under this doctrine, the Supreme Court has ruled that every protection contained in the Bill of Rights — except for the right to bear arms, the right to indictment by grand jury, the right to trial by jury in civil cases, and the right against quartering soldiers — must be protected by state governments under the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court has explained that each of these incorporated rights is "deeply rooted in the nation's history" and "fundamental" to the concept of "ordered liberty" represented by the Due Process Clause (Palko v. Connecticut, 302 U.S. 319, 58 S. Ct. 149, 82 L. Ed. 288 [1937]). Any state that denies one of these rights is violating its duty to provide the "equal protection of the laws" guaranteed to the residents of every state by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Although a state may provide more constitutional protection to its residents than is conferred by the Bill of Rights, the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits any state from providing less protection. For example, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of sobriety checkpoints, which authorize police officers to stop motor vehicles to determine if the driver has been consuming alcohol, regardless of whether the stop was based on probable cause or made pursuant to a search warrant as required by the Fourth Amendment (Michigan v. Sitz, 496 U.S. 444, 110 S. Ct. 2481, 110 L. Ed. 2d 412 [1990]). The Minnesota Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion, invalidating arrests made during traffic stops at sobriety checkpoints because they did not comport with the state's constitutional provisions prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures (Ascher v. Commissioner of Public Safety, 519 N.W.2d 183 [Minn. 1993]).

Whereas the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses have given rise to a panorama of legal claims such as the sobriety checkpoint cases, the Privileges and Immunities Clause has produced only a few lawsuits since the end of the 1800s. Like most other legal terms in the Bill of Rights, the phrase privileges or immunities is not defined in the Constitution. Nor does the phrase possess a meaning that is self-evident. However, some insight into the meaning of the Privileges and Immunities Clause may be gleaned from statements made by the man who drafted it, Congressman Bingham.

Bingham said the "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States … are chiefly defined in the first eight amendments to the Constitution of the United States… . These eight articles … never were limitations upon the power of the states until made so by the Fourteenth Amendment" (quoted in Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 67 S. Ct. 1672, 91 L. Ed. 1903 [1947] [Murphy, J., dissenting]). Senator Jacob Howard echoed these thoughts, stating that "these privileges and immunities, whatever they may be — for they are not and cannot be fully defined in their entire extent and precise nature — [include] … personal rights … such as the freedom of speech and of the press, [and] the right of the people to peaceably assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances." Similarly, Representative James Wilson made it clear that the "privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United States" include "[f]reedom of religious opinion" and "freedom of speech and press."

Notwithstanding the statements made by these congressmen, the Supreme Court has limited the application of the Fourteenth Amendment's Privileges and Immunities Clause to provide only negligible protection against the state and federal governments. In the Slaughter-House cases, 83 U.S. (16 Wall.) 16, 21 L. Ed. 268 (1873), a group of New Orleans butchers brought a lawsuit to invalidate a Louisiana law that granted a monopoly to a local slaughterhouse. The butchers alleged that the state-chartered monopoly violated their "privileges and immunities" to pursue gainful employment free from unlawful restraints.

In an extremely narrow reading of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court rejected the butchers' argument. The Court held that the Privileges and Immunities Clause protects only rights derived from U.S. citizenship, such as the right to habeas corpus and interstate travel, and not rights derived from state law, such as the common-law rights of tort and property asserted by the New Orleans butchers. The Supreme Court has neither overruled its decision in the Slaughter-House cases nor expanded its narrow interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause. Most constitutional scholars have since pronounced this clause a dead letter.

If the Supreme Court has provided a more conservative interpretation of the Privileges and Immunities Clause than envisioned by the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, it has provided a more liberal interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 74 S. Ct. 686, 98 L. Ed. 873 (1954), the Supreme Court ruled that the doctrine of "separate but equal," in which the black and white races were segregated in public schools and other places of public accommodation, was "inherently unequal" and denied African Americans "equal protection of the laws." The ambit of the Equal Protection Clause was later enlarged by the Supreme Court beyond racial segregation to cover an assortment of gender discrimination claims asserted by women.

The Court made these rulings in spite of evidence that racial segregation was prevalent at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted and that women were treated like second-class citizens during most of the nineteenth century. In 1868, for example, racial segregation of public schools was permitted throughout the South and in eight northern states. The gallery of the U.S. Senate was itself segregated by race during the debate of the Equal Protection Clause. During the first half of the nineteenth century, every state proscribed married women from devising a will, owning or inheriting property, entering into a contract, or exercising almost any other basic civil right afforded to women in the modern United States. Indeed, the common law recognized no existence for married women independent from their husband. By marriage, the husband and wife became one person in law, and that person was the husband.

Thus, the Framers' original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment has not provided a useful yardstick to measure the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses. Since the mid-1940s, the Supreme Court has strayed further from the Framers' original understanding, recognizing controversial privacy rights to use contraceptives (Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 85 S. Ct. 1678, 14 L. Ed. 2d 510 [1965]), obtain abortions prior to the third trimester of pregnancy (Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113, 93 S. Ct. 705, 35 L. Ed. 2d 147 [1973]), and view obscene pornographic material in the privacy of one's own home (Stanley v. Georgia, 394 U.S. 557, 89 S. Ct. 1243, 22 L. Ed. 2d 542 [1969]). In 1996 the Supreme Court held that the Equal Protection Clause had been violated by an amendment to the Colorado constitution prohibiting legislative, judicial, or executive action at the state or local level from protecting homosexual persons from discrimination in Romer v. Evans, ___U.S. ___, 116 S. Ct. 1620, 134 L. Ed. 2d 855 (1996).

See: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas; Dred Scott v. Sandford; Due Process of Law; Equal Protection; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Griswold v. Connecticut; Roe v. Wade; Slaughter-House Cases.

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Note:
Article I, section 2, of the Constitution was modified by section 2 of the 14th amendment.

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 the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
*Changed by section 1 of the 26th amendment.

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An amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868. It was primarily concerned with details of reintegrating the southern states after the Civil War and defining some of the rights of recently freed slaves. The first section of the amendment, however, was to revolutionize federalism. It stated that no state could “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.” Gradually, the Supreme Court interpreted the amendment to mean that the guarantees of the Bill of Rights apply to the states as well as to the national government.

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Page 1 of Amendment XIV in the National Archives

Page 2 of the amendment

The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution, along with the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, was adopted after the Civil War as one of the Reconstruction Amendments. It was adopted on July 9, 1868.

The amendment provides a broad definition of citizenship, overruling the decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which had excluded slaves, and their descendants, from possessing Constitutional rights; this was used in the mid-20th century to dismantle racial segregation in the United States, as in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Its Due Process Clause has been used to apply most of the Bill of Rights to the states. This clause has also been used to recognize: (1) substantive due process rights, such as parental and marriage rights; and (2) procedural due process rights requiring that certain steps, such as a hearing, be followed before a person's "life, liberty, or property" can be taken away. The amendment's Equal Protection Clause requires states to provide equal protection under the law to all people within their jurisdictions. The amendment also includes a number of clauses dealing with the Confederate states and their officials.

Contents 1 Text 2 Citizenship and civil rights 2.1 Background 2.2 Citizenship Clause 2.3 Due Process Clause 2.4 Equal Protection Clause 2.5 Incorporation 3 Apportionment of Representatives 4 Participants in rebellion 5 Validity of public debt 6 Power of enforcement 7 Proposal and ratification 8 Supreme Court cases 8.1 Citizenship 8.2 Privileges or immunities 8.3 Procedural due process/Incorporation 8.4 Substantive due process 8.5 Equal protection 8.6 Apportionment of Representatives 8.7 Power of Enforcement 9 Notes 10 External links

Text

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.

Citizenship and civil rights

Background

Section 1, arguably the most far-reaching section of the Fourteenth Amendment, formally defines citizenship and protects a person's civil and political rights from being abridged or denied by any state. This represented the Congress's reversal of that portion of the Dred Scott decision which ruled that black people were not and could not become citizens of the United States or enjoy any of the privileges and immunities of citizenship.^[1] The Civil Rights Act of 1866 had already granted U.S. citizenship to all persons born in the United States; the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment added this principle into the Constitution to keep the Supreme Court from ruling the Civil Rights Act of 1866 to be unconstitutional for want of congressional authority to pass such a law or a future Congress from altering it by a bare majority vote.

This section was also in response to the Black Codes which southern states had passed in the wake of the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery in the United States.^[2] Those laws attempted to return freed slaves to something like their former condition by, among other things, restricting their movement and by preventing them from suing or testifying in court.

Section 1 also includes a formal definition of citizenship. During the original debate over the amendment, Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan—the author of the citizenship clause—described the clause as excluding not only "Indians", but also “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.”^[3] Howard also stated the word "jurisdiction" meant the United States possessed a “full and complete jurisdiction” over the person described in the amendment.^[4] Such meaning precluded citizenship to any person who was beholden, in even the slightest respect, to any sovereignty other than a U.S. state or the federal government.^[4][5]

Finally, this section was in response to violence against African Americans within the southern states. A Joint Committee on Reconstruction found that only a Constitutional amendment could protect the rights and safety of African Americans within those states.^[6]

Citizenship Clause

Main article: Citizenship Clause

There are varying interpretations of the original intent of Congress, based on statements made during the congressional debate over the amendment.^[7] During the original debate over the amendment Senator Jacob M. Howard of Michigan—the author of the Citizenship Clause—described the clause as excluding not only Indians but “persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers.” He was supported by other senators, including Edgar Cowan, Reverdy Johnson, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull.^[8] Howard additionally stated the word jurisdiction meant "the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now"^[8] and that the United States possessed a “full and complete jurisdiction” over the person described in the amendment.^[4][9][8] Other senators, including Senator John Conness,^[10] supported the amendment, believing citizenship ought to be extended to children of foreigners.

In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94 (1884), the clause's meaning was tested regarding whether it meant that anyone born in the United States would be a citizen regardless of the parents' nationality. In that case, the Supreme Court held that the children of Native Americans were not citizens, despite the fact that they were born in the United States.

The meaning was tested again in the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649 (1898), regarding children of non-citizen Chinese immigrants born in United States. The court ruled that the children were U.S. citizens.^[11]

The distinction between "legal" and "illegal" immigrants was not clear at the time of the decision of Wong Kim Ark.^[12] Neither in that decision nor in any subsequent case has the Supreme Court explicitly ruled on whether children born in the United States to illegal immigrant parents are entitled to birthright citizenship via the amendment,^[13] although that has generally been assumed to be the case.^[14] In some cases, the Court has implicitly assumed, or suggested in dicta, that such children are entitled to birthright citizenship: these include INS v. Rios-Pineda, 471 U.S. 444 (1985)^[15] and Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).^[16] Nevertheless, some claim the Congress possesses the power to exclude such children from US citizenship by legislation.^[13]

The Constitution does not explicitly provide any procedure for loss of United States citizenship. Loss of U.S. citizenship is possible only under the following circumstances:

• Fraud in the naturalization process. Technically, this is not loss of citizenship but rather a voiding of the purported naturalization and a declaration that the immigrant never was a U.S. citizen.
• Voluntary relinquishment of citizenship. This may be accomplished either through renunciation procedures specially established by the State Department or through other actions which demonstrate an intent to give up U.S. citizenship.^[17]

For a long time, voluntary acquisition or exercise of a foreign citizenship was considered sufficient cause for revocation of U.S. citizenship.^[18] This concept was enshrined in a series of treaties between the United States and other countries (the Bancroft Treaties). However, the Supreme Court repudiated this concept in Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967), as well as Vance v. Terrazas, 444 U.S. 252 (1980), holding that the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment barred the Congress from revoking citizenship.

Due Process Clause

Main article: Due process

Beginning with Allgeyer v. Louisiana (1897), the Court interpreted the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as providing substantive protection to private contracts and thus prohibiting a range of social and economic regulation, under what was referred to as "freedom of contract".^[19] Thus, the Court struck down a law decreeing maximum hours for workers in a bakery in Lochner v. New York (1905) and struck down a minimum wage law in Adkins v. Children's Hospital (1923). However, the Court did uphold some economic regulation such as state prohibition laws (Mugler v. Kansas), laws declaring maximum hours for mine workers (Holden v. Hardy (1898)), laws declaring maximum hours for female workers (Muller v. Oregon (1908)), President Wilson's intervention in a railroad strike (Wilson v. New (1917)), as well as federal laws regulating narcotics (United States v. Doremus (1919)).

The Court repudiated the "freedom of contract" line of cases in West Coast Hotel v. Parrish (1937). In the past forty years it has recognized a number of "fundamental rights" of individuals, such as privacy, which the states can regulate only under narrowly defined circumstances.^[19] The Court has also greatly expanded the reach of procedural due process, requiring some sort of hearing before the government may terminate civil service employees, expel a student from public school, or cut off a welfare recipient's benefits.^[20][21]

The Court has ruled that in certain circumstances, the Due Process Clause requires a judge to recuse himself on account of concern of there being a conflict of interest. For example, on June 8, 2009, in Caperton v. A. T. Massey Coal Co. (2009), the Court ruled that a justice of the Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia could not participate in a case involving a major donor to his election to that court.^[22]

Equal Protection Clause

Main article: Equal Protection Clause

In the decades following the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Supreme Court overturned laws barring blacks from juries (Strauder v. West Virginia (1880)) or discriminating against Chinese-Americans in the regulation of laundry businesses (Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886)), as violations of the Equal Protection Clause. However, in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Supreme Court held that the states could impose segregation so long as they provided equivalent facilities—the genesis of the “separate but equal” doctrine.^[23] The Court went even further in restricting the Equal Protection Clause in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908), holding that the states could force private actors to discriminate by prohibiting an integrated college from admitting both black and white students. By the early twentieth century, the Equal Protection Clause had been eclipsed to the point that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. dismissed it as "the usual last resort of constitutional arguments."^[24]

The Court held to the "separate but equal" doctrine for more than fifty years, despite numerous cases in which the Court itself had found that the segregated facilities provided by the states were almost never equal, until Brown v. Board of Education (1954) reached the Court. Brown met with a campaign of resistance from white Southerners, and for decades the federal courts attempted to enforce Brown's mandate against continual attempts at circumvention.^[25] This resulted in the controversial desegregation busing decrees handed down by federal courts in many parts of the nation (see Milliken v. Bradley (1974)).^[26] In Hernandez v. Texas,^[27] the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects those beyond the racial classes of white or "Negro",and extends to other racial and nationalistic groups, such as Mexican Americans in this case. In the half century since Brown, the Court has extended the reach of the Equal Protection Clause to other historically disadvantaged groups, such as women and illegitimate children, although it has applied a somewhat less stringent test than it has applied to governmental discrimination on the basis of race (United States v. Virginia (1996); Levy v. Louisiana (1968)).^[28]

Though the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment did not believe it would expand voting rights^[29] (leading to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment), the Supreme Court, since Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), has interpreted the Equal Protection Clause as requiring the states to apportion their congressional districts and state legislative seats on a "one man, one vote" basis.^[30] The Court has also struck down districting plans in which race was a major consideration. In Shaw v. Reno (1993), the Court prohibited a North Carolina plan aimed at creating majority-black districts to balance historic underrepresentation in the state's congressional delegations.^[31] In League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry (2006), the Court ruled that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan intentionally diluted the votes of Latinos and thus violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Incorporation

Main articles: Incorporation (Bill of Rights) and Privileges or Immunities Clause

Prior to the adoption of this amendment, the Supreme Court ruled, in Barron v. Baltimore (1833), that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the states. While many states modeled their constitutions and laws after the United States Constitution and federal laws, those state constitutions did not necessarily include provisions comparable to the Bill of Rights. According to some commentators, the framers and early supporters of the Fourteenth Amendment believed that it would ensure that the states would be required to recognize the individual rights the federal government was already required to respect in the Bill of Rights and in other constitutional provisions; all of these rights were likely understood to fall within the "privileges or immunities" safeguarded by the Amendment.^[32] However, the Supreme Court limited the reach of the Amendment by holding in the Slaughterhouse Cases (1873) that the Privileges or Immunities Clause was limited to "privileges or immunities" granted to citizens by the federal government in virtue of national citizenship. The Court further held in the Civil Rights Cases (1883) that the Amendment was limited to "state action" and thus did not authorize the Congress to outlaw racial discrimination on the part of private individuals or organizations. Neither of these decisions has been overturned and in fact have been specifically reaffirmed several times.^[33]

However, by the latter half of the twentieth century, nearly all of the rights in the Bill of Rights had been applied to the states, under what is known as the incorporation doctrine.^[34] As a result, the Fourteenth Amendment not only empowered the federal courts to intervene in this area to enforce the guarantee of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, but also to import the substantive rights of free speech, freedom of religion, protection from unreasonable searches and cruel and unusual punishment, and other limitations on governmental power.^[35] At the present, the Supreme Court has held that the Due Process Clause incorporates all of the substantive protections of the First, Fourth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments and all of the Fifth Amendment other than the requirement that any criminal prosecution must follow a grand jury indictment, but none of the provisions of the Seventh Amendment relating to civil trials.^[35]

Apportionment of Representatives

Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment establishes rules for the apportioning of Representatives in the Congress to states, essentially counting all residents for apportionment and reducing apportionment if a state wrongfully denies a person's right to vote. This section overrode the provisions of Article I, Section 2, Clause 3 of the Constitution, which counted only three-fifths of each state's slave population for purposes of allotting seats in the House of Representatives and the Electoral College.

However, the provision calling for proportional decreases in representation in the House of Representatives for states that denied men 21 and older the right to vote was never enforced, despite the fact that Southern states prevented many blacks from voting before the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.^[36] Some have argued that Section 2 was implicitly repealed by the Fifteenth Amendment,^[37] but it should be noted that the Supreme Court has acknowledged the provisions of Section 2 in modern times. For example, in Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24 (1974) the Court invoked Section 2 to justify the disenfranchisement of felons by the states. In his dissent, Justice Marshall explained the history of the Section 2 in relation to the Post-Civil War Reconstruction era:

The historical purpose for section 2 itself is, however, relatively clear and, in my view, dispositive of this case. The Radical Republicans who controlled the 39th Congress were concerned that the additional congressional representation of the Southern States which would result from the abolition of slavery might weaken their own political dominance. There were two alternatives available—either to limit southern representation, which was unacceptable on a long-term basis, or to insure that southern Negroes, sympathetic to the Republican cause, would be enfranchised; but an explicit grant of suffrage to Negroes was thought politically unpalatable at the time. Section 2 of the Fourteenth Amendment was the resultant compromise. It put Southern States to a choice—enfranchise Negro voters or lose congressional representation. [...] Section 2 provides a special remedy—reduced representation—to cure a particular form of electoral abuse—the disenfranchisement of Negroes.^[38]

Participants in rebellion

Section 3 prevents the election or appointment to any federal or State office of any person who had held any of certain offices and then engaged in insurrection, rebellion or treason. However, a two-thirds vote by each House of the Congress can override this limitation. In 1975, Robert E. Lee's citizenship was restored by a joint congressional resolution, retroactive to June 13, 1865.^[39] In 1978, two-thirds of both Houses of Congress voted to posthumously remove the service ban from Jefferson Davis.^[40]

Validity of public debt

Section 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt legislated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, several English and French banks had lent money to the South during the war.^[41] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power" on account of Section 4.^[42]

Power of enforcement

Main article: Congressional power of enforcement

Section 5, the last section, was construed broadly by the Supreme Court in Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966).^[43] However, the Court, in City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), said:

Any suggestion that Congress has a substantive, non-remedial power under the Fourteenth Amendment is not supported by our case law.^[44]

Proposal and ratification

The United States Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment on June 13, 1866 and on July 9, 1868, three-fourths of the states (28 of 37) had ratified the amendment:^[45]

1. Connecticut (June 25, 1866)
2. New Hampshire (July 6, 1866)
3. Tennessee (July 19, 1866)
4. New Jersey (September 11, 1866)*
5. Oregon (September 19, 1866)
6. Vermont (October 30, 1866)
7. Ohio (January 4, 1867)*
8. New York (January 10, 1867)
9. Kansas (January 11, 1867)
10. Illinois (January 15, 1867)
11. West Virginia (January 16, 1867)
12. Michigan (January 16, 1867)
13. Minnesota (January 16, 1867)
14. Maine (January 19, 1867)
15. Nevada (January 22, 1867)
16. Indiana (January 23, 1867)
17. Missouri (January 25, 1867)
18. Rhode Island (February 7, 1867)
19. Wisconsin (February 7, 1867)
20. Pennsylvania (February 12, 1867)
21. Massachusetts (March 20, 1867)
22. Nebraska (June 15, 1867)
23. Iowa (March 16, 1868)
24. Arkansas (April 6, 1868)
25. Florida (June 9, 1868)
26. North Carolina (July 4, 1868, after having rejected it on December 14, 1866)
27. Louisiana (July 9, 1868, after having rejected it on February 6, 1867)
28. South Carolina (July 9, 1868, after having rejected it on December 20, 1866)

*Ohio passed a resolution that purported to withdraw its ratification on January 15, 1868. The New Jersey legislature also tried to rescind its ratification on February 20, 1868. The New Jersey governor had vetoed his state's withdrawal on March 5, and the legislature overrode the veto on March 24. Accordingly, on July 20, 1868, Secretary of State William H. Seward certified that the amendment had become part of the Constitution if the rescissions were ineffective. The Congress responded on the following day, declaring that the amendment was part of the Constitution and ordering Seward to promulgate the amendment.

Meanwhile, two additional states had ratified the amendment:

1. Alabama (July 13, 1868, the date the ratification was "approved" by the governor)
2. Georgia (July 21, 1868, after having rejected it on November 9, 1866)

Thus, on July 28, Seward was able to certify unconditionally that the Amendment was part of the Constitution without having to endorse the Congress's assertion that the withdrawals were ineffective.

There were additional ratifications and rescissions; by 2003, the Amendment had been ratified by every state in the Union as of 1868:^[46]

1. Virginia (October 8, 1869, after having rejected it on January 9, 1867)
2. Mississippi (January 17, 1870)
3. Texas (February 18, 1870, after having rejected it on October 27, 1866)
4. Delaware (February 12, 1901, after having rejected it on February 7, 1867)
5. Maryland (1959)
6. California (1959)
7. Oregon (1973, after withdrawing it on October 15, 1868)
8. Kentucky (1976, after having rejected it on January 8, 1867)
9. New Jersey (2003, after having rescinded on February 20, 1868)
10. Ohio (2003, after having rescinded on January 15, 1868)

Supreme Court cases

Citizenship

1857 – Dred Scott v. Sandford 1884 – Elk v. Wilkins 1898 – United States v. Wong Kim Ark 1964 – Schneider v. Rusk

1967 – Afroyim v. Rusk 1980 – Vance v. Terrazas 1982 – Plyler v. Doe

Privileges or immunities

1868 – Crandall v. Nevada 1873 – Slaughterhouse Cases 1908 – Twining v. New Jersey

1920 – United States v. Wheeler 1948 – Oyama v. California 1999 – Saenz v. Roe

Procedural due process/Incorporation

1832 – Barron v. Baltimore 1883 – Civil Rights Cases 1925 – Gitlow v. New York 1932 – Powell v. Alabama 1952 – Rochin v. California 1961 – Mapp v. Ohio 1962 – Robinson v. California

1963 – Gideon v. Wainwright 1966 – Miranda v. Arizona 1967 – Reitman v. Mulkey 1970 – Goldberg v. Kelly 1972 – Furman v. Georgia 1974 – Goss v. Lopez 1975 – O'Connor v. Donaldson 1976 – Gregg v. Georgia

Substantive due process

1857 – Dred Scott v. Sandford 1870 – Munn v. Illinois 1887 – Mugler v. Kansas 1897 – Allgeyer v. Louisiana 1905 – Lochner v. New York 1908 – Muller v. Oregon 1923 – Adkins v. Children's Hospital

1923 – Meyer v. Nebraska 1925 – Pierce v. Society of Sisters 1937 – West Coast Hotel v. Parrish 1973 – Roe v. Wade 1996 – BMW v. Gore 2003 – Lawrence v. Texas

Equal protection

1880 – Strauder v. West Virginia 1886 – Yick Wo v. Hopkins 1896 – Plessy v. Ferguson 1908 – Berea College v. Kentucky 1917 – Buchanan v. Warley 1942 – Skinner v. Oklahoma 1946 – Korematsu v. United States 1948 – Shelley v. Kraemer

1954 – Hernandez v. Texas 1954 – Brown v. Board of Education 1962 – Baker v. Carr 1965 – Griswold v. Connecticut 1967 – Loving v. Virginia 1978 – Regents of the University of California v. Bakke 1982 – Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan 1996 – United States v. Virginia 1996 – Romer v. Evans

Apportionment of Representatives

• 1974 – Richardson v. Ramirez

Power of Enforcement

1883 – Civil Rights Cases 1966 – Katzenbach v. Morgan 1997 – City of Boerne v. Flores 2000 – United States v. Morrison

2001 – Board of Trustees of the University of Alabama v. Garrett 2003 – Nevada Department of Human Resources v. Hibbs 2004 – Tennessee v. Lane

Notes

1. ^ Tsesis, Alexander, The Inalienable Core of Citizenship: From Dred Scott to the Rehnquist Court. Arizona State Law Journal, Vol. 39, 2008
2. ^ Duhaime, Lloyd. "Legal Definition of Black Code". duhaime.org. http://www.duhaime.org/LegalDictionary/B/BlackCode.aspx. Retrieved on 2009-03-25. 
3. ^ Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, p. 2890.
4. ^ ^{a b c} Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, p. 2895.
5. ^ Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, p. 2893. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull, participating in the debate, stated the following: "What do we mean by 'subject to the jurisdiction of the United States'? Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means." In a similar vein, Reverdy Johnson said in the same debate: "If there are to be citizens of the United States entitled everywhere to the character of citizens of the United States, there should be some certain definition of what citizenship is, what has created the character of citizen as between himself and the United States, and the amendment says citizenship may depend upon birth, and I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States."
6. ^ Finkelman, Paul, John Bingham and the Background to the Fourteenth Amendment. Akron Law Review, Vol. 36, No. 671, 2003
7. ^ Messner, Emily. “Born in the U.S.A. (Part I)”, The Debate, washingtonpost.com (2006-03-30).
8. ^ ^{a b c} Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, p. 2890.
9. ^ Congressional Globe, 1st Session, 39th Congress, pt. 4, p. 2893. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lyman Trumbull, participating in the debate, stated the following: "What do we [the committee reporting the clause] mean by 'subject to the jurisdiction of the United States'? Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means."
   Reverdy Johnson said in the same debate: "If there are to be citizens of the United States entitled everywhere to the character of citizens of the United States, there should be some certain definition of what citizenship is, what has created the character of citizen as between himself and the United States, and the amendment says citizenship may depend upon birth, and I know of no better way to give rise to citizenship than the fact of birth within the territory of the United States, born of parents who at the time were subject to the authority of the United States."
10. ^ "[...] During that debate, Senator Edgar Cowan of Pennsylvania objected to the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment. 'Is the child of the Chinese immigrant in California a citizen?' he asked on the Senate floor. Senator John Conness of California said the answer should be 'yes.' 'The children of all parentage whatever, born in California, should be regarded and treated as citizens of the United States, entitled to equal civil rights with other citizens,' Mr. Conness said.", Robert Pear (1996-08-07). "Citizenship Proposal Faces Obstacle in the Constitution". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9503E7DE143EF934A3575BC0A960958260. 
11. ^ Klusmeyer, Douglas B.; Alexander, Thomas (2000). From Migrants to Citizens: Membership in a Changing World. Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment. pp. 124. ISBN 0870031597. 
12. ^ Ancheta, Angelo N. (1998). Race, Rights, and the Asian American Experience. Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 103. ISBN 0813524644. 
13. ^ ^{a b} The Heritage Foundation (2005). The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Washington, DC: Heritage Foundation. pp. 385–386. ISBN 159698001X. 
14. ^ Erler, Edward J.; West, Thomas G.; Marini, John A. (2007). The Founders on Citizenship and Immigration: Principles and Challenges in America. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 67. ISBN 074255855X. 
15. ^ In INS v. Rios-Pineda the Supreme Court opinion referred to a child born to deportable aliens as "a citizen of this country"
16. ^ In Plyler v. Doe the court stated in dicta that illegal immigrants are "within the jurisdiction" of the states in which they reside and added in a footnote that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful."
17. ^ U.S. Department of State (02/01/2008). "Advice about Possible Loss of U.S. Citizenship and Dual Nationality". http://travel.state.gov/law/citizenship/citizenship_778.html. Retrieved on 2009-04-17. 
18. ^ For example, see Perez v. Brownell, 356 U.S. 44 (1958), overruled by Afroyim v. Rusk, 387 U.S. 253 (1967)
19. ^ ^{a b} "Due Process of Law - Substantive Due Process". West's Encyclopedia of American Law. Thomson Gale. 1998. http://law.jrank.org/pages/6312/Due-Process-Law-Substantive-Due-Process.html. 
20. ^ White, Bradford (2008). Procedural Due Process in Plain English. National Trust for Historic Preservation. ISBN 0891335730. 
21. ^ See also Mathews v. Eldridge (1976).
22. ^ Jess Bravin and Kris Maher (June 8, 2009). "Justices Set New Standard for Recusals". The Wall Street Journal. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124447000965394255.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-09. 
23. ^ Abrams, Eve (2009-02-12). "Plessy/Ferguson plaque dedicated". WWNO (University New Orleans Public Radio). http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wwno/news.newsmain?action=article&ARTICLE_ID=1468970. Retrieved on 2009-04-17. 
24. ^ Last paragraph in Opinion of the Court in Buck v. Bell (1927)
25. ^ Patterson, James (2002). Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy (Pivotal Moments in American History). Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195156323. 
26. ^ "Forced Busing and White Flight". Time. September 25, 1978. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912178,00.html. Retrieved on 2009-06-17. 
27. ^ 347 U.S. 475 (1954)
28. ^ Gerstmann, Evan (1999). The Constitutional Underclass: Gays, Lesbians, and the Failure of Class-Based Equal Protection. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226288609. 
29. ^ Meese, III, Edwin; Heritage Foundation (2005). The Heritage Guide to the Constitution. Washington D.C.: Regnery Publishing. pp. 400. ISBN 159698001X. http://books.google.com/books?id=-_8N3UeXeesC&pg=PA400&lpg=PA400&dq=fourteenth+amendment+framers+voting+rights&source=web&ots=kYRrYD2LNK&sig=S2j-E1vlY4mA7OY8hNXh39HooCE. 
30. ^ Earl Warren: Judicial Revolution (sixth paragraph)
31. ^ Aleinikoff, T. Alexander; Samuel Issacharoff (1993). "Race and Redistricting: Drawing Constitutional Lines after Shaw v. Reno". Michigan Law Review 92: 588. 
32. ^ Amar, Akhil Reed (1992). "The Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment". Yale Law Journal 101 (6): 1193–1284. doi:10.2307/796923. http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html. 
33. ^ e.g., United States v. Morrison (2000)
34. ^ "Duncan v. Louisiana (Mr. Justice Black, joined by Mr. Justice Douglas, concurring". Cornell Law School - Legal Information Institute. May 20, 1968. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0391_0145_ZC.html. Retrieved on 2009-04-26. 
35. ^ ^{a b} Levy, Leonard (1970). Fourteenth Amendment and the Bill of Rights: The Incorporation Theory (American Constitutional and Legal History Series). Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306700298. 
36. ^ For more on Section 2 go to Findlaw.com
37. ^ Chin, Gabriel J. (2004). "Reconstruction, Felon Disenfranchisement, and the Right to Vote: Did the Fifteenth Amendment Repeal Section 2 of the Fourteenth?". Georgetown Law Journal 92: 259. doi:10.139/ssrn.10.139/ssrn.433580 (inactive 2009-04-04). 
38. ^ Richardson v. Ramirez, 418 U.S. 24, 74 (1974)
39. ^ "Pieces of History: General Robert E. Lee's Parole and Citizenship". Prologue Magazine (The National Archives) 37 (1). 2005. http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/piece-lee.html. 
40. ^ Goodman, Bonnie K. (2006). "History Buzz: October 16, 2006: This Week in History". History News Network. http://hnn.us/blogs/archives/52/2006/10/. Retrieved on 2009-06-18. 
41. ^ For more on Section 4 go to Findlaw.com
42. ^ 294 U.S. 330 at 354
43. ^ FindLaw: U.S. Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment, p. 40
44. ^ City of Boerne v. Flores, Opinion of the Court, Part III-A-3
45. ^ Mount, Steve (January 2007). "Ratification of Constitutional Amendments". http://www.usconstitution.net/constamrat.html. Retrieved on February 24, 2007. 
46. ^ Chin, Gabriel J.; Abraham, Anjali (2008). "Beyond the Supermajority: Post-Adoption Ratification of the Equality Amendments". Arizona Law Review 50: 25. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1076805. 

External links

• "Amendments to the Constitution of the United States" (PDF). GPO Access. http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/pdf/con001.pdf. Retrieved on September 11, 2005.  (PDF, providing text of amendment and dates of ratification)
• CRS Annotated Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment
• Fourteenth Amendment and related resources at the Library of Congress
• National Archives: Fourteenth Amendment
• Jon Roland article about Amendment's intent

v • d • e Illegal immigration to the United States and related topics Issues Human trafficking · Labor shortage · US-Mexico Border · Economic impact · Population · Guest worker program Proposed legislation DREAM Act (2001–2009) · H.R. 4437 (2005) · McCain-Kennedy (2005) · SKIL (2006) · S. 2611 (2006) · STRIVE Act (2007) · Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 S. 1348 (2007) · Uniting American Families Act (2000-2009) Operations Wetback (1954) · Gatekeeper (1994) · Endgame (2003-[2012]) · Front Line (2004-2005) · Return to Sender (2006-2007) · Scheduled Departure (2008) Results 2006 Protests · List of people deported from the United States Government organizations Department of Homeland Security · Immigration and Customs Enforcement · U.S. Customs and Border Protection · INS · Board of Immigration Appeals Non-government organizations CHIRLA · CCIR · NIF · FIRM · WAAA · CASA · NA · MM · MB · FAIR · MMP · MCDC · CCIR · SOS · CIS · NUSA · NPG · MPI · YDSM Relevant U.S. laws Naturalization Act (1790) · Naturalization Act (1795) · 14th Amendment (1868) · Naturalization Act (1870) · Page Act (1875) · Chinese Exclusion (1882) · Naturalization Act (1906) · Gentlemen's Agreement (1907) · Emergency Quota Act (1921) · Immigration Act (1924) · Tydings-McDuffie Act (1934) · Filipino Repatriation Act (1935) · Bracero Program (1942–64) · Magnuson Act (1943) · INS Act (1952) · INS Act (1965) · IRCA (1986) · Immigration Act (1990) · IIRIRA (1996) · NACARA Act (1997) · REAL ID Act (2005) · Secure Fence (2006) Relevant International laws UN Refugee Convention (1951) Visas and Policies Green Card Lottery · United States visas · Visa Waiver Program · Asylum in the United States · US-VISIT · Security Advisory Opinion · E-Verify · 287(g)

v • d • e United States Constitution Text (at Wikisource): Preamble and Articles · Bill of Rights · Subsequent Amendments Articles Preamble · One · Two · Three · Four · Five · Six · Seven Amendments 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 · 8 · 9 · 10 · 11 · 12 · 13 · 14 · 15 · 16 · 17 · 18 · 19 · 20 · 21 · 22 · 23 · 24 · 25 · 26 · 27 Bill of Rights · Ratified · Proposed · Unsuccessful · Conventions to propose · State ratifying conventions Formation History · Articles of Confederation · Mount Vernon Conference · Annapolis Convention · Philadelphia Convention (Virginia Plan · New Jersey Plan · Connecticut Compromise · Three-Fifths Compromise · Signers) · Federalist Papers (list) · Massachusetts Compromise Clauses Appointments · Appropriations · Case or Controversy · Citizenship · Commerce · Compact · Confrontation · Contract · Copyright and Patent · Due Process · Emolument · Equal Protection · Establishment · Exceptions · Ex post facto · Extradition · Free Exercise · Fugitive Slave · Full Faith and Credit · General Welfare  · Guarantee · Impeachment · Ineligibility · Militia · Natural–born citizen · Necessary and Proper · No Religious Test · Origination · Postal · Presentment · Privileges and Immunities · Privileges or Immunities · Speech or Debate · Supremacy · Suspension · Takings · Taxing and Spending · Territorial · Title of Nobility · Treaty · Trial by Jury · Vesting · War Powers Interpretation Theory · Concurrent powers · Congressional enforcement · Double jeopardy · Dormant Commerce Clause · Enumerated powers · Executive privilege · Incorporation of the Bill of Rights · Nondelegation doctrine · Preamble · Preemption · Saxbe fix · Separation of church and state · Separation of powers · Unitary executive theory

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