The People's U.S. Constitution: Amendment XIV
Posted: Thursday, December 04, 2008
by Jeff Brown
Inner Projection
Amendment XIV: Citizenship Rights or Equal Protection of the Laws. Ratified 7/9/1868.
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.
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.
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.
5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Because of its importance, the 14 th Amendment has been referred to as the New Constitution, but what makes this one greater than all the rest? It is the amendment that the Court used to apply the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states. Remember how often the phrase "doesn't apply to the states" has been used by the Court in past amendments? It's an interesting point to bring up, because how many Joe and Jane average citizens believe (or maybe never even thought about) the Constitution applies to citizens at the state level? Of course, the definition of federal is a union of states that recognizes the sovereignty of a central authority or government while retaining certain residual powers of government.
But in using your thesaurus if you click on "residual", one of the words that appears is "leftover." Who wants a whole bunch of leftovers? So therein is the importance of the 14 th Amendment. If it wasn't for this amendment, we'd still be eating leftovers a greater portion of the time. Nothing like a cold slice of pizza for breakfast or a turkey sandwich the day after Thanksgiving, but a steady diet of leftovers is seldom healthy or preferred.
The 14 th Amendment also attempts to make up for the lack of political rights received by former slaves and to negate the Black Codes or a "separate but equal" status, for even though they were physically freed through the Emancipation Proclamation, blacks did not begin to fully receive their rights until after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. And even though the 14 th Amendment, which was ratified in 1868, sought "equal protection" for all citizens, we all know that the receiving of those rights even to this day is a work in progress.
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.
It used to be left up to the states to determine citizenship. Now citizenship is a national designation. Here, for the first time, regardless of race, color, creed, "all persons born or naturalized in the United States " are citizens of those states. All states, including the one he or she is born in.
And in order for Southern states to be added back to the union after the Civil War, they were required to ratify the 14 th Amendment, the cornerstone of the government's plan for Reconstruction.
Some Supreme Court justices have believed that the Bill of Rights should be selectively applied to the states or what is called "selective incorporation." Others believed that this gave the Court too much power and subjective reign over decisions, therefore, the "total incorporation" philosophy or applying all the provisions of the Bill of Rights to the states.
Which has won out? Selective incorporation, for the following rights in the first eight amendments have not been applied to the states: the right to keep and bear arms (2nd Amendment) even though this has changed somewhat in recent years (see my comments in The People's U.S. Constitution: Amendments II-IV); the restriction on quartering troops (3rd Amendment); trial by jury in civil cases (7th Amendment); and the ban on excessive bail and fines (Eight Amendment). And we're not concerned about the 9th and 10th Amendments because they don't apply to the states. They may mention "the people" and "states" but they do not directly protect individual rights.
The "due process of law" clause of the 14 th Amendment is a protection of what the Court calls enumerated rights or rights that are not specifically in the Constitution. I hope you can see by this statement the inherent problems of "due process." For since nothing is specifically stated, who states? Well, whoever happens to be a Supreme Court justice that's who. And depending on the subjective nature of your call as Supreme Court justice, "due process" protection may or may not protect.
For example, what if you as a justice believe in laissez faire or government not stepping in to regulate business? In this case, you potentially give more power to the companies. If you oppose laissez faire philosophy, you give more power to the people. Which is it? And what's the good of all this "due process." Once again, it comes down to the whim of the Court. But keep in mind that since this is the United States--a government of the people, by the people, for the people, allegedly--in order to keep the people happy, you may decide to alter your opinion if the majority speaking loudly in your ear opposes your interpretation of the protection of enumerated rights. I know judges are not elected to life-terms but, hey, judges are people too-most anyway.
U.S. citizens may complain and fret and worry and rail against "the system," but what's the option? Federalism may not be the ideal and it sure isn't as neat and easy as Communism where as a citizen you simply follow along or get thrown in jail or strung up for disobedience. But you do have a choice, even though a choice to leave these good states may end in fewer choices, but again, your choice.
But here's a little despotism in your federalism to give you a taste of our government's imperfection and, may I say, its imbecility.
In Buck vs. Bell (1927) Carrie Buck was to be sterilized for being an "imbecile." At the time, there was a belief that the human race could be purified through eugenics-selective breeding to improve the human race. Those who were selected were not necessarily unintelligent but poor. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes allowed Buck's sterilization because "Three generation of imbeciles is enough."
But who's the imbecile here? You can plainly see why the subjectivity of the Constitution's interpretation and the leaving of the "greater" decisions in the hands of the unelected and life-serving few is problematic for many American citizens. But get these guys in office, if you will, with the vote, let them stay, say, three or four years, and have to work to get reelected and I'm sure we'll see a difference in the overall decision making of the Court.
And I'm really not sure why justices aren't elected and take office for life. Maybe it was done early on because being a judge was not seen as a great job and to keep people they were given life sentences (the double meaning here should be noted) or a promise of steady employment. In the early goings of this country, many took a judgeship because of "last resort" tactics. But it appears to me that a change in the election of our Supreme Court judges is certainly needed.
Now let's consider the Equal Protection Clause. A biggie, for this is the first time we see the word "equal" specifically expressed in the Constitution. The intention here is to avoid discrimination and it restricts the states. Yes, I said "states." So maybe this federalism isn't so government oriented as we the people believe. Maybe. Stay tuned, only time will tell what will happen with those non-state applied amendments.
But this amendment is a biggie, as I so gracefully stated above, because its main purpose is to protect minorities from racial discrimination. And it should, for in the past the Court allowed racial segregation of public facilities, the Japanese during WWII to be interned, and The Chinese Exclusion Act, the only time an entire race was specifically excluded by the government. This is not ancient history, for professor James W. Loewen states in Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism that "Towns such as Anna and Jonesboro are often called sundown towns,' owing to the signs that many of them formerly sported at their corporate limits-signs that usually said Nigger, Don't Let the Sun Go Down on You in __.' Anna-Jonesboro had such signs on Highway 127 as recently as the 1970s." And thirty years is but a spit in the bucket of even recorded history. You can now stop wondering why such an insidious disease like racism is believed by many to be alive and well, for a disease that has lasted thousands of years is not simply eradicated in a few decades by a few words in a document.
Once again, I say "due process" and the protection of "enumerated rights"? Who's rights?
In Plessy v. Ferguson, a case that involved racial segregation in public places, Homer Plessy believed that Jim Crow Laws reinforced a "badge of inferiority." The court thought otherwise: "If this be so, it is not by reason of anything found in the act, but solely because the colored race chooses to put that construction upon it." Ah, the wisdom of our illustrious courts.
And if you think that all citizens of these United States have been protected by our most important document, the Law of the Land, one must ponder its lack of ability to do so, especially considering the 4,700 people who were lynched between 1882 and 1944. Unfortunately, for many Law of the Land has stood more for the modern day shorthand LOL.
But even women were discriminated against . . . by the Court. Justice Joseph P. Bradley said that being a wife and mother, according to God, is "the paramount destiny and mission of women." And even as late as the early 1900s the Court believed that women should work limited hours on the grounds that they are "the weaker sex." Also, women shouldn't work in bars because of the morality issue-women naturally more susceptible to being harmed by immoral environments. Or women being exempted from jury duty because they "needed to be at home with their families."
Need I say more about "enumeration" and "due process" and their limitations as a result of human error and bias? Even the bias of our unelected "smart" people?
But women still are getting the short end of the stick. According to the Court, sex is not a suspect class, as much as race is. The Court uses a less demanding test than "compelling interest" for classification based on gender. The Equal Rights Amendment which stated that "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States nor by any state on account of sex." Yet the amendment was never ratified.
So far we've been speaking mostly about citizens; however, the Equal Protection Clause also applies to aliens. Regarding benefits, Congress has complete control of immigration and who gets what. The States, however, since the Court has sovereignty here, can't deny even illegal immigrants certain benefits such as education.
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. . . .
The 13 th Amendment may have abolished slavery, but it said nothing about fixing the provision in Article I, Section 2, or the statement that slaves shall count as three-fifths of a person regarding representation.
. . . 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, . . .
Here we see the all-too-troublesome word "male." At the time it was written, what did that mean? Eventually, it meant more work, actually, for there would have to be separate amendments for not only women, but black men (for "male," even though it was not specifically stated, meant "white male inhabitants"), and eventually, eighteen-year-olds on up.
. . . 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.
This provision punishes states for not allowing African American's to vote; however, it says nothing of the states having to stop such practices.
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.
This is post-Civil War stuff. Basically, you couldn't hold federal or state office if you supported the Confederacy.
Let's move on.
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.
What's this? This recognizes and validates Union debt from the Civil War. However, it makes it evident that federal or state government will not take on any of the debt.
5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Here is simply a statement of the federal government's power to give Congress the authority to pass legislation to enforce its provisions.
This Article has been viewed 351 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (0 total)No comments yet.
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.