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The Fourteenth Amendment (Amendment XIV) to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Usually considered one of the most consequential amendments, it addresses citizenship rights and equal protection under the law and was proposed in response to issues related to formerly enslaved Americans following the American Civil War.
The Equal Protection Clause is located at the end of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment: 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.
The Massachusetts Constitution, chiefly authored by John Adams in 1780, contains in its Declaration of Rights the wording: "All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and ...
Twenty-seven of those, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, are part of the Constitution. The first ten amendments were adopted and ratified simultaneously and are known collectively as the Bill of Rights. The 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments are collectively known as the Reconstruction Amendments. Six amendments adopted by ...
the word 'liberty', in the 14th Amendment, is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law.
The U.S. Constitution was a federal one and was greatly influenced by the study of Magna Carta and other federations, both ancient and extant. The Due Process Clause of the Constitution was partly based on common law and on Magna Carta (1215), which had become a foundation of English liberty against arbitrary power wielded by a ruler.
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The words "equal justice under law" paraphrase an earlier expression coined in 1891 by the Supreme Court. [7] [8] In the case of Caldwell v.Texas, Chief Justice Melville Fuller wrote on behalf of a unanimous Court as follows, regarding the Fourteenth Amendment: "the powers of the States in dealing with crime within their borders are not limited, but no State can deprive particular persons or ...