How has the Fourteenth Amendment affected civil liberties from the time of its passage at the end of the Civil War?

The Fourteenth Amendment was added to ensure that all citizens of the United States were entitled to "equal protection" under the law. It said that all naturalized or born citizens were given this right regardless of any other factors. Before the Civil War, the Supreme Court had held (in the infamous Dred Scott decision) that African Americans could not be citizens, and that they had no rights a white man had to recognize. This Amendment essentially nullified that decision. It also was intended to guarantee that the rights protected in the Bill of Rights were not just shielded from infringement from Congress, but the state legislatures as well.
This had, however, been a relatively recent development. In the nineteenth century, courts regularly held that the Fourteenth Amendment did not do this, most famously in a series of Supreme Court cases that allowed Southern states to roll back laws intended to guarantee the rights of freedmen. In the twentieth century, the Supreme Court developed a legal doctrine known as "incorporation." Under this doctrine, the rights protected by the Bill of Rights were extended to the state level under the "Due Process" clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Amendments have all been applied to state laws under this doctrine in a series of cases dating back to the turn of the century. So in this way, the Fourteenth Amendment has been instrumental—essential, even—to extending civil liberties to all American citizens. Having very little effect on civil liberties immediately after its passage, it has become the linchpin of the rights and liberties associated with American citizenship.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine


The civil liberties that are enjoyed by the people of the United States are outlined in the Amendments to the Constitution, the first ten of which are also known as the Bill of Rights. For example, the First Amendment gives the people the liberties of free speech, the freedom to exercise their religion, and the freedom of the press, while the Fourth Amendment provides civil liberties through the prohibition of government searches or seizures that are deemed unreasonable.
However, up until the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, these civil liberties were only enforceable against the federal government, not the governments of the individual states. After all, the first three words of the Bill of Rights are "Congress shall not," and Congress is the legislative body of the federal government.
Before 1868, then, this meant that, while individuals had a right to free speech that could not be infringed upon by the United States government, the government of a state—say, the state of Virginia—could do whatever it wanted to infringe on this civil liberty.
The Fourteenth Amendment changed that. By declaring that "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" (this is known as the due process clause), the Fourteenth Amendment applied the protections that were guaranteed by the Bill of Rights to actions done by state governments, not just the federal government. No longer were individual states able to violate the civil liberties of U.S. citizens.
The timing of the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, of course, reveals the underlying goal of the new Amendment. It was 1868, and the southern states were just recovering from losing the Civil War. They had newly-freed slaves now living in the area, and racial animosity was running high. Local and state governments were passing long lists of laws ("Jim Crow" laws) that stripped these newly-freed slaves of many of their civil liberties—liberties that were protected by the Bill of Rights, but only against federal incursion, not state incursion.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/incorporation_doctrine

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How does Bilbo show leadership and courage in The Hobbit?

Bilbo’s increase in confidence and courage is the defining aspect of his character arc. At the beginning of the novel, he is shut away content in his Hobbit hole, happy to remain separate and coddled from the rest of the world. In the movie, Bilbo chooses to join the dwarves on their quest out of a sense for adventure. In the book, however, Bilbo wants nothing to do with them and only joins because he had been duped into signing a contract. Despite being on the adventure somewhat against his will, Bilbo still proves himself time and again, saving the dwarves from the spiders, the trolls, and a number of other dangers they encounter along the way. Bilbo’s character arc has even been cited as a sort of Christian metaphor for the growth of the soul, though how much Tolkien intended on this front is up for debate. From a thematic standpoint, the ring of invisibility also plays into Bilbo’s brand of bravery. If Hobbits are the overlooked creatures of Middle Earth, then it is noteworthy that...
Read more

What was the effect of World War II on African Americans?

According to historians John Hope Franklin and Alfred A. Moss, Jr., more than three million black men registered for the Selective Service. However, they were refused at a rate of 18.2 percent, compared to just 8.5 percent for whites.  Discrimination was rampant in the armed forces, though black soldiers had more opportunities than in the First World War. They were included in the infantry, the coast and field artillery, the engineer corps, the medical corps, and many other branches. When the Women's Army Corps was organized (WAC), black women were included. By the end of the war, more than 4,000 women had enlisted in the organization. The next step was to get black soldiers recommended for advanced training at officer training schools. Blacks were not admitted to officer training schools in high numbers until the Secretary of War issued an order stating that blacks were to be admitted. The integration of the military began in 1945, first on the war front in Germany. In 1948, sever...
Read more

How is Jack in William Golding's The Lord of the Flies presented as militaristic?

Jack, who has red hair that symbolizes his association with blood, constantly carries a knife around with him. He is responsible for hunting, and when he at first fails to kill a pig, "he snatched his knife out of the sheath and slammed it into a tree trunk" (page 31). As the novel goes on, Jack becomes increasingly more violent, and his knife is often withdrawn from his sheath. He relies on violence to increase his power. Jack resents Piggy's intelligence, and he wants to rid Piggy of his glasses, the symbol of Piggy's learning. For example, when the boys are lighting a fire in the hope of being rescued, Jack says, "His specs--use them as burning glasses!" (page 40). Jack prefers to use Piggy's glasses to make a fire than to allow Piggy, the resident intellectual, to see. Later, Jack, constantly seen with a spear in hand and often bloodied from hunting, gives up all attempts to be rescued. Instead, he uses his violence, symbolized by the spear, to take ...
Read more