The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment: Its Letter and Spirit

By Evan D. Bernick, Randy E Barnett, Randy E. Barnett

Book Overview

A Federalist Notable Book

"An important contribution to our understanding of the 14th Amendment."
--Wall Street Journal

"By any standard an important contribution...A must-read."
--National Review

"The most detailed legal history to date of the constitutional amendment that changed American law more than any before or since...The corpus of legal scholarship is richer for it."
--Washington Examiner

Adopted in 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment profoundly changed the Constitution, giving the federal judiciary and Congress new powers to protect the fundamental rights of individuals from being violated by the states. Yet, according to Randy Barnett and Evan Bernick, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of the amendment's key Section I clauses.

Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment must be understood as the culmination of decades of debate about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. In the course of this debate, antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law, as well as what is today called public-meaning originalism.

With evenhanded attention to primary sources, the authors show how these arguments, and the principles of the Declaration in particular, eventually came to modify the Constitution. In this light, they also propose workable doctrines for implementing the amendment's key provisions covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674295536
• ISBN13: 9780674295537
• Release Date: April 2024
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 488 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.7" x 8.9"