Dear Students: In this discussion question we focus on the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which was ratified and added to the Constitution three years after the Civil War in 1868. Among other things, the Amendment prohibited states from enacting laws that abridged Americans’ rights or deprived them of due process when taking their life, liberty, or property (as the result of a just sentence imposed for a crime). Regarding the Amendment, our textbook author states that its “broad language opened the door for future Congresses and the federal courts to breathe meaning into the guarantee of legal equality.” In this question we will study and analyze the Amendment both in the years right after its passing, and then far on into the future, as far as last year, as a matter of fact. The goal here is to appreciate how this Amendment, enacted 155 years ago, still remains very much relevant in the present and likely on into our future.
To begin, please read the text of the Amendment, available by clicking once on “Next” in the lower right-hand corner of your screen, or take a shortcut to it by clicking on the link in the beginning of this sentence. After you have read the Amendment, please go on to read excerpts from five Supreme Court decisions that invoked the Fourteenth Amendment as the basis or a basis for the decision. You can advance to the text of each excerpt by continuing to click on “Next,” or take a shortcut to each one by clicking on their titles in the links below. Whether you access the slides by clicking on “Next” or by clicking on the links on this page, you can always go back a slide by clicking on “Previous” in the lower left-hand corner of your screen.
Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
Loving v. Virginia (1967)
Roe v. Wade (1973)
Obergefell v. Hodges (2015)
Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022)
Once you have read excerpts of each Court decision, please go on to answer the following question with an answer at least three paragraphs long:
What was the significance of the Fourteenth Amendment when it was ratified in 1868? Did it live up to its guarantee that no state “shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law . . . nor deny to any person . . . the equal protection of the laws”? How has the Fourteenth Amendment remained significant since then?
