14th Amendment
Equal protection clause
The 14th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, ratified in 1868, established birthright citizenship and guaranteed equal protection under the law.
Originally designed to secure rights for formerly enslaved people after the Civil War, its equal protection clause became the constitutional basis for landmark civil rights decisions: The court ruled the law violated the 14th Amendment.
- citizenshipStatus as state member
- due processGuaranteed judicial fairness
- equal protectionUniform legal treatment
- fundamental rightsCore legal protections guaranteed
- ReconstructionPost-1865 national reunification period
birthright · Constitution · civil rights · civil rights movement · ratification · abolition · incorporation · Congress · Supreme Court · Brown · Dred Scott · Roe v Wade · states · liberty · privileges · immunities · persons · freedmen
- Reconstructionfreedmen, Freedmen's Bureau, carpetbaggers, scalawags, Radical Republicans
- Civil War aftermathfreedmen, Reconstruction, sharecropping, Jim Crow, carpetbaggers
- legal historylegal history, medieval law, Roman law, Roman jurisprudence, common law
- Rights LawsBill of Rights, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, UN Charter, ADA
- slaverychattel slavery, enslaved, slave, enslavement, slave traders
- citizenshipcitizen, citizenship laws, citizenship law, citizenship test, citizenship ceremony
14th AmendmentBill of Rights
Initial constitutional amendments guaranteeing freedoms
14th AmendmentDred Scott decision
1857 ruling denying Black citizenship
Jim Crow laws · Fugitive Slave Act · slavery · slave codes · Plessy v. Ferguson
14th AmendmentTenth Amendment
States retain unassigned powers
nullification · states' rights · Articles of Confederation · interposition
amend, amendment, amendments, amendable, amended, amending, emend, emendation, fourteenth