Editor Sylvia Engdahl explores a highly controversial topic, the right to equal protection under the law. This right grants everyone protection, but we haven't always granted it equally. Timely essays in this volume debate school segregation, a woman's right in relation to non-consent pregnancy, an unborn child's rights, the rights of children of illegal immigrants, and gay marriage.

A renowned constitutional scholar and a rising star provide a balanced and definitive analysis of the origins and original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. 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 amendmentÕs key clauses, covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process of law, and the equal protection of the laws. Barnett and Bernick contend that the Fourteenth Amendment was the culmination of decades of debates about the meaning of the antebellum Constitution. Antislavery advocates advanced arguments informed by natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the common law. They also utilized what is today called public-meaning originalism. Although their arguments lost in the courts, the Republican Party was formed to advance an antislavery political agenda, eventually bringing about abolition. Then, when abolition alone proved insufficient to thwart Southern repression and provide for civil equality, the Fourteenth Amendment was enacted. It went beyond abolition to enshrine in the Constitution the concept of Republican citizenship and granted Congress power to protect fundamental rights and ensure equality before the law. Finally, Congress used its powers to pass Reconstruction-era civil rights laws that tell us much about the original scope of the amendment. With evenhanded attention to primary sources, The Original Meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment shows how the principles of the Declaration eventually came to modify the Constitution and proposes workable doctrines for implementing the key provisions of Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment.

National Book Award for Nonfiction Finalist National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction Finalist A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Washington Post Notable Book of the Year A PBS “Now Read This” Book Club Selection Named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Economist and the Boston Globe A landmark exposé and “deeply engaging legal history” of one of the most successful, yet least known, civil rights movements in American history (Washington Post). In a revelatory work praised as “excellent and timely” (New York Times Book Review, front page), Adam Winkler, author of Gunfight, once again makes sense of our fraught constitutional history in this incisive portrait of how American businesses seized political power, won “equal rights,” and transformed the Constitution to serve big business. Uncovering the deep roots of Citizens United, he repositions that controversial 2010 Supreme Court decision as the capstone of a centuries-old battle for corporate personhood. “Tackling a topic that ought to be at the heart of political debate” (Economist), Winkler surveys more than four hundred years of diverse cases—and the contributions of such legendary legal figures as Daniel Webster, Roger Taney, Lewis Powell, and even Thurgood Marshall—to reveal that “the history of corporate rights is replete with ironies” (Wall Street Journal). We the Corporations is an uncompromising work of history to be read for years to come.

Explores the significance of the Fourtheenth Amendment through the country's history and legal cases and discusses why there was a need for this amendment, how it was created, and fully explains the major sections and clauses.

A riveting narrative of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, an act which revolutionized the U.S. constitution and shaped the nation's destiny in the wake of the Civil War Though the end of the Civil War and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation inspired optimism for a new, happier reality for blacks, in truth the battle for equal rights was just beginning. Andrew Johnson, Lincoln's successor, argued that the federal government could not abolish slavery. In Johnson's America, there would be no black voting, no civil rights for blacks. When a handful of men and women rose to challenge Johnson, the stage was set for a bruising constitutional battle. Garrett Epps, a novelist and constitutional scholar, takes the reader inside the halls of the Thirty-ninth Congress to witness the dramatic story of the Fourteenth Amendment's creation. At the book's center are a cast of characters every bit as fascinating as the Founding Fathers. Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, among others, understood that only with the votes of freed blacks could the American Republic be saved. Democracy Reborn offers an engrossing account of a definitive turning point in our nation's history and the significant legislation that reclaimed the democratic ideal of equal rights for all U.S. citizens.

Due process is probably one of the most important rights that your readers should know about, understand, and keep with themselves for the rest of their lives. Due process is fair treatment through the normal judicial system, especially as a citizen's entitlement. This collection of essays presents the Fourteenth amendment through several essays that debate is meaning and use. Topics include truancy, double jeopardy, a woman's right to choose abortion, student suspension, detainees of the war on terrorism, music piracy, and immigration reform.

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, the Supreme Court has long misunderstood or ignored the original meaning of its 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. The authors show how these arguments and the principles of the Declaration in particular eventually came to modify the Constitution. They also propose workable doctrines for implementing the amendment’s key provisions covering the privileges and immunities of citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law.