why is the 14th amendment important essay

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14th Amendment

By: History.com Editors

Updated: December 20, 2023 | Original: November 9, 2009

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including formerly enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” One of three amendments passed during the Reconstruction era to abolish slavery and establish civil and legal rights for Black Americans, it became the basis for many landmark Supreme Court decisions over the years.

In its later sections, the 14th Amendment authorized the federal government to punish states that violated or abridged their citizens’ right to vote by proportionally reducing the states’ representation in Congress, and mandated that anyone who “engaged in insurrection” against the United States could not hold civil, military or elected office (without the approval of two-thirds of the House and Senate).

It also upheld the national debt, but exempted federal and state governments from paying any debts incurred by the former Confederate states.

Reconstruction

Abraham Lincoln ’s assassination in April 1865 left his successor, President Andrew Johnson , to preside over the complex process of incorporating former Confederate states back into the Union after the Civil War and establishing former enslaved people as free and equal citizens.

Johnson, a Democrat (and former slaveholder) from Tennessee , supported emancipation, but he differed greatly from the Republican-controlled Congress in his view of how Reconstruction should proceed. Johnson showed relative leniency toward the former Confederate states as they were reintroduced into the Union.

But many northerners were outraged when the newly elected southern state legislatures—largely dominated by former Confederate leaders—enacted black codes , which were repressive laws that strictly regulated the behavior of Black citizens and effectively kept them dependent on white planters.

Civil Rights Act of 1866

In creating the Civil Rights Act of 1866, Congress was using the authority given it to enforce the newly ratified 13th Amendment , which abolished slavery, and protect the rights of Black Americans.

Johnson vetoed the bill, and though Congress successfully overrode his veto and made it into law in April 1866—the first time in history that Congress overrode a presidential veto of a major bill—even some Republicans thought another amendment was necessary to provide firm constitutional grounds for the new legislation.

Thaddeus Stevens

In late April, Representative Thaddeus Stevens introduced a plan that combined several different legislative proposals (civil rights for Black people, how to apportion representatives in Congress, punitive measures against the former Confederate States of America and repudiation of Confederate war debt), into a single constitutional amendment. After the House and Senate both voted on the amendment by June 1866, it was submitted to the states for ratification.

President Johnson made clear his opposition to the 14th Amendment as it made its way through the ratification process, but Congressional elections in late 1866 gave Republicans veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate.

Southern states also resisted, but Congress required them to ratify the 13th and 14th Amendments as a condition of regaining representation in Congress, and the ongoing presence of the Union Army in the former Confederate states ensured their compliance.

On July 9, 1868, Louisiana and South Carolina voted to ratify the 14th Amendment, making up the necessary three-fourths majority .

5 Historic Supreme Court Rulings Based on the 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment's guarantee to "due process" provided a basis for these five Supreme Court rulings that have impacted Americans' lives.

How the Black Codes Limited African American Progress After the Civil War

The black codes effectively continued enslavement for African Americans by restricting their rights and exploiting their labor.

Reconstruction: A Timeline of the Post‑Civil War Era

For a 14‑year period, the U.S. government took steps to try and integrate the nation's newly freed Black population into society.

Section One: 14th Amendment

The opening sentence of Section One of the 14th Amendment defined U.S. citizenship: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”

This clearly repudiated the Supreme Court’s notorious 1857 Dred Scott decision , in which Chief Justice Roger Taney wrote that a Black man, even if born free, could not claim rights of citizenship under the federal constitution.

Section One's next clause was: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” This greatly expanded the civil and legal rights of all American citizens by protecting them from infringement by the states as well as by the federal government.

The third clause, “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law,” expanded the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment to apply to the states as well as the federal government.

Over time, the Supreme Court has interpreted this clause to guarantee a wide array of rights against infringement by the states, including those enumerated in the Bill of Rights (freedom of speech, free exercise of religion, right to bear arms, etc.) as well as the right to privacy and other fundamental rights not mentioned elsewhere in the Constitution .

Finally, the “equal protection clause” (“nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws”) was clearly intended to stop state governments from discriminating against Black Americans, and over the years would play a key role in many landmark civil rights cases.

Section Two: 14th Amendment

Section Two of the 14th Amendment repealed the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3) of the original Constitution, which counted enslaved people as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning congressional representation. With slavery outlawed by the 13th Amendment, this clarified that all residents, regardless of race, should be counted as one whole person. This section also guaranteed that all male citizens over age 21, no matter their race, had a right to vote.

Southern states continued to deny Black men the right to vote using a collection of state and local statutes during the  Jim Crow era. Subsequent amendments to the Constitution granted women the right to vote and lowered the legal voting age to 18.

Section Three: 14th Amendment

Section Three of the amendment, gave Congress the authority to bar public officials, who took an oath of allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, from holding office if they "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the Constitution. The intent was to prevent the president from allowing former leaders of the Confederacy to regain power within the U.S. government after securing a presidential pardon. It states that a two-thirds majority vote in Congress is required to allow public officials who had engaged in rebellion to regain the rights of American citizenship and hold government or military office.

It states that: "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."

Section Four: 14th Amendment

Section Four of the 14th Amendment states that the "validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." Historians believe the clause was intended to ensure the federal government would not repudiate its debts, as some former Confederate states had done.

It also prohibited payment of any debt owed to the defunct Confederate States of America and banned any payments to former enslavers as compensation for the loss of human "property" (enslaved people).

Section Five: 14th Amendment

The fifth and final section of the 14th Amendment (“Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”) echoed a similar enforcement clause in the 13th Amendment.

In giving Congress power to pass laws to safeguard the sweeping provisions of Section One, in particular, the 14th Amendment effectively altered the balance of power between the federal and state governments in the United States.

Nearly a century later, Congress used this authority to pass landmark civil rights legislation, including the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 .

Impact of the 14th Amendment

In its early decisions involving the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court often limited the application of its protections on a state and local level.

In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court ruled that racially segregated public facilities did not violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, a decision that would help establish infamous Jim Crow laws throughout the South for decades to come.

But beginning in the 1920s, the Supreme Court increasingly applied the protections of the 14th Amendment on the state and local level. Ruling on appeal in the 1925 case Gitlow v. New York , the Court stated that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment protected the First Amendment rights of freedom of speech from infringement by the state as well as the federal government.

And in its famous 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , the Supreme Court overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson , ruling that segregated public schools did in fact violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In other landmark rulings, the Supreme Court has cited the 14th Amendment in cases involving the use of contraception (1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut ), interracial marriage (1967’s Loving v. Virginia ), abortion (1973’s Roe v. Wade ), a highly contested presidential election (2000’s Bush v. Gore ), gun rights (2010’s McDonald v. Chicago ) and same-sex marriage (2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges ).

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Amendment XIV, Constitution Center . Akhil Reed Amar, America’s Constitution: A Biography ( New York : Random House, 2005). Fourteenth Amendment, HarpWeek . 10 Huge Supreme Court Cases About the 14th Amendment, Constitution Center .

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What is the Fourteenth Amendment?

What does the fourteenth amendment forbid.

• What was the Reconstruction era?
• What were the Reconstruction era promises?
• Was the Reconstruction era a success or a failure?

Fourteenth Amendment

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• America's Story from America's Library - 14th Amendment to the Constitution Was Ratified
• National Archives: 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)
• National Constitution Center - Citizenship Rights, Equal Protection, Apportionment, Civil War Debt
• National Geographic Society - Jul 28, 1868 CE: 14th Amendment Ratified
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• Fourteenth Amendment - Student Encyclopedia (Ages 11 and up)

The Fourteenth Amendment is an amendment to the United States Constitution that was adopted in 1868. It granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and enslaved people who had been emancipated after the American Civil War. It included them under the umbrella phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.”

When was the Fourteenth Amendment ratified?

The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was submitted for ratification on June 16, 1866, and on July 28, 1868, it was ratified and entered into force.

The Fourteenth Amendment forbids the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and from denying anyone equal protection under the law. The amendment also prohibits former civil and military office holders who had supported the Confederacy from again holding any state or federal office.

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Fourteenth Amendment , amendment (1868) to the Constitution of the United States that granted citizenship and equal civil and legal rights to African Americans and slaves who had been emancipated after the American Civil War , including them under the umbrella phrase “all persons born or naturalized in the United States.” In all, the amendment comprises five sections, four of which began in 1866 as separate proposals that stalled in legislative process and were later amalgamated, along with a fifth enforcement section, into a single amendment.

This so-called Reconstruction Amendment prohibited the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and from denying anyone within a state’s jurisdiction equal protection under the law. Nullified by the Thirteenth Amendment , the section of the Constitution apportioning representation in the House of Representatives based on a formula that counted each slave as three-fifths of a person was replaced by a clause in the Fourteenth Amendment specifying that representatives be “apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed.” The amendment also prohibited former civil and military office holders who had supported the Confederacy from again holding any state or federal office—with the proviso that this prohibition could be removed from individuals by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of Congress . Moreover, the amendment upheld the national debt while exempting the federal government and state governments from any responsibility for the debts incurred by the rebellious Confederate States of America . Finally, the last section, mirroring the approach of the Thirteenth Amendment , provided for enforcement.

The full text of the amendment is:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. 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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress , the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Among those legislators responsible for introducing the amendment’s provisions were Rep. John A. Bingham of Ohio , Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan , Rep. Henry Deming of Connecticut , Sen. Benjamin G. Brown of Missouri , and Rep. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania . The Congressional Joint Resolution proposing the amendment was submitted to the states for ratification on June 16, 1866. On July 28, 1868, having been ratified by the requisite number of states, it entered into force. However, its attempt to guarantee civil rights was circumvented for many decades by the post-Reconstruction-era black codes , Jim Crow laws , and the U.S. Supreme Court ’s “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896).

The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution Essay

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Introduction

• Interpretation of the 14th amendment

Affirmative action

This amendment was approved on July 1868. The amendment contained two important clauses that marked the history of Civil rights movement in the US. These are the Equal protection clause and the Due Process clause.

The former guaranteed equal protection of the law while the latter protected individuals from deprivation of life, liberty and property by the state without the due process of law. This article looks into the various interpretations given to the Fourteenth Amendment, limitations to its applications and the affirmative action.

Interpretation of the 14 th amendment

The problem that faced the court was in determining what could qualify as equal protection. The first attempt to interpret the Equal protection clause was made in the infamous case of Plessy Vs Ferguson (1896) , which advocated for racial segregation. Justice Brown was concerned with the reasonableness of the clause.

He argued that when the court is reviewing state legislation it should consider regulation of public order and the tradition or custom of the people. “In short, the Court created a very lenient standard when reviewing state legislation: If a statute promotes order or can be characterized as a tradition or custom… the statute meets the requirements of the clause” (Peter, 1998, Par 3).

In Brown Vs Board of Education (1954) however, the Equal Protection clause was given a new meaning. Justice Earl Warren found that segregated facilities did not amount to equal protection in law. He stated:

“…the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others…are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment” (Brown Vs Board of Education, 1954).

Hernandez v. Texas (1954) the Court found that the Equal Protection clause to apply to not only whites and blacks but also other races and ethnic groups. Among these, other races were the Mexican-Americans. Since Brown case, women and illegitimate children have been included in the Equal Protection Clause.

“The Supreme Court accepted the concept of distinction by class, that is, between “white” and Hispanic, and found that when laws produce unreasonable and different treatment on such a basis, the constitutional guarantee of equal protection is violated” (Carl 1982. Par.2).

The Due Process Clause was not only meant to protect basic procedural rights but also substantive rights. In the case of Gitlow Vs New York (1925) , protection of press from abridgement by the legislature was held to be some of the fundamental freedoms protected by the ‘due process’ clause of the fourteenth Amendment from infringement by the state. Here it was dealing with the substantive rights incorporated in the bill of rights.

However, the decision in Muller Vs Oregon (1908), showed that the state could restrict working hours of women if doing so was in their best interest. This decision was made in due regard to the physical health of a woman. It was held that the physical role of women in childbirth and their social role in the society is an issue of public interest permitting the state to regulate their working hours notwithstanding the ‘due process’ clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Even though it offered a starting point, the Fourteenth Amendment was seen not to be enough to curb discrimination and racial segregation. More positive measures were needed to protect minority groups in the US.

“Affirmative Action refers to a set of practices undertaken… to go beyond non-discrimination, with the goal of actively improving the economic status of minorities and women with regard to employment, education, and business ownership and growth” (Holzer & Neumark 2005, Par. 1).

Affirmative Action was first introduced by President John F. Kennedy in the 1961 Executive Order 10925. Thereafter, several more orders were passed to deal with discrimination in employment. Other laws dealing with equal protection were subsequently enacted to outlaw discrimination such as the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Title II of the Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations while title IV prohibited race and sex discrimination in employment.

Courts too have joined hands in the fight. For example in Davis vs. Bakke (1978) , where the court found that Bakke had been denied equal protection of the law by the University of California by being refused admission in the school even though his grades were better than the minority’s admitted. This was done in line with a two-track admission system for blacks and whites. Even thought the decision overruled the affirmative action policy, it was viewed as a victory to proponents of affirmative action because it was a fight against racial segregation.

Affirmative action-together with anti-discrimination laws and legislation-has rendered rights of minority groups in the labor market as well as public academic institutions more apparent. Therefore we cannot bow to the critics propositions that affirmative action promotes discrimination and racism.

“Laws barring race- or sex-conscious behavior in hiring, promotions, and discharges are likely to undermine not only explicit forms of Affirmative Action, but also any prohibitions of discrimination that rely on disparate impact analyses for their enforcement” (Holzer and Neumark, 2006, Par, 11).

The Fourteenth amendment has been classified as the most far-reaching amendment in the history of the US constitution especially to the minority groups. “The Fourteenth Amendment itself was the fruit of a necessary and wise solution for a comparable problem” (Howard 2000).

It came at a time when civil rights movements were at the peak and has contributed significantly to the redemption of minority from past discriminatory activities. It created awareness to the whole world on the injustices of racial segregation and prompted the public to take corrective measures, which have no doubt yielded a lot of success.

Brown V Board of Education. (1945). Massive Resistance” to Integration . Web.

Carl. V. (1982). Allsup, Hernandez V state of Texas . Texas. Texas State Historical Association.

Gitlow V. New York . (2011). In Encyclopedia Britannica. Web.

Holzer H. and Neumark D. (2006). Journal of Policy Analysis and Management: Affirmative Action: What do we know? Published by Urban Institute.

Howard. N.M. (2000). The Amendment that Refused to Die: Equality and Justice Deferred: The History of the Fourteenth Amendment. Madison Books.

Peter, M. (1998). Princeton university law Journals: Past and future of Affirmative action Volume I. Issue 2 Springs. Web.

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IvyPanda. (2018, October 10). The Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-fourteenth-amendment-to-the-us-constitution/

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Milestone Documents

14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868)

Citation: The House Joint Resolution Proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, June 16, 1866; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1999; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

View All Pages in the National Archives Catalog

View Transcript

Passed by Congress June 13, 1866, and ratified July 9, 1868, the 14th Amendment extended liberties and rights granted by the Bill of Rights to formerly enslaved people.

Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people.

Another equally important provision was the statement that “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments.

On June 16, 1866, the House Joint Resolution proposing the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was submitted to the states. On July 28, 1868, the 14th amendment was declared, in a certificate of the Secretary of State, ratified by the necessary 28 of the 37 States, and became part of the supreme law of the land.

Congressman John A. Bingham of Ohio, the primary author of the first section of the 14th Amendment, intended that the amendment also nationalize the Bill of Rights by making it binding upon the states. When introducing the amendment, Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan specifically stated that the privileges and immunities clause would extend to the states “the personal rights guaranteed and secured by the first eight amendments.” Historians disagree on how widely Bingham's and Howard's views were shared at the time in the Congress, or across the country in general. No one in Congress explicitly contradicted their view of the amendment, but only a few members said anything at all about its meaning on this issue. For many years, the Supreme Court ruled that the amendment did not extend the Bill of Rights to the states.

Not only did the 14th Amendment fail to extend the Bill of Rights to the states; it also failed to protect the rights of Black citizens. A legacy of Reconstruction was the determined struggle of Black and White citizens to make the promise of the 14th Amendment a reality. Citizens petitioned and initiated court cases, Congress enacted legislation, and the executive branch attempted to enforce measures that would guard all citizens’ rights. While these citizens did not succeed in empowering the 14th Amendment during Reconstruction, they effectively articulated arguments and offered dissenting opinions that would be the basis for change in the 20th century.

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AMENDMENT XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

• Fourteenth Amendment

Primary tabs

The  Fourteenth Amendment  of the U.S. Constitution contains a number of important concepts, most famously state action, privileges or immunities, citizenship,  due process , and  equal protection —all of which are contained in Section One. However, the Fourteenth Amendment contains four other sections.

• Section Two deals with the apportionment of representatives to Congress. 
• Section Three forbids anyone who participates in “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States from holding federal office. 
• Section Four addresses federal debt and repudiates debts accrued by the Confederacy. 
• Section Five expressly authorizes Congress to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment “by appropriate legislation.” 

The states ratified the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868 in the immediate aftermath of the  American Civil War , along with the other Reconstruction Amendments —the  Thirteenth  and  Fifteenth .

Citizenship

Also known as the Naturalization Clause, the Citizenship Clause is contained in Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment. The clause conferred U.S. and state citizenship at birth to all individuals born in the United States.

African Americans

In  Dred Scott v. Sanford , 60 U.S. 393 (1857) , the Supreme Court held that African Americans were not U.S. citizens, even if they were free.

The Fourteenth Amendment, however, guaranteed that everyone born or naturalized in the United States and under its jurisdiction would be a United States citizen. It also ensured that federal citizenship was also made primary, which meant that states could not prevent freed slaves from obtaining state citizenship and thus federal citizenship. As such, the Fourteenth Amendment effectively overturned  Scott v. Sanford.

Native Americans

In  Elk v. Wilkins , 112 U.S. 94 (1884) , the Supreme Court held that children born to members of Native American tribes governed by local tribal governments were not automatically granted citizenship under the Fourteenth Amendment. Congress, however, granted citizenship to Native Americans in 1924 when it passed the  Indian Citizenship Act .

Chinese Americans

In  United States v. Wong Kim Ark , 169 U.S. 649 (1898) , the Supreme Court held that when a child is born in America to non-citizen Chinese parents, that child is a United States citizen. The Court in  Wong Kim  also applied that ruling "[a]ll persons born or naturalized in the United States," finding that those persons "are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

State Action

The  State Action Clause  of the Fourteenth Amendment declares that a state cannot make or enforce any law that abridges the privileges or immunities of any citizen. In the   Civil Rights Cases , 109 U.S. 3 (1883) , the Supreme Court ruled that the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which prohibited racial discrimination in public accommodations, was unconstitutional because it tried to regulate private actors. The Court decided in  United States v. Guest , 383 U.S. 745 (1966)  that the Enforcement Clause gave Congress the power to regulate the private of individuals who conspired with state officials to deprive people of their rights under Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment. In later cases, the Courts tried to distance itself from the  Guest  decision, and in  United States v. Morrison , 529 U.S. 598 (2000) , the Supreme Court rejected  Guest,  and struck down part of the Violence Against Women Act that provided a civil remedy for victims of sex-related violence.

The Court also handled a number of cases dealing with racial discrimination by private actors. In  Shelley v. Kraemer , 334 U.S. 1 (1948) , the Supreme Court decided that the judicial enforcement of a private restrictive covenant that prohibited non-white occupants violated equal protection to a Black buyer, even though enforcing private  restrictive covenants  was generally valid and enforceable. In  Burton v. Wilmington Parking Authority , 365 U.S. 715 (1961) , a restaurant which leased space in a public parking garage was found to engage in racially discriminatory practices. The Supreme Court, influenced by the fact that the garage was used for public parking, ruled that the restaurant was closely tied to the state in such a way that the discrimination could be considered state action. As such, the Supreme Court decided that the restaurant's discrimination unconstitutionally violated the Equal Protection Clause . The Supreme Court in  Reitman v. Mulkey , 387 U.S. 369 (1967)  struck down a California constitutional amendment that prohibited enacting any law that restricted an individual from refusing to sell land to a buyer for any reason. The Court’s argument seemed to be that the amendment to the state constitution was a state action violating equal protection.

In a number of cases, the Court has continued to limit state action claims against private individuals. In  Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co. , 419 U.S. 345 (1974) , the Supreme Court ruled that Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply when electric utilities stop service to customers. The Court also determined in  Flagg Brothers, Inc. v. Brooks , 436 U.S. 149 (1978)  that there was no Section One liability for a warehouse-workers selling stored property to make good back payments.

Privileges or Immunities Clause

There has been some debate over the meaning of the Privileges or Immunities Clause, with several possible original meanings. A question arose as to whether the clause meant that all state laws should be applied equally to its citizens or that state laws should have certain substantive content. The substantive view can be further divided into two categories. One view is that these privileges and immunities include all of the rights in the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights. Thus, this view sees the purpose of the Privileges or Immunities Clause as applying all of the rights in the Constitution against all of the states. Another view is that it only meant to make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states.

In the Slaughter-House Cases , 83 U.S. 36 (1873) , the Supreme Court took an entirely different view. The Court contrasted the Privileges or Immunities Clause with Article IV’s Privileges and Immunities Clause . The Court distinguished the two provisions, claiming that the Privileges or Immunities Clause “speaks only of privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States, and does not speak of those of citizens of the several states.” The Court said such rights included the right to petition Congress, the right to vote in federal elections, the right to enter federal lands, the right to engage in interstate commerce, and several others. On this reading, the Privileges or Immunities Clause in effect does nothing. Neither the Bill of Rights nor fundamental natural rights were included, and thus the apparent equality function of the Privileges or Immunities Clause was taken over by the  Equal Protection Clause , and the substantive functions were taken over by the  Due Process Clause . This holding has resulted in a fractured incorporation doctrine .

Due Process Clause

The  Fifth  and Fourteenth Amendments both contain a Due Process Clause, although the Fourteenth Amendment applies explicitly to the states. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Due Process Clauses in both articles as having the same meaning, as Justice Frankfurter describes in his concurrence in  Malinski v. New York , 324 U.S. 401 (1945) : "To suppose that "due process of law" meant one thing in the Fifth Amendment and another in the Fourteenth is too frivolous to require elaborate rejection."

Due process  is generally understood to contain two concepts:  procedural due process  and  substantive due process .

Procedural Due Process

Procedural due process guarantees fairness to all individuals. This fairness might require different elements to the accused, including the opportunity to be heard, given notice, and be given a judicial decision with a stated rationale. As a basic rule, the more important the right, the stricter the procedural process must be. The Supreme Court has defined what property and liberty interests are in different cases. In the case  Board of Regents v. Roth , 408 U.S. 564 (1972) , the Court held, "The Fourteenth Amendment does not require opportunity for a hearing prior to the nonrenewal of a nontenured state teacher's contract unless he can show that the nonrenewal deprived him of an interest in 'liberty' or that he had a 'property' interest in continued employment, despite the lack of tenure or a formal contract."

Substantive Due Process

Although  procedural due process  is widely accepted,  substantive due process  is a bit more controversial. Modern debate regarding the substantive due process clause tends to focus on certain liberties which the Supreme Court has interpreted as belonging to citizens, with a large focus on economic liberties, such as the right to create private contracts.

Economic Rights

Starting in the late 1800s, the Supreme Court used substantive due process to uphold a number of economic rights. In  Lochner v. New York , 198 U.S. 45 (1905) , the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment protects a general right to make private contracts, and that a state may not interfere with this liberty in the name of protecting the health of the worker. The Supreme Court continued with the liberty-of-contract doctrine in   Adkins v. Children’s Hosp. , 261 U.S. 525 (1923)  by holding that a  minimum wage  law for nurses violated the Due Process Clause. The Court also used substantive due process to protect other fundamental rights, such as in   Pierce v. Society of Sisters , 268 U.S. 510 (1925)  when the Court held that parents have the right to refuse to send their children to public school .

After the New Deal and the Constitutional Revolution of 1937 when the Court started to defer more frequently to Congress on issues of economic legislation, the Supreme Court's interpretation of the Due Process Clause changed. Regarding  Lochner's  right to contract, two cases went directly against that holding. In  Nebbia v. New York , 291 U.S. 502 (1934) , the Supreme Court held that the state legislature may regulate prices of items, notwithstanding a right to private contract. And in  West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish , 300 U.S. 379 (1937) , the Supreme Court upheld Washington's state minimum wage law, effectively ending the  Lochner  era ideals of the right to private contract superseding a legislature's economic regulatory abilities.

Privacy Rights

The Supreme Court has historically used substantive due process to endorse other rights, such as  privacy rights . In  Griswold v. Connecticut , 381 U.S. 479 (1965) , the Supreme Court endorsed a right to privacy, partially relying on substantive due process. The Court relied upon the right to privacy in several other cases involving individual liberties, such as permitting abortions in  Roe v. Wade , 410 U.S. 113 (1973) , and permitting private homosexual acts in  Lawrence v. Texas , 539 U.S. 558 (2003) . The Supreme Court did establish a limit to the doctrine in  Washington v. Glucksberg , 521 U.S. 702 (1997) , when it ruled that assisted suicide was not a liberty upheld under substantive due process; and in 2022, the Supreme Court overturned  Roe v. Wade  (see entries on  Dobbs v. Jackson  (2022) , right to privacy , and  abortion  for further details). The right to abortion no longer falls under the broader right to privacy. Additionally, the  Dobbs  opinion mentioned potentially examining  Griswold   in the future. While it is unclear to what extent that may have on the current right to privacy; it is likely that the  case law  around this right will continue to evolve with more recent Supreme Court decisions.   

Equal Protection

The Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is one of the most litigated sections of the Constitution. As a brief overview, the clause refers to the fact that all citizens of the United States are guaranteed equal protection under the laws of the United States.

When a  statute  or  ordinance   discriminates  against an individual or a  class  of individuals, and those individuals sue, the court will apply one of three levels of scrutiny to the law in question:

• This is the lowest level of scrutiny imposed
• This is an intermediate level of scrutiny imposed (typically used for laws which discriminate on the basis of gender, disability, or  illegitimacy )
• This is the highest level of scrutiny imposed (typically used for laws which discriminate on the basis of race, national origin, alienage, or religion, as well as for laws which infringe on  fundamental rights )

For a full in-depth analysis of equal protection, see the LII's  Equal Protection  Wex page. 

Apportionment

Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment deals with apportionment of representatives from the southern states. The abolition of slavery meant that the representation of the former slave in the House of Representatives increased. This clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was drafted to encourage Southern states to grant Black people the right to vote without forcing them to do so. Congress did not really try to enforce the clause. In  Saunders v. Wilkins,  152 F.2d 235 (4th Cir. 1945) , a candidate for Congress from Virginia sued under Section Two of the Fourteenth Amendment, trying to force the state to adopt an at-large electoral system because the state was not eligible for the nine electoral seats it had been granted after the 1940 census. The Court dismissed the case as a  political question . This section is still in operation and would operate in future cases of rebellion. The Supreme Court affirmed in  Richardson v. Ramirez , 418 U.S. 24 (1974)  that under Section Two, states can prohibit convicted felons from voting after they have served their prison sentence. Taking away the right to vote is referred to as "disenfranchisement " and you can read more about it in the Wex article titled " Civil Rights ."

Disqualification for Rebellion

Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment disqualifies an individual from serving as a state or federal official if that person has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion against" the United States. Although the clause was written in the context of the Civil War, it would theoretically still apply for members of future rebellions or insurrections against the United States.

The fourth section of the Fourteenth Amendment involved making the national debt sacrosanct and repudiating Confederate debt. In  Branch v. Haas  (1883) , a federal court decided that  contracts  involving Confederate  debt  would not be enforced, although contracts that involve Confederate currency are enforceable to prevent injustice to those who were required to accept them during the Civil War. The issue of the repudiation of the United States’ debt came up again in the  Gold Clause Cases  (1935) . In those cases, the Supreme Court held that Congress exceeded its authority by refusing to pay bonds in gold, but that the debt holders could not recover because the  damage  was only nominal.

Enforcement Clause

Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment is also known as the Enforcement Clause. This Clause grants Congress the power to pass laws that make Sections One through Four of the Fourteenth Amendment effective.

One of the limitations on the Enforcement Clause is that Congress is only permitted to enforce the provision through appropriate legislation. In  Katzenbach v. Morgan , 384 U.S. 641 (1966) , the Supreme Court’s  holding  suggested that Congress could define the substantive scope of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Supreme Court rejected this suggestion in  City of Boerne v. Flores , 521 U.S. 507 (1997) .

Enforcement Against Private  Parties

In the  Civil Rights Cases  (1883 ), the Court ruled that Congress did not have the power to legislate against discrimination by private individuals, because Section One of the Fourteenth Amendment only applied to actions committed by a state or state agents. However, if the private party discriminates while engaging in public action (such as a private university which accepts federal funding), then that party would be subject to the Fourteenth Amendment.

Further Reading

For more on the Fourteenth Amendment, see this  Florida State University Law Review article , this  Stanford Law Review article , and this  Yale Law Journal note .

[Last updated in March of 2024 by the Wex Definitions Team ]

• civil rights
• the Constitution
• constitutional law
• wex articles
• U.S. CONSTITUTION
• due process
• PROCEDURAL DUE PROCESS
• Fifth Amendment
• SUBSTANTIVE DUE PROCESS
• citizenship
• CONGRESSIONAL APPORTIONMENT

Essay: The Fourteenth Amendment and Incorporation

The Bill of Rights originally applied only to the national government. Given the concerns about centralized power shared by Federalist and Anti-Federalists alike, this is no surprise. Federalist arguments for strong national power always presupposed strong power in states as well. Tellingly, all the states who proposed any amendments at all suggested the principle of the Tenth Amendment: if the Constitution does not give the national government a certain power, that power is kept by the states and the people. The idea that a distant national government knew better than the people of each individual state what kinds of laws that state should have would have been puzzling to most people during the Founding era and for the first century of the republic.

Not long after the amendment was ratified, its Due Process Clause became the subject of scrutiny. What did it mean for a state to deprive a citizen of life, liberty, or property without due process of law? What was “liberty”? What was “due process”?

The Supreme Court building of the United States.

The Supreme Court would begin to tackle these questions. In the case of U.S. v. Cruikshank (1876), the Court held that the First Amendment right to freely assemble and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms did not apply to state governments. States could limit these rights without violating the Fourteenth Amendment.

Over the next seventy-five years, the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment increased. It used the Due Process clause to strike down many state laws and to incorporate parts of the Bill of Rights.

In the process of using its power to bring the states under the provisions of the Bill of Rights, several Supreme Court justices wondered how far incorporation should go. In 1937, Justice Benjamin Cardozo wrote that the Court was “selectively incorporating” rights it considered “so rooted in the traditions and conscience of our people as to be ranked as fundamental.” These fundamental rights, Cardozo added, included only those “implicit in the concept of ordered liberty.”

Justice Benjamin Cardozo

Cardozo’s words, unfortunately, give little guidance for determining what rights are fundamental. The most famous debate on incorporation was waged between Justices Hugo Black and Felix Frankfurter. Dissenting in  Adamson v. California  (1947), Black supported “total incorporation,” the idea that every provision of the Bill of Rights applies to the states. The due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, Black argued, protects the life, liberty and property of Americans, and the most complete expression of American liberty is found in the Bill of Rights.

Black argued: “The words ‘No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States’ seem an eminently reasonable way of expressing the idea that henceforth the Bill of Rights shall apply to the states.”

But of course, the Fourteenth Amendment does not say that the Bill of Rights would now apply to the states. Its authors could have written that it would, but they did not. And so the debate raged. Justice Frankfurter argued that the Fourteenth Amendment does not require incorporation of any provision of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, the idea that the Due Process Clause meant the Bill of Rights would apply to the states was expressly rejected by the Court early on. Rather, it requires states to honor principles of “fundamental fairness.” While these principles might overlap with the Bill of Rights, they are not inevitably connected. In  Rochin v. California  (1952), Frankfurter argued that the Court should indeed apply the Bill of Rights when actions taken by a state “shock the conscience.”

Black retorted that Frankfurter’s flexible philosophy “must inevitably imperil all the individual liberty safeguards” found in the Bill of Rights.

Incorporation increased the Supreme Court’s power to define rights, and changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights from a series of limits on government power to a set of rights belonging to the individual and guaranteed by the federal government. With incorporation, the Supreme Court became busier and more influential.

The effect of the Fourteenth Amendment may or may not have been anticipated by its authors or the generation that ratified it. Some historians say that the post-Civil War amendments so fundamentally altered the Constitution that the time period was, in effect, a revolution and a new Founding. Looking back over the American history you have studied so far, and your knowledge of constitutional principles as the Founders understood them, what do you think?

The individual liberty safeguards in the Bill of Rights go beyond a list of rights. Individuals have natural rights that are not listed in the Bill of Rights. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments make clear that rights and powers not listed remain with the people. One consequence of incorporation has been for the Court to seemingly place more value on those individual rights which are enumerated in the Bill of Rights than those natural rights which are not listed. The Founders had worried that future generations might think that listing some rights would cause people to think that the others were less important. This worry was one reason the Federalists had opposed adding a Bill of Rights to the Constitution. The Ninth Amendment was among the amendments added in 1791 for that reason.

As the Supreme Court’s responsibilities increased along with the legal protections afforded American citizens, the federal government has become larger, especially since 1900. The federal government has expanded in regard to business regulation in the early 1900s, New Deal programs (1930s), military strength during World War II, anti-poverty Great Society programs (1960s), environmental regulation and education (1970s), the war on drugs (1980s), health entitlements (1990s), education (2000s), and a mandate for individuals to buy health insurance in the 2010s.

Justice Felix Frankfurter

During the same period, state governments have also expanded. All this growth in local, state, and federal activities has extended the Supreme Court’s reach as the number of possible conflicts involving the law has risen.

Related Content

The Fourteenth Amendment and Incorporation

The Bill of Rights, setting limitations on Congress, originally applied only to the national government. In the effort to protect individual rights of the freedmen, the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868. It differs from every previous amendment because it limits what state governments may do. Over the next seventy-five years, the Court’s use of the Fourteenth Amendment increased. It used the Due Process clause in that amendment to strike down many state laws and to selectively incorporate parts of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment so as to make them apply to states as well as the federal government. This practice, known as “incorporation,” increased the Supreme Court’s power to define rights for the entire Union, and reduced the power of the states as compared to federal power. It also reduced the power of Congress as opposed to the Supreme Court, to define which rights are properly constitutional. This changed the meaning of the Bill of Rights from a series of limits on government power to a set of rights belonging to the individual and guaranteed by the federal government.

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Primary Sources on Slavery Winter 2004

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The Reconstruction Amendments: Official Documents as Social History

By eric foner.

Like other Radical Republicans, Stevens believed that Reconstruction was a golden opportunity to purge the nation of the legacy of slavery and create a "perfect republic," whose citizens enjoyed equal civil and political rights, secured by a powerful and beneficent national government. In his speech on June 13 he offered an eloquent statement of his political dream—"that the intelligent, pure and just men of this Republic . . . would have so remodeled all our institutions as to have freed them from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor, and the superior caste of the rich." Stevens went on to say that the proposed amendment did not fully live up to this vision. But he offered his support. Why? "I answer, because I live among men and not among angels." A few moments later, the Fourteenth Amendment was approved by the House. It became part of the Constitution in 1868. The Fourteenth Amendment did not fully satisfy the Radical Republicans. It did not abolish existing state governments in the South and made no mention of the right to vote for blacks. Indeed it allowed a state to deprive black men of the suffrage, so long as it suffered the penalty of a loss of representation in Congress proportionate to the black percentage of its population. (No similar penalty applied, however, when women were denied the right to vote, a provision that led many advocates of women’s rights to oppose ratification of this amendment.) Nonetheless, the Fourteenth Amendment was the most important constitutional change in the nation’s history since the Bill of Rights. Its heart was the first section, which declared all persons born or naturalized in the United States (except Indians) to be both national and state citizens, and which prohibited the states from abridging their "privileges and immunities," depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, or denying them "equal protection of the laws." In clothing with constitutional authority the principle of equality before the law regardless of race, enforced by the national government, this amendment permanently transformed the definition of American citizenship as well as relations between the federal government and the states, and between individual Americans and the nation. We live today in a legal and constitutional system shaped by the Fourteenth Amendment. The Fourteenth Amendment was one of three changes that altered the Constitution during the Civil War and Reconstruction. The Thirteenth Amendment, ratified in 1865, irrevocably abolished slavery throughout the United States. The Fifteenth, which became part of the Constitution in 1870, prohibited the states from depriving any person of the right to vote because of race (although leaving open other forms of disenfranchisement, including sex, property ownership, literacy, and payment of a poll tax). In between came the Reconstruction Act of 1867, which gave the vote to black men in the South and launched the short-lived period of Radical Reconstruction, during which, for the first time in American history, a genuine interracial democracy flourished. "Nothing in all history," wrote the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, equaled "this . . . transformation of four million human beings from . . . the auction-block to the ballot-box." These laws and amendments reflected the intersection of two products of the Civil War era—a newly empowered national state and the idea of a national citizenry enjoying equality before the law. These legal changes also arose from the militant demands for equal rights from the former slaves themselves. As soon as the Civil War ended, and in some places even before, blacks gathered in mass meetings, held conventions, and drafted petitions to the federal government, demanding the same civil and political rights as white Americans. Their mobilization (given moral authority by the service of 200,000 black men in the Union Army and Navy in the last two years of the war) helped to place the question of black citizenship on the national agenda. The Reconstruction Amendments, and especially the Fourteenth, transformed the Constitution from a document primarily concerned with federal-state relations and the rights of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minorities could stake a claim to substantive freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government. The rewriting of the Constitution promoted a sense of the document’s malleability, and suggested that the rights of individual citizens were intimately connected to federal power. The Bill of Rights had linked civil liberties and the autonomy of the states. Its language—"Congress shall make no law"—reflected the belief that concentrated power was a threat to freedom. Now, rather than a threat to liberty, the federal government, declared Charles Sumner, the abolitionist US senator from Massachusetts, had become "the custodian of freedom." The Reconstruction Amendments assumed that rights required political power to enforce them. They not only authorized the federal government to override state actions that deprived citizens of equality, but each ended with a clause empowering Congress to "enforce" them with "appropriate legislation." Limiting the privileges of citizenship to white men had long been intrinsic to the practice of American democracy. Only in an unparalleled crisis could these limits have been superseded, even temporarily, by the vision of an egalitarian republic embracing black Americans as well as white and presided over by the federal government. Constitutional amendments are often seen as dry documents, of interest only to specialists in legal history. In fact, as the amendments of the Civil War era reveal, they can open a window onto broad issues of political and social history. The passage of these amendments reflected the immense changes American society experienced during its greatest crisis. The amendments reveal the intersection of political debates at the top of society and the struggles of African Americans to breathe substantive life into the freedom they acquired as a result of the Civil War. Their failings—especially the fact that they failed to extend to women the same rights of citizenship afforded black men—suggest the limits of change even at a time of revolutionary transformation. Moreover, the history of these amendments underscores that rights, even when embedded in the Constitution, are not self-enforcing and cannot be taken for granted. Reconstruction proved fragile and short-lived. Traditional ideas of racism and localism reasserted themselves, Ku Klux Klan violence disrupted the Southern Republican party, and the North retreated from the ideal of equality. Increasingly, the Supreme Court reinterpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to eviscerate its promise of equal citizenship. By the turn of the century, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments had become dead letters throughout the South. A new racial system had been put in place, resting on the disenfranchisement of black voters, segregation in every area of life, unequal education and job opportunities, and the threat of violent retribution against those who challenged the new order. The blatant violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments occurred with the acquiescence of the entire nation. Not until the 1950s and 1960s did a mass movement of black southerners and white supporters, coupled with a newly activist Supreme Court, reinvigorate the Reconstruction Amendments as pillars of racial justice. Today, in continuing controversies over abortion rights, affirmative action, the rights of homosexuals, and many other issues, the interpretation of these amendments, especially the Fourteenth, remains a focus of judicial decision-making and political debate. We have not yet created the "perfect republic" of which Stevens dreamed. But more Americans enjoy more rights and freedoms than ever before in our history.

Eric Foner , the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University, is the author of numerous books on the Civil War and Reconstruction. His most recent book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery (2010), has received the Pulitzer, Bancroft, and Lincoln Prizes.

Suggested Sources

Books and printed materials.

A selection of relevant books by the author of this essay: Foner, Eric. Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. New York: Knopf, 2005.

Foner, Eric. Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2007.

Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1807. New York: Perennial Classics, 2002.

On the adoption of the Reconstruction Amendments: Maltz, Earl M. Civil Rights, the Constitution, and Congress, 1863–1869 . Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1990.

The Reconstruction Amendments’ Debates: The Legislative History and Contemporary Debates in Congress on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments . Richmond: Commission on Constitutional Government, 1963.

Richards, David A. Conscience and the Constitution: History, Theory, and Law of the Reconstruction Amendments. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.

On Thaddeus Stevens: Stevens, Thaddeus. The Selected Papers of Thaddeus Stevens. Beverly Wilson Palmer and Holly Byers Ochoa, eds. 2 vols. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.

Internet Resources

Yale University’s "Avalon Project" for a multitude of documents related to American legal and constitutional history:  http://avalon.law.yale.edu/default.asp

For images of manuscript copies of the amendments, transcripts of their texts, and brief background information, see the National Archives’ "Our Documents" site: http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=40 [Thirteenth Amendment] http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=43 [Fourteenth Amendment] http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=44 [Fifteenth Amendment]

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Immigration History

14th Amendment

Ratified in 1868 to secure equal treatment for African Americans after the Civil War, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed birthright citizenship for all persons born in the United States. It also provided for equal protections and due process for all legal residents.

Discussion Questions

What rights and protections does the 14th Amendment enshrine?

In what ways do you think the 14th Amendment impacted African-American and immigrant communities?

Name three ways you think the extension of birthright citizenship has shaped the Untied States.

Ratified in 1868 to secure equal treatment for African Americans after the end of slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment also provided key rights for immigrants and their families such as birthright citizenship, equal protections, and due process. The Supreme Court has interpreted the Fourteenth Amendment to extend birthright citizenship to all persons born in the United States and as a protection against discrimination based on categories such as race, class, and gender for legal residents. Starting in the 1890s, however, courts have ruled that the federal government’s “sovereign and plenary power” over immigration can supersede these civil rights protections, such as in cases involving excludable aliens and unauthorized immigrants whose immigration related situations are handled through the immigration bureaucracy and courts.

“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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

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Fourteenth Amendment argument decided a presidential election and led to marriage equality

The fourteenth amendment has been cited by many cases to implement both substantive and procedural due process. here's what that means..

• Paul G. Summers, a lawyer, is a former appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and the attorney general of Tennessee.

Editor's note: This is a regular feature on issues related to the Constitution and civics education  written by Paul G. Summers,  retired judge and state attorney general.

Legal treatises have been written about the Fourteenth Amendment. We shall explore the most referenced subpart, Section 1. Three substantive sections deal with representative apportionment among the states; officers debarred from serving if they engaged “… in insurrection or rebellion …;” and the public debt.

The last section involves Congress’ delegated power to enforce the Amendment by appropriate legislation.

Ratified in 1868, the Amendment at Section 1 provides: 

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Why the 14 th Amendment is so consequential

I have served as a lawyer, district attorney, appellate and senior judge, and attorney general of Tennessee. I have surmised that the 14th Amendment is cited in cases more than any other amendment or article of the Constitution. This is true whether in state or federal cases.

This Amendment declares that most of the Bill of Rights and other fundamental rights apply not only to the federal government but to all the States as well.

Please recall that amendments, part of the Constitution, are the supreme law of the land. The Constitution and Amendments supersede every law, including federal law and state constitutions.

13th Amendment is least cited of Reconstruction revisions, but its impact is powerful

States’ citizens and inhabitants have the same privileges and immunities as under the federal jurisdiction. No state may deprive anyone of life, liberty or property without due process. Likewise, no person may be deprived by the state (or federal) government equal protection of the laws.

Former Confederate states opposed ratification

Opposed by many of the former defeated Confederate states after the Civil War, the 14th Amendment was finally ratified so that all states could have representation in the Congress. One of the original Reconstruction Amendments, it originally was used to address the rights of former slaves.

Section 1 of the Amendment has encompassed cases such as Bush v. Gore (2000) , which addressed the presidential election of 2000. The amendment has been cited in a multitude of cases. They range, as just a few examples, from racial segregation, interracial marriage, same-sex marriage , and the death penalty.

The Fourteenth Amendment has been cited by many cases to implement both substantive and procedural due process. Substantive due process, for example, would be the right to marry someone of a different race. See Loving v. Virginia (1967) from the U.S. Supreme Court. Procedural due process examples are the right to counsel in criminal cases and the burden of proof of “clear and convincing evidence” in cases involving parental rights.

Please continue to read and study the Constitution and its amendments. It is definitely time well spent. We encourage our readers to comment on these articles, whether they agree or disagree with the author. We encourage input from all viewpoints, and we request civility. We shall continue in the next column with the study of the 15th Amendment.

Paul G. Summers, a lawyer, is a former appellate and senior judge, district attorney general, and the attorney general of Tennessee. Raised in Fayette County, Judge Summers resides in Nashville and Holladay.

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Constitution

The heritage guide to the constitution.

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Understanding the Guide

Article i: legislative.

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States , and the Electors in each State shall have the Qualifications requisite for Electors of the most numerous Branch of the State Legislature.

No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the Age of twenty five Years, and been seven Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State in which he shall be chosen.

Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons. The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct. The Number of Representatives shall not exceed one for every thirty Thousand, but each State shall have at Least one Representative; and until such enumeration shall be made, the State of New Hampshire shall be entitled to chuse three, Massachusetts eight, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations one, Connecticut five, New-York six, New Jersey four, Pennsylvania eight, Delaware one, Maryland six, Virginia ten, North Carolina five, South Carolina five, and Georgia three.

When vacancies happen in the Representation from any State, the Executive Authority thereof shall issue Writs of Election to fill such Vacancies.

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers ; and shall have the sole Power of Impeachment.

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.

Immediately after they shall be assembled in Consequence of the first Election, they shall be divided as equally as may be into three Classes. The Seats of the Senators of the first Class shall be vacated at the Expiration of the second Year, of the second Class at the Expiration of the fourth Year, and of the third Class at the Expiration of the sixth Year, so that one third may be chosen every second Year; and if Vacancies happen by Resignation, or otherwise, during the Recess of the Legislature of any State, the Executive thereof may make temporary Appointments until the next Meeting of the Legislature, which shall then fill such Vacancies.

No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.

The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every Year, and such Meeting shall be on the first Monday in December, unless they shall by Law appoint a different Day.

Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business; but a smaller Number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the Attendance of absent Members, in such Manner, and under such Penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Each House shall keep a Journal of its Proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such Parts as may in their Judgment require Secrecy; and the Yeas and Nays of the Members of either House on any question shall, at the Desire of one fifth of those Present, be entered on the Journal.

Neither House, during the Session of Congress, shall, without the Consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other Place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

The Senators and Representatives shall receive a Compensation for their Services, to be ascertained by Law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States. They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been encreased during such time ; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.

All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

Every Bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a Law, be presented to the President of the United States: If he approve he shall sign it, but if not he shall return it, with his Objections to that House in which it shall have originated, who shall enter the Objections at large on their Journal, and proceed to reconsider it. If after such Reconsideration two thirds of that House shall agree to pass the Bill, it shall be sent, together with the Objections, to the other House, by which it shall likewise be reconsidered, and if approved by two thirds of that House, it shall become a Law. But in all such Cases the Votes of both Houses shall be determined by yeas and Nays, and the Names of the Persons voting for and against the Bill shall be entered on the Journal of each House respectively. If any Bill shall not be returned by the President within ten Days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it, unless the Congress by their Adjournment prevent its Return, in which Case it shall not be a Law.

Every Order, Resolution, or Vote to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House of Representatives may be necessary (except on a question of Adjournment) shall be presented to the President of the United States; and before the Same shall take Effect, shall be approved by him, or being disapproved by him, shall be repassed by two thirds of the Senate and House of Representatives, according to the Rules and Limitations prescribed in the Case of a Bill.

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises , to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;

To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;

To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;

To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;

To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations ;

To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;

To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;

To provide and maintain a Navy;

To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;

To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; — And

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.

The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

No Tax or Duty shall be laid on Articles exported from any State.

No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another; nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal ; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing its inspection Laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul of the Congress.

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Article II: Executive

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years , and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term , be elected, as follows:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: — "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices , and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union , and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient ; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper ; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers ; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed , and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Article III: Judicial

The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour , and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority; — to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls; — to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction; — to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party; — to Controversies between two or more States; — between a State and Citizens of another State; — between Citizens of different States; — between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

The Trial of all Crimes, except in Cases of Impeachment, shall be by Jury; and such Trial shall be held in the State where the said Crimes shall have been committed; but when not committed within any State, the Trial shall be at such Place or Places as the Congress may by Law have directed.

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

The Congress shall have Power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.

Article IV: States

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.

The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.

A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or Parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.

The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States ; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened), against domestic Violence.

Article V: Amendment

The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which, in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States, or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress ; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article ; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.

Article VI: Supreme Law

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution ; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Article VII: Ratification

The Ratification of the Conventions of nine States, shall be sufficient for the Establishment of this Constitution between the States so ratifying the Same.

Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names ,

G°. Washington Presidt. and deputy from Virginia Delaware Geo: Read Gunning Bedford jun John Dickinson Richard Bassett Jaco: Broom Maryland James McHenry Dan of St Thos. Jenifer Danl. Carroll Virginia John Blair James Madison Jr. North Carolina Wm. Blount Richd. Dobbs Spaight Hu Williamson South Carolina J. Rutledge Charles Cotesworth Pinckney Charles Pinckney Pierce Butler Georgia William Few Abr Baldwin New Hampshire John Langdon Nicholas Gilman Massachusetts Nathaniel Gorham rufus King Connecticut Wm. Saml. Johnson Roger Sherman New York Alexander Hamilton New Jersey Wil: Livingston David Brearley Wm. Paterson Jona: Dayton Pennsylvania B Franklin Thomas Mifflin Robt. Morris Geo. Clymer Thos. FitzSimons Jared Ingersoll James Wilson Gouv Morris Attest William Jackson, Secretary

The Amendments

Amendment i.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Amendment III

No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated , and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger ; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb ; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself , nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Amendment VI

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law , and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation ; to be confronted with the witnesses against him ; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor , and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

Amendment VII

In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved , and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required , nor excessive fines imposed , nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment IX

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Amendment XI

The Judicial power of the United States shall not be construed to extend to any suit in law or equity, commenced or prosecuted against one of the United States by Citizens of another State, or by Citizens or Subjects of any Foreign State.

Amendment XII

The Electors shall meet in their respective states and vote by ballot for President and Vice-President, one of whom, at least, shall not be an inhabitant of the same state with themselves; they shall name in their ballots the person voted for as President, and in distinct ballots the person voted for as Vice-President, and they shall make distinct lists of all persons voted for as President, and of all persons voted for as Vice-President, and of the number of votes for each, which lists they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the seat of the government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate; — the President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted; — The person having the greatest number of votes for President, shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed; and if no person have such majority, then from the persons having the highest numbers not exceeding three on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two-thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. And if the House of Representatives shall not choose a President whenever the right of choice shall devolve upon them, before the fourth day of March next following, then the Vice-President shall act as President, as in case of the death or other constitutional disability of the President. — The person having the greatest number of votes as Vice-President, shall be the Vice-President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of Electors appointed, and if no person have a majority, then from the two highest numbers on the list, the Senate shall choose the Vice-President; a quorum for the purpose shall consist of two-thirds of the whole number of Senators, and a majority of the whole number shall be necessary to a choice. But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States.

Amendment XIII

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XIV

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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 ; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Amendment XV

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude —

The Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XVI

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Amendment XVII

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years; and each Senator shall have one vote. The electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State legislatures.

When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of such State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided, That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.

This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the election or term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

Amendment XVIII

After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.

The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XIX

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Amendment XX

The terms of the President and the Vice President shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of Senators and Representatives at noon on the 3d day of January, of the years in which such terms would have ended if this article had not been ratified; and the terms of their successors shall then begin.

The Congress shall assemble at least once in every year, and such meeting shall begin at noon on the 3d day of January, unless they shall by law appoint a different day.

If, at the time fixed for the beginning of the term of the President, the President elect shall have died, the Vice President elect shall become President. If a President shall not have been chosen before the time fixed for the beginning of his term, or if the President elect shall have failed to qualify, then the Vice President elect shall act as President until a President shall have qualified; and the Congress may by law provide for the case wherein neither a President elect nor a Vice President shall have qualified, declaring who shall then act as President, or the manner in which one who is to act shall be selected, and such person shall act accordingly until a President or Vice President shall have qualified.

The Congress may by law provide for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the House of Representatives may choose a President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them, and for the case of the death of any of the persons from whom the Senate may choose a Vice President whenever the right of choice shall have devolved upon them.

Sections 1 and 2 shall take effect on the 15th day of October following the ratification of this article.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission.

Amendment XXI

The eighteenth article of amendment to the Constitution of the United States is hereby repealed.

The transportation or importation into any State, Territory, or Possession of the United States for delivery or use therein of intoxicating liquors, in violation of the laws thereof, is hereby prohibited.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by conventions in the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXII

No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this Article was proposed by Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.

This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several States within seven years from the date of its submission to the States by the Congress.

Amendment XXIII

The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct:

A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

Amendment XXIV

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

Amendment XXV

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

Amendment XXVI

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

Amendment XXVII

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

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Amdt14.S1.7.1.2 Personal Jurisdiction from Founding Era to 1945

Fourteenth Amendment , Section 1:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. 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; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Prior to ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Supreme Court’s 1877 decision in Pennoyer v. Neff , a defendant that objected to the plaintiff’s state court exercising personal jurisdiction over him would typically wait to object to such exercise of jurisdiction until the plaintiff sought to have the defendant’s state court recognize and enforce the first court’s judgment. 1 Footnote Stephen E. Sachs , Pennoyer Was Right , 95 Tex. L. Rev. 1249 , 1270 (2017) . State (and, in some cases, federal) 2 Footnote Id. at 1279 . courts considering whether such judgments were enforceable would resolve such jurisdictional challenges on the basis of general, customary law principles derived from English common law and international law addressing the recognition of foreign judgments rather than by applying the federal Constitution. 3 Footnote Id. ( The Constitution’s role here was largely indirect—letting defendants remove their cases into federal court or challenge enforcement through diversity suits. ). In the 1851 case D’Arcy v. Ketchum , decided prior to Pennoyer , in which an individual sought to enforce a New York judgment in a Louisiana federal court, the Supreme Court stated that countries foreign to our own disregard a judgment merely against the person, where he has not been served with process nor had a day in court, and that such proceedings are deemed an illegitimate assumption of power, and resisted as mere abuse. 52 U.S. (11 How.) 165, 174 (1851) . However, in Pennoyer , the Supreme Court stated that the Fourteenth Amendment 's Due Process Clause imposes constitutional limits on state courts’ exercise of personal jurisdiction over nonresident defendants. 4 Footnote Pennoyer v. Neff , 95 U.S. 714 (1878) ( Since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, the validity of such judgments may be directly questioned, and their enforcement in the State resisted, on the ground that proceedings in a court of justice to determine the personal rights and obligations of parties over whom that court has no jurisdiction do not constitute due process of law. ), overruled in part by , Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186 (1977) . Pennoyer converted the issue of personal jurisdiction into a question of federal constitutional law, allowing a party to obtain direct review of a state court’s judgment in a federal court that was not bound to apply state statutes or judicial precedent when deciding whether the issuing court had personal jurisdiction over the parties. 5 Footnote Sachs , supra note 1 , at 1253, 1288 ( The Fourteenth Amendment remade this picture simply by changing the route for appeal. A judgment without jurisdiction was void; its execution took away property (or, less commonly, liberty) without due process of law. That turned the presence or absence of jurisdiction, full stop, into a matter of constitutional concern. ).

In Pennoyer , the Court indicated that, absent a defendant’s consent, a state court’s jurisdiction generally extends only to persons or property within its territory. 6 Footnote Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 720 ( The authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established. Any attempt to exercise authority beyond those limits would be deemed in every other forum . . . [an] illegitimate assumption of power, and be resisted as mere abuse. ); id. at 722 ( [N]o State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property [outside of] its territory. ). The Pennoyer Court recognized that a tribunal had authority to exercise personal jurisdiction over a non-resident served with process while in the forum. Id. at 724 ( Where a party is within a territory, he may justly be subjected to its process, and bound personally by the judgment pronounced on such process against him. ) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). See also Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington , 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) ( Historically the jurisdiction of courts to render judgment in personam is grounded on their de facto power over the defendant’s person. ); McDonald v. Mabee , 243 U.S. 90, 91 (1917) ( The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power. ). The Court grounded this physical presence approach in principles of federalism: each state of the union is a coequal and independent sovereign in the federal system, and thus possesses exclusive authority over persons and property within its domain. 7 Footnote Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 722 ( [E]very state possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory . . . . The several States are of equal dignity and authority, and the independence of one implies the exclusion of power from all others . . . . [N]o tribunal established by [a state] can extend its process beyond that territory so as to subject either persons or property to its decisions. ). Although the Court’s decision in Pennoyer addressed personal jurisdiction over natural persons or people, the Court’s early jurisprudence following the 1877 case established that state courts could potentially exercise jurisdiction over foreign corporations doing business in the state because the law presumed that those corporations had implicitly consented to personal jurisdiction, or could be deemed present within the state, based on their in-state activities. 8 Footnote Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186, 201 (1977) ( [The Pennoyer ] opinion approved the practice of considering a foreign corporation doing business in a State to have consented to being sued in that State. This basis for in personam jurisdiction over foreign corporations was later supplemented by the doctrine that a corporation doing business in a State could be deemed ‘present’ in the State, and so subject to service of process under the rule of Pennoyer . ) (internal citations omitted). See also, e.g. , Int’l Harvester Co. v. Kentucky , 234 U.S. 579, 586 (1914) ( This course of conduct of authorized agents within the state in our judgment constituted a doing of business there in such [manner] that the Harvester Company might be fairly said to have been there, doing business, and amenable to the process of the courts of the state. ); Lafayette Ins. Co. v. French , 59 U.S. (18 How.) 404, 408 (1856) ( Now, when this corporation sent its agent into Ohio, with authority to make contracts of insurance there, the corporation must be taken to assent to the condition upon which alone such business could be there transacted by them; that condition being, that an agent, to make contracts, should also be the agent of the corporation to receive service of process in suits on such contracts. ).

The Pennoyer Court’s physical presence test established the constitutional foundation for strict limits on state courts’ authority to exercise in personam jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant—that is, to render judgments concerning that defendant’s personal rights and obligations. 9 Footnote Hanson v. Denckla , 357 U.S. 235, 246 n.12 (1958) ( A judgment in personam imposes a personal liability or obligation on one person in favor of another. ); Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 727 . Thus, for example, service upon a defendant by publishing notice of the lawsuit in a newspaper circulating in the forum state was insufficient to confer jurisdiction on a court to adjudicate the personal liability of a defendant who had left the state and did not intend to return. 10 Footnote McDonald , 243 U.S. at 92 ( [I]t appears to us that an advertisement in a local newspaper is not sufficient notice to bind a person who has left a state, intending not to return. ). Nevertheless, even in the absence of a nonresident defendant’s physical presence or consent, courts could still attain jurisdiction over the defendant indirectly through the attachment (i.e., seizure) of the defendant’s property interests within the forum and the provision of notice to the defendant. 11 Footnote Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723 ( But as contracts made in one State may be enforceable only in another State, and property may be held by non-residents, the exercise of the jurisdiction which every State is admitted to possess over persons and property within its own territory will often affect persons and property [outside of] it. ). In particular, a state court could exercise in rem jurisdiction 12 Footnote In Rem Jurisdiction , Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014) (defining in rem jurisdiction as a court’s power to adjudicate the rights to a given piece of property, including the power to seize and hold it ). over a nonresident defendant’s property interest in the state in order to adjudicate all of the rights or claims in a piece of property. 13 Footnote Hanson , 357 U.S. at 246 n.12 ( A judgment in rem affects the interests of all persons in designated property. ). It could also exercise quasi in rem jurisdiction 14 Footnote Quasi-in-rem Jurisdiction , Black’s Law Dictionary , supra note 12 (defining quasi-in-rem jurisdiction as jurisdiction over a person but based on that person’s interest in property located within the court’s territory ). over a nonresident defendant by adjudicating a plaintiff’s claim to the property in relation to the defendant or to satisfy the claims of its own citizens against the defendant personally. 15 Footnote Hanson , 357 U.S. at 246 n.12 ( A judgment quasi in rem affects the interests of particular persons in designated property. ). See also Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723 ( Every State owes protection to its own citizens; and, when non-residents deal with them, it is a legitimate and just exercise of authority to hold and appropriate any property owned by such non-residents to satisfy the claims of its citizens. ); id. at 728 ( [T]he jurisdiction of the court to inquire into and determine [the defendant’s] obligations at all is only incidental to its jurisdiction over the property. ). For example, in Harris v. Balk , the Supreme Court held that a Maryland court had properly exercised quasi in rem jurisdiction over a North Carolina resident (Balk) who owed a debt to a Maryland resident (Epstein) because Epstein could attach the debt of a third party (Harris) that was owed to Balk while Harris was physically present in Maryland. 198 U.S. 215, 223 (1905) . Harris was eventually overruled by Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186 (1977) . See id. at 216–17 (holding that a state court could not exercise quasi in rem jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant by attaching the defendant’s property interests in the state without inquiring separately into whether these property interests and any other connections between the defendant, forum, and litigation established sufficient minimum contacts to satisfy the first prong of the Int’l Shoe test). However, judgments resting upon the exercise of in rem or quasi in rem jurisdiction would not personally bind the defendant to an extent greater than the value of the property. 16 Footnote See Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723–24 (stating that a judgment resting on in rem or quasi in rem jurisdiction binds the defendant only to the extent of the property’s value). As discussed below, the Court subsequently held that a tribunal may not exercise quasi in rem jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant by attaching the defendant’s property interests in the state without inquiring separately into whether these property interests and any other connections establish sufficient contacts between the defendant, forum, and litigation. Rush v. Savchuk , 444 U.S. 320, 328 (1980) ( We held in Shaffer that the mere presence of property in a State does not establish a sufficient relationship between the owner of the property and the State to support the exercise of jurisdiction over an unrelated cause of action. The ownership of property in the State is a contact between the defendant and the forum, and it may suggest the presence of other ties. Jurisdiction is lacking, however, unless there are sufficient contacts to satisfy the fairness standard of Int’l Shoe . ) (citing Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186, 209 (1977) ). As a result, it appears that plaintiffs rely upon quasi in rem jurisdiction instead of in personam jurisdiction in some cases in which a state’s long-arm statute does not provide for the exercise of in personam jurisdiction over the defendant. See Michael B. Mushlin , The New Quasi In Rem Jurisdiction: New York’s Revival of a Doctrine Whose Time Has Passed , 55 Brook. L. Rev. 1059 , 1063 (1990) ( Courts have explained that the new theory of quasi in rem jurisdiction is necessary to fill gaps in the state’s long arm statute. ).

•   Jump to essay-1 Stephen E. Sachs , Pennoyer Was Right , 95 Tex. L. Rev. 1249 , 1270 (2017) .
•   Jump to essay-2 Id. at 1279 .
•   Jump to essay-3 Id. ( The Constitution’s role here was largely indirect—letting defendants remove their cases into federal court or challenge enforcement through diversity suits. ). In the 1851 case D’Arcy v. Ketchum , decided prior to Pennoyer , in which an individual sought to enforce a New York judgment in a Louisiana federal court, the Supreme Court stated that countries foreign to our own disregard a judgment merely against the person, where he has not been served with process nor had a day in court, and that such proceedings are deemed an illegitimate assumption of power, and resisted as mere abuse. 52 U.S. (11 How.) 165, 174 (1851) .
•   Jump to essay-4 Pennoyer v. Neff , 95 U.S. 714 (1878) ( Since the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, the validity of such judgments may be directly questioned, and their enforcement in the State resisted, on the ground that proceedings in a court of justice to determine the personal rights and obligations of parties over whom that court has no jurisdiction do not constitute due process of law. ), overruled in part by , Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186 (1977) .
•   Jump to essay-5 Sachs , supra note 1 , at 1253, 1288 ( The Fourteenth Amendment remade this picture simply by changing the route for appeal. A judgment without jurisdiction was void; its execution took away property (or, less commonly, liberty) without due process of law. That turned the presence or absence of jurisdiction, full stop, into a matter of constitutional concern. ).
•   Jump to essay-6 Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 720 ( The authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established. Any attempt to exercise authority beyond those limits would be deemed in every other forum . . . [an] illegitimate assumption of power, and be resisted as mere abuse. ); id. at 722 ( [N]o State can exercise direct jurisdiction and authority over persons or property [outside of] its territory. ). The Pennoyer Court recognized that a tribunal had authority to exercise personal jurisdiction over a non-resident served with process while in the forum. Id. at 724 ( Where a party is within a territory, he may justly be subjected to its process, and bound personally by the judgment pronounced on such process against him. ) (internal citations and quotation marks omitted). See also Int’l Shoe Co. v. Washington , 326 U.S. 310, 316 (1945) ( Historically the jurisdiction of courts to render judgment in personam is grounded on their de facto power over the defendant’s person. ); McDonald v. Mabee , 243 U.S. 90, 91 (1917) ( The foundation of jurisdiction is physical power. ).
•   Jump to essay-7 Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 722 ( [E]very state possesses exclusive jurisdiction and sovereignty over persons and property within its territory . . . . The several States are of equal dignity and authority, and the independence of one implies the exclusion of power from all others . . . . [N]o tribunal established by [a state] can extend its process beyond that territory so as to subject either persons or property to its decisions. ).
•   Jump to essay-8 Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186, 201 (1977) ( [The Pennoyer ] opinion approved the practice of considering a foreign corporation doing business in a State to have consented to being sued in that State. This basis for in personam jurisdiction over foreign corporations was later supplemented by the doctrine that a corporation doing business in a State could be deemed ‘present’ in the State, and so subject to service of process under the rule of Pennoyer . ) (internal citations omitted). See also, e.g. , Int’l Harvester Co. v. Kentucky , 234 U.S. 579, 586 (1914) ( This course of conduct of authorized agents within the state in our judgment constituted a doing of business there in such [manner] that the Harvester Company might be fairly said to have been there, doing business, and amenable to the process of the courts of the state. ); Lafayette Ins. Co. v. French , 59 U.S. (18 How.) 404, 408 (1856) ( Now, when this corporation sent its agent into Ohio, with authority to make contracts of insurance there, the corporation must be taken to assent to the condition upon which alone such business could be there transacted by them; that condition being, that an agent, to make contracts, should also be the agent of the corporation to receive service of process in suits on such contracts. ).
•   Jump to essay-9 Hanson v. Denckla , 357 U.S. 235, 246 n.12 (1958) ( A judgment in personam imposes a personal liability or obligation on one person in favor of another. ); Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 727 .
•   Jump to essay-10 McDonald , 243 U.S. at 92 ( [I]t appears to us that an advertisement in a local newspaper is not sufficient notice to bind a person who has left a state, intending not to return. ).
•   Jump to essay-11 Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723 ( But as contracts made in one State may be enforceable only in another State, and property may be held by non-residents, the exercise of the jurisdiction which every State is admitted to possess over persons and property within its own territory will often affect persons and property [outside of] it. ).
•   Jump to essay-12 In Rem Jurisdiction , Black’s Law Dictionary (10th ed. 2014) (defining in rem jurisdiction as a court’s power to adjudicate the rights to a given piece of property, including the power to seize and hold it ).
•   Jump to essay-13 Hanson , 357 U.S. at 246 n.12 ( A judgment in rem affects the interests of all persons in designated property. ).
•   Jump to essay-14 Quasi-in-rem Jurisdiction , Black’s Law Dictionary , supra note 12 (defining quasi-in-rem jurisdiction as jurisdiction over a person but based on that person’s interest in property located within the court’s territory ).
•   Jump to essay-15 Hanson , 357 U.S. at 246 n.12 ( A judgment quasi in rem affects the interests of particular persons in designated property. ). See also Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723 ( Every State owes protection to its own citizens; and, when non-residents deal with them, it is a legitimate and just exercise of authority to hold and appropriate any property owned by such non-residents to satisfy the claims of its citizens. ); id. at 728 ( [T]he jurisdiction of the court to inquire into and determine [the defendant’s] obligations at all is only incidental to its jurisdiction over the property. ). For example, in Harris v. Balk , the Supreme Court held that a Maryland court had properly exercised quasi in rem jurisdiction over a North Carolina resident (Balk) who owed a debt to a Maryland resident (Epstein) because Epstein could attach the debt of a third party (Harris) that was owed to Balk while Harris was physically present in Maryland. 198 U.S. 215, 223 (1905) . Harris was eventually overruled by Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186 (1977) . See id. at 216–17 (holding that a state court could not exercise quasi in rem jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant by attaching the defendant’s property interests in the state without inquiring separately into whether these property interests and any other connections between the defendant, forum, and litigation established sufficient minimum contacts to satisfy the first prong of the Int’l Shoe test).
•   Jump to essay-16 See Pennoyer , 95 U.S. at 723–24 (stating that a judgment resting on in rem or quasi in rem jurisdiction binds the defendant only to the extent of the property’s value). As discussed below, the Court subsequently held that a tribunal may not exercise quasi in rem jurisdiction over a nonresident defendant by attaching the defendant’s property interests in the state without inquiring separately into whether these property interests and any other connections establish sufficient contacts between the defendant, forum, and litigation. Rush v. Savchuk , 444 U.S. 320, 328 (1980) ( We held in Shaffer that the mere presence of property in a State does not establish a sufficient relationship between the owner of the property and the State to support the exercise of jurisdiction over an unrelated cause of action. The ownership of property in the State is a contact between the defendant and the forum, and it may suggest the presence of other ties. Jurisdiction is lacking, however, unless there are sufficient contacts to satisfy the fairness standard of Int’l Shoe . ) (citing Shaffer v. Heitner , 433 U.S. 186, 209 (1977) ). As a result, it appears that plaintiffs rely upon quasi in rem jurisdiction instead of in personam jurisdiction in some cases in which a state’s long-arm statute does not provide for the exercise of in personam jurisdiction over the defendant. See Michael B. Mushlin , The New Quasi In Rem Jurisdiction: New York’s Revival of a Doctrine Whose Time Has Passed , 55 Brook. L. Rev. 1059 , 1063 (1990) ( Courts have explained that the new theory of quasi in rem jurisdiction is necessary to fill gaps in the state’s long arm statute. ).