Legal Liberalism Calls For Equality

The constitutional issue involved in this case involved the incorporation of the 4th Amendment's prohibition against the

By their actions, Griswold and Buxton violated a statute and were convicted as accessories and fined one hundred dollars each. However, Griswold and Buxton argued that the statutes violated the Fourteenth Amendment, which states “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.” After both the Appellate Division of the Circuit

The Slaughter-House decision by the Supreme Court limited the power of the Fourteenth Amendment. It declared that the Jim Crowe laws were state laws and that they could not over turn them because the federal government did not have power over state laws. It also declared that national citizenship and state citizenship were different. In the U.S. v. Cruikshank the court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment did not give the federal government power to act against the whites, who attacked a meeting of blacks and conspired deprive them of their rights, and they said that the duty of protecting equal rights for citizens was in the states hands. So the federal government could not do anything about one person violating another’s civil rights that lived in the same state.

In 1788, the ratification of the United States Constitution sought to establish the fundamental aspects of the nation’s government, laws, and protections of its citizens’ unalienable rights. Robert G. McCloskey’s The American Supreme Court (2016) explains that, during this period, the prospects of the Supreme Court were essentially unknown. As time progressed, however, the Court began strengthening its legitimacy with its decisions in major landmark court cases which, in turn, established its crucial role in shaping the judicial interests and values of the nation. As such, McCloskey (2016) traces the country’s judicial history by highlighting the Court’s great transitional periods regarding state rights, nation rights, property rights, and slavery. By the start of the 20th century, however, discrepancies began to emerge with the rise of

(1962) this was a landmark decision that decided that redistricting issues present justiciable questions, therefore the federal courts had to intervene and decide redistricting cases. It resulted in the defendants being unsuccessful. This case said that the law upheld by the Tennessee Constitution regarding the establishment of districts was a violation of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution. It has to do with the equal protection clause; this clause forces every individual citizen of the United States to be treated equally and without bias with regard to their pursuit of happiness. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution does not allow the government to infringe on the individual person’s rights to pursue a happy

The Supreme Court decision in Buck v. Bell displays some clues to the values of early twentieth century American society. The interpretation of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution is the lynchpin of the decision, and the values of the court can be derived from it. In this essay I will demonstrate that the ambiguity of the Amendment in question has significant consequences, the ethics of the interpretation of the Amendment is derived form the paternalistic nature of the Constitution, and that equality of the law is subservient to the desire for a homogeneous and comfortable cultural environment.

In order to begin to understand this intricate movement and its many facets, it is vital to note the relevance of consumer culture during this time period, and the role it played in altering the course of the suffrage movement. Historian Margaret Finnegan dives into the finer points of this juxtaposition in her book, Selling Suffrage, her main argument insinuating that the two aforementioned subjects indeed go hand in hand. By the end of this work, the author identified numerous ways in which suffragists used different avenues of consumer culture to promote their agenda, and peddle their suffrage products and ideas. In order to support this thesis, Finnegan dissected the very roots of consumer culture, finding significance in subjects like fashion, alcohol, advertisement, theatrical performance and film, public speaking, and capitalism. It is intriguing to note how

In the United States Constitution, the Fourteenth Amendment states “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.” (Law.Cornell) Many of the cases that have been addressed in the Supreme Court book, written by Jack Fruchtman Jr., show the readers the rulings of the case and if either the Due Process of Law and the Equal Protection of the laws has or has not been applied.

During the reconstruction a the 14th Amendment was passed, it protected the rights of the freedmen. Document A states, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge [take away] the privileges or immunities of all citizens of the United States.” This was to protect the rights of the citizens of the United States’ rights and to avoid discrimination. This protects the citizens from the state government. Aslo in Document A it states, “nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This segment states that all the citizens must have equal treatment from the government. These laws are still used today and are brought up in courts all over America.

The Slaughterhouse Cases of 1873 played a part in restricting the extent of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment guaranteed equality under law for all citizens, and that no State could deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due

The Fourteenth Amendment is relatively new compared to the Bill of Rights, having been passed in 1868. The first major case that dealt with the amendment were the Slaughterhouse Cases in 1872. In those cases, a group of slaughterhouses that were put out of business by a Louisiana law creating a monopoly claimed that they were denied equal protection under the law. Though the court ultimately denied their claim primarily on the basis that the Privileges and Immunities Clause does not apply to the states, they also

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) supports this case by stating that the 14th Amendment is “used as a vehicle for lawsuits upholding…important constitutional rights, such as the right to freedom of expression and the right to freedom from unlawful searches and seizures” because the rights of the American people have built the framework for future generations

Throughout the history of this ever-expanding nation as well as many others, there have been times in which words alone were able to stop an action. Consequences were bountiful and punishment seemed to be thought of on the fly. For instance, a convicted murderer may have gotten thrown in jail, however a man who may have sneezed on the king would have been burned at the stake for “Crimes against the Kingdom.”  In modern times it seems nearly impossible to think that such unfathomable treatment was commonplace and, worse yet, a public spectacle. After many years of being free of British rule, the Framers of the United States Constitution had envisioned a society based on the treatment from

In 1942 the Supreme Court, in Wickard v. Filburn, ruled unanimously in favor of restricting an Ohio farmer's acreage allotment to farm wheat grown for his own personal use. Congress’s authority to regulate local activities was questioned in reference to the 10th Amendment’s claim to states’ reserved powers (Oyez, 2015). However, Congress’s invocation of the Commerce Clause provided a loophole by which the case was settled. This sort of encroachment on personal matters was precisely the fear of Federalists when creating the Bill of Rights and in turn resulted in the 10th Amendment. The 10th Amendment was a precautionary measure to protect states from exploitative interpretations of The Constitution’s granted federal powers, and added a necessary provision to a system of mixed sovereignty in which each government has direct authority over citizens within the limits of said powers.

It was not until after the Civil War that the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments were enacted and began protecting individuals against the states. The Fourteenth Amendment has been the principal means by which this protection has been accomplished. It reads, in part, “No State shall...deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” The Supreme Court had interpreted this guarantee of liberty to embrace the fundamental liberties in the Bill of Rights, meaning that the state governments must observe and protect them to the same extent as the federal government this is also known called incorporation. The amendments in the Bill of Rights are said to be incorporated against the states through the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. There has been an ongoing debate on the Supreme Court about the extent of incorporation, and whether the entire Bill of Rights, or only some of it’s guarantees, should be incorporated against the states.