Fourteenth Amendment Commons^™

Three Keys To The Original Meaning Of The Privileges Or Immunities Clause, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Establishing the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Privileges or Immunities Clause requires a wealth of evidence. But three key data points are crucial to identifying the core of its meaning. First, Supreme Court Justice Washington’s explanation of the meaning of “privileges and immunities” in Corfield v. Coryell; second, the rights protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1866; and third, Michigan Senator Jacob Howard’s speech explaining the content of the Privileges or Immunities Clause when introducing the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Senate in 1866. Any theory of the Privileges or Immunities Clause and its original meaning …

The Privileges Or Immunities Clause Abridged: A Critique Of Kurt Lash On The Fourteenth Amendment, Randy E. Barnett, Evan Bernick

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was virtually eliminated by the Supreme Court in three cases: The Slaughter-House Cases, Bradwell v. Illinois, and United States v. Cruikshank. Today, most constitutional scholars agree that this was a terrible mistake, the effects of which continue to reverberate through our constitutional law. But, as evidenced by the Court’s decision in McDonald v. City of Chicago, both the “left” and “right” sides of the Court are reluctant to open the “Pandora’s Box” of uncertainty created by the phrase “privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” …

The Difference Narrows: A Reply To Kurt Lash, Randy E. Barnett, Evan Bernick

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

No abstract provided.

After All These Years, Lochner Was Not Crazy—It Was Good, Randy E. Barnett

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

For this year’s Rosenkranz Debate, we have been asked to debate the question: Lochner v. New York: Still Crazy After All These Years? It is my job to defend the “negative” position. My burden is not to establish that Lochner was correctly decided, but merely that it was not “crazy.” I intend to meet that burden and exceed it. I intend to show how Lochner v. New York was not at all crazy; in fact, it was a reasonable and good decision.

"Seg Academies," Taxes, And Judge Ginsburg, Stephen B. Cohen

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This essay recounts the historical, political, and legal context in which Judge Ginsburg’s ruling in the Wright case arose. This context explains the importance of her decision to the battle against segregated education and highlights as well the repeated efforts of powerful political forces, including the Reagan administration and congressional conservatives, to cripple efforts to prohibit racially discriminatory private schools from receiving federal subsidies through the tax system. This essay also aims to highlight Wright’s place in the modern doctrine of educational discrimination.

A Tale Of Two Rights, Robin West

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In part I of this article the author identifies and criticizes a cluster of constitutional rights, which she argues does tremendous and generally unreckoned harm to civil society, and does so for reasons poorly articulated in earlier critiques. At the heart of the new paradigm of constitutional rights that the author believes these rights exemplify is a “right to exit.” On this conception of individual rights, a constitutional right is a right to “opt out” of some central public or civic project. This understanding of what it means to have a constitutional right hit the scene a good two decades …

Buck V. Bell: A Constitutional Tragedy From A Lost World, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Some constitutional tragedies are well known: Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu v. United States are taught to every first-year law student. Buck v. Bell is not. Decided in 1927 by the Taft Court, the case is known for its shocking remedy--sterilization--and Justice Holmes's dramatic rhetoric: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." A mere five paragraphs long, Buck v. Bell could represent the highest ratio of injustice per word ever signed on to by eight Supreme Court Justices, progressive and conservative alike.

Buck v. Bell is not a tragedy as some others might define tragedy: it is not a well-known opinion, …

A Tale Of Two Lochners: The Untold History Of Substantive Due Process And The Idea Of Fundamental Rights, Victoria Nourse

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

To say that the Supreme Court's decision in Lochner v. New York is infamous is an understatement. Scholars remember Lochner for its strong right to contract and laissez-faire ideals--at least that is the conventional account of the case. Whether one concludes that Lochner leads to the judicial activism of Roe v. Wade, or foreshadows strong property rights, the standard account depends upon an important assumption: that the Lochner era's conception of fundamental rights parallels that of today. From that assumption, it appears to follow that Lochner symbolizes the grave political dangers of substantive due process, with its "repulsive connotation …

Incorporation And Originalist Theory, Lawrence B. Solum

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

Does the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution incorporate the Bill of Rights contained in the first eight amendments? And how should an originalist answer that question? This paper focuses on the latter question--the issues of originalist theory that are raised by judicial and scholarly debates over what is called "incorporation."

The inquiry proceeds in six parts. Part I answers the questions: "What is incorporation?" and "What is originalism?" Part II examines the theoretical framework for an investigation of incorporation that operates within the narrow confines of interpretation of the linguistic meaning text based on the assumption that the …

Writing Off Race, Girardeau A. Spann

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

The constitutionality of affirmative action has now become one of the central topics in the politics of race. Ironically, the United States Constitution says absolutely nothing about affirmative action. The text never mentions the term, and the equal protection language in the Fourteenth Amendment simply begs the question of whether equality requires or precludes the use of affirmative action. The intent of the Framers is similarly unhelpful. We know that the drafters of the Fifth Amendment owned slaves, and the drafters of the Fourteenth Amendment envisioned a racially stratified society. But the Fourteenth Amendment was itself an affirmative action measure, …

Sovereign Immunity, Due Process, And The Alden Trilogy, Carlos Manuel Vázquez

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

In Alden v. Maine, the Court held that the principle of sovereign immunity protects states from being sued without their consent in their own courts by private parties seeking damages for the states' violation of federal law. The Court thus rejected the "forum allocation" interpretation of the Eleventh Amendment, under which the Amendment serves merely to channel suits against the states based on federal law into the state courts, which are required by the Supremacy Clause to entertain such suits. The Court held instead that the Eleventh Amendment protects the states from being subjected to private damage liability by …

Taking The Framers Seriously, William Michael Treanor

Georgetown Law Faculty Publications and Other Works

This article reviews Taking the Constitution Seriously by Walter Berns (1987).

This review focuses on three of the key historical points that Walter Berns makes: his arguments that the Declaration of Independence is a Lockean document; that the Constitution encapsulates the political philosophy of the Declaration; and that the framers viewed the commercialization of society as a salutary development and were unambivalent champions of the right to property. Examination of these issues suggests that the ideological universe of the framers was far more complex than Berns indicates. While the revolutionary era witnessed a new concern with individual rights and a …