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Fourteenth Amendment Commons

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Ryan Williams

Selected Works

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Fourteenth Amendment

The Paths To Griswold, Ryan C. Williams Dec 2013

The Paths To Griswold, Ryan C. Williams

Ryan Williams

The goal of this Article is to develop a fuller picture of Griswold by situating the case within a series of doctrinal and jurisprudential debates and developments that were prominent at the time of the Court's decision but that have faded in significance over time. This alternative picture of Griswold shifts the focus away from viewing the case as one about birth control, sexual privacy, and women's autonomy and toward viewing the decision as one about interpretive method, constitutional theory, and the Supreme Court's role within the national political system. This alternative perspective on Griswold has by no means gone …


Originalism And The Other Desegregation Decision, Ryan C. Williams Apr 2013

Originalism And The Other Desegregation Decision, Ryan C. Williams

Ryan Williams

Critics of originalist approaches to constitutional interpretation often focus on the “intolerable” results that originalism would purportedly require. Although originalists have disputed many such claims, one contention that they have been famously unable to answer satisfactorily is the claim that their theory is incapable of justifying the Supreme Court’s famous 1954 decision in Bolling v. Sharpe. Decided the same day as Brown v. Board of Education, Bolling is the case that is most closely associated with the Supreme Court’s so-called “reverse incorporation” doctrine, which interprets the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment as if it effectively "incorporates" the Fourteenth …


The One And Only Substantive Due Process Clause, Ryan C. Williams Dec 2009

The One And Only Substantive Due Process Clause, Ryan C. Williams

Ryan Williams

The nature and scope of the rights protected by the Due Process Clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments are among the most debated topics in all of constitutional law. At the core of this debate is the question of whether these clauses should be understood to protect only “procedural” rights, such as notice and the opportunity for a hearing, or whether the due process guarantee should be understood to encompass certain “substantive” protections as well. An important though little explored assumption shared by participants on both sides of this debate is that the answer to the substantive due process …