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Federalism Re-Constructed: The Eleventh Amendment's Illogical Impact On Congress' Power, Marcia L. Mccormick
Federalism Re-Constructed: The Eleventh Amendment's Illogical Impact On Congress' Power, Marcia L. Mccormick
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The Constitution is designed to protect individual liberty and equality by diffusing power among the three branches of the federal government and between the federal and state governments, and by providing a minimum level of protection for individual rights. Yet, the Supreme Court seems to think that federalism is about protecting states as states rather than balancing governmental power to protect individuals. In the name of federalism, the Supreme Court has been paring away at Congress' power to enact civil rights legislation. In doing so, it has transformed the Fourteenth Amendment into a vehicle for protecting states rights rather than …
The Antebellum Political Background Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Garrett Epps
The Antebellum Political Background Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Garrett Epps
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Understanding the Fourteenth Amendment is the key question of Constitutional law, both as it pertains to individual rights and, in many areas, as it relates to questions of Congressional power as opposed to the reserved powers of the states. The Amendment is often disaggregated and read clause by clause - but the intellectual and political background of its framers suggests that the Amendment in fact forms a coherent whole and that reading it as a whole might be a fertile source of new meanings. The Amendment was written by politicians who had spent their careers deeply involved in anti-slavery politics. …