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The Original Understanding Of The Fourteenth Amendment In Illinois, Ohio, And Pennsylvania, James E. Bond

Faculty Articles

The fourteenth amendment is a second American Constitution, the "new birth of freedom" for which Lincoln had prayed at Gettysburg. It nationalized the protection of civil liberty and thereby revolutionized the structure of American government. In the three great clauses of its first section it guarantees the privileges and immunities of citizenship, the equal protection of the laws, and due process of law. These guarantees are the bedrock upon which the American regime of individual liberty rests. Stated as principles, these guarantees presumably embodied a particular view of man and his relationship to government. The nature of that view is …