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Resolving The Original Sin Of Bolling V. Sharpe, Gregory Dolin
Resolving The Original Sin Of Bolling V. Sharpe, Gregory Dolin
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On May 17, 1954 the Supreme Court handed down two decisions that for the first time categorically held that racial segregation in public schools was per se unlawful – Brown v. Board of Education and Bolling v. Sharpe. Ostensibly, both cases dealt with a same question; however, in Brown the entity accused of discrimination was a creature of the State of Kansas, while in Bolling the discrimination was practiced by the federal government. The problem that the Supreme Court faced was the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, which, by its own terms, guaranteed “equal protection of the laws” only vis-à-vis …
Unfinished Business: Protecting Voting Rights In The Twenty-First Century, Gilda R. Daniels
Unfinished Business: Protecting Voting Rights In The Twenty-First Century, Gilda R. Daniels
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While minorities have experienced great progress because of the Voting Rights Act, particularly section 5 of the Act, the work to achieve an electoral process free of discrimination remains unfinished. In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court struck down section 4 of the Act, which provided the coverage formula through which section 5 was implemented. Without section 4, there is no section 5. The historical and contemporaneous discrimination that minorities in states formerly covered under section 5 continue to face is substantial and outpaces that in noncovered states. Scholars cannot divorce the debate surrounding section 5’s constitutionality, which continues …
Lecture: Second Founding: The Story Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Garrett Epps
Lecture: Second Founding: The Story Of The Fourteenth Amendment, Garrett Epps
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The story of the Framing of the Fourteenth Amendment is a lost story of American history, covered over by Southern inspiring myth making and an unwillingness to grapple with the central role of slavery in American history. Americans can take new inspiration from that story and use it as an example of how our popular democracy can be perfected. Even today, nearly a century and a half after the Second Founders did their work, their words and example move before us as a people, a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.
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. …