14th amendment

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

*anyone born on American soil is guaranteed full American citizenship. *no state can strip any of its residents of the full privileges of American citizenship. *all citizens are guaranteed "due process of law," which means that states cannot pass arbitrary or unfair laws. *all citizens are guaranteed "equal protection of the laws," which means that states cannot discriminate against particular groups of citizens. Defined what citizenship meant after slavery was abolished. People cannot be denied equal protection of laws. Protected the threat of southerners from using the laws of the government to re-enslave liberated blacks by passing discriminatory laws. Due process of law - states can't pass unfair laws / laws that take away life liberty and pursuit of happiness. This means that the state cannot deprive you of your basic rights without first allowing you proper legal proceedings such as a trial. Fairness of legal matters. The right to counsel to contest a matter. Right to have the opportunity to cross-examine a witness. Right to have a neutral person review an adverse decision. Right to recover compensation for wrongful deprivation. Right to notice and pre-deprivation hearing before depriving a license or welfare benefits entitled to. Right to have an evidentiary hearing prior to termination of a continued employment. A notice and hearing prior to garnishing a person's wages. Incorporation: states are responsible to ensure and uphold our civil liberties.

Incorporation

A process that extended the protections of the Bill of Rights against the actions of state and local governments; states are responsible to ensure and uphold our civil liberties.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Banned payment to former slaveholders for loss of their slaves. It also prohibited any debt owed to the Confederate States. Any debt incurred that undermines the government will not be paid back. Section 4 of the Fourteenth Amendment prohibited payment of any debt owed to the defunct Confederate States of America and also banned any payment to former slaveholders as compensation for the loss of their human property.

Section 5. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Congress has the power to enforce the amendment and pretty much speaks for itself.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

If any person was involved in rebellion against the United States, they may only be voted into office with ⅔ vote of Congress. The Fourteenth Amendment passed Congress at a moment when leading Republican lawmakers were feuding with President Andrew Johnson over how to treat the southern states of the former Confederacy in the aftermath of the Civil War. Johnson favored lenient treatment, while Congress wanted for the national government to impose stricter control over the states that had waged rebellion against it. Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment made it impossible for the president to allow the former leaders of the Confederacy to regain power within the US government after regaining full citizenship rights via blanket presidential pardon; instead, the amendment required a vote of a two-thirds majority of Congress itself to allow former Confederate leaders to regain the rights of American citizenship. Unless and until they received that two-thirds vote, former Confederate leaders were barred from voting in federal elections or holding federal office.

Example Supreme Court case; Gideon v. Wainwright (1963)

In 1961, Clarence Earl Gideon stood trial in Florida, accused of robbing a pool hall. Gideon could not afford a lawyer so he requested that the court provide one for him, but Florida only provided lawyers for defendants accused of capital offenses. At this time, the Sixth Amendment right to legal counsel applied only to the federal government, not to the states. Gideon, forced to defend himself, lost his case. The court sentenced him to five years in prison. While he was in prison, Gideon educated himself about the law and became convinced that the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause incorporated the Sixth Amendment right to counsel to the states. The Court took up his case in 1963 and appointed Abe Fortas, a renowned lawyer and future Supreme Court justice, to defend Gideon. Yes. The Fourteenth Amendment, which prevents states from depriving citizens of life, liberty and property without due process of law, applies the Sixth Amendment to the states. The Court reasoned that the assistance of a lawyer was necessary to ensure a fair trial, and so states must provide counsel to defendants too poor to afford lawyers. Abe Fortas argued that Clarence Darrow, considered one of the greatest American criminal lawyers of all time, had hired a lawyer for himself when he had legal trouble. If even the most capable lawyer required the assistance of another lawyer to ensure a fair trial, then certainly an ordinary person without deep knowledge of the law required one. After the Supreme Court case, Gideon's original case was retried in Florida, this time with the assistance of a court-appointed lawyer. Gideon was acquitted. The Gideon case incorporated the Sixth Amendment into the states, meaning that all state courts must provide lawyers for defendants who cannot afford to hire their own. Citing the Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause, the Supreme Court has applied provisions of the Bill of Rights (which originally only constrained the actions of the federal government) to the states. Selective incorporation prevents state governments from infringing on individual freedoms.

equal protection of the laws

Part of the Fourteenth Amendment emphasizing that the laws must provide equivalent "protection" to all people.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Repeals the 3/5th clause. Every citizen is considered a whole person for the purpose of apportioning in the House. Also, this section provided everyone, no matter their race, with the right to vote. The second section of the Fourteenth Amendment repealed the three-fifths clause (Article I, Section 2, Clause 3) of the original Constitution, which counted slaves as three-fifths of a person for the purpose of apportioning congressional representation. With slavery outlawed by the Thirteenth Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment here clarified that all residents, of whatever race, should be counted as one whole person. This section also guaranteed that all male citizens over age 21, no matter their race, had a right to vote. (In practice, many southern states devised schemes to effectively deny blacks the vote during the Jim Crow era. Later amendments to the Constitution extended the right to vote to women and lowered the voting age to 18.)

Due Process Clause

prohibits state governments from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.

due process of law

the right of every citizen against arbitrary action by national or state governments

Citizenship in the first two sections are the most influential because

they both gave slaves rights as people. It considered slaves as citizens instead of property.