Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Supreme Court's ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) that had held that black people could not be citizens of the United States.[1]
Its Due Process Clause prohibits state and local governments from depriving persons of life, liberty, or property without certain steps being taken to ensure fairness. This clause has been used to make most of the Bill of Rights applicable to the states, as well as to recognize substantive and procedural rights.
Its Equal Protection Clause requires each state to provide equal protection under the law to all people within its jurisdiction. This clause was the basis for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the Supreme Court decision which precipitated the dismantling of racial segregation in United States education. In Reed v. Reed (1971), the Supreme Court ruled that laws arbitrarily requiring sex discrimination violated the Equal Protection Clause.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Validity_of_public_debtSection 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.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.
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.
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.
Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Validity of public debtSection 4 confirmed the legitimacy of all United States public debt appropriated by the Congress. It also confirmed that neither the United States nor any state would pay for the loss of slaves or debts that had been incurred by the Confederacy. For example, during the Civil War several British and French banks had lent large sums of money to the Confederacy to support its war against the Union.[47] In Perry v. United States (1935), the Supreme Court ruled that under Section 4 voiding a United States government bond "went beyond the congressional power."[48]The United States debt-ceiling crisis in 2011 raised the question of what powers Section 4 gives to the President. Under the current law, the executive branch of the government (which includes the Treasury and the President) is obligated to carry out all appropriations authorized by the Congress. It has been argued that, in the presence of conflicting statutes (a federal budget statute, which instructs the Treasury to spend a certain amount of money, and a debt ceiling statute, which limits the amount of money that the Treasury is allowed to borrow in process), the statute that was passed more recently "wins"; therefore, in this situation, the President may simply instruct the Treasury to continue issuing bonds beyond the ceiling. Furthermore, such an instruction may be difficult to challenge in court, because it would take a joint resolution of both chambers of Congress to get standing to challenge it.[49] In addition, it has been observed by many, such as legal scholar Garrett Epps, fiscal expert Bruce Bartlett and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, that the debt ceiling itself may be unconstitutional and therefore void as long as it interferes with the duty of the government to pay interest on outstanding bonds and to make payments owed to pensioners (that is, Social Security recipients).[50][51]
The issue of what effect Section 4 has regarding the debt ceiling remains unsettled.[52] Legal analyst Jeffrey Rosen has argued that Section 4 gives the President unilateral authority to raise or ignore the national debt ceiling, and that if challenged the Supreme Court would likely rule in favor of expanded executive power or dismiss the case altogether for lack of standing.[53] Erwin Chemerinsky, professor and dean at University of California, Irvine School of Law, has argued that not even in a "dire financial emergency" could the President raise the debt ceiling as "there is no reasonable way to interpret the Constitution that [allows him to do so]".[54]
Power of enforcement
Main article: Congressional power of enforcementSection 5, the last section, was construed broadly by the Supreme Court in Katzenbach v. Morgan (1966).[55] However, the Court, in City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), said:
Any suggestion that Congress has a substantive, non-remedial power under the Fourteenth Amendment is not supported by our case law.[56]Proposal and ratification
The 39th United States Congress proposed the Fourteenth Amendment on June 13, 1866.
Ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment was bitterly contested: all the Southern state legislatures, with the exception of Tennessee, refused to ratify the amendment. This refusal led to the passage of the Reconstruction Acts. Ignoring the existing state governments, military government was imposed until new civil governments were established and the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified.[57]
By July 9, 1868, three-fourths of the states (28 of 37) ratified the amendment:[58
